AnotterKiosk

Digital Signage OS, to use a Raspberry Pi or x86 PC to display a webpage, in fullscreen, reliably, 24/7
By Manawyrm |
Monitor running AnotterKiosk, displaying a photo of a townhall in fullscreen

What is it?

This project is a Debian Linux-based operating system for computers, either PCs or Raspberry Pi’s.
It is designed to take the URL to a website and display it in fullscreen, without any UI elements.

There are several similar solutions for this task, but many suffer from issues like reliability issues due to broken SD cards, crashing browsers, etc.

AnotterKiosk has a number of different mechanisms (like read-only storage, watchdogs, restart on crash, configurable caching, etc.) that will ensure that the website is always visible and up-to-date.
It has been used in a number of real-world deployments for several years and has proven itself.

Monitor running AnotterKiosk, displaying a public transport timetable in fullscreen Small LCD monitor running AnotterKiosk, displaying a Victron solar inverter dashboard in fullscreen

Key features

  • Images built via CI
  • WiFi & Ethernet connection support
  • Raspberry Pi & PC (64-bit) compatibility
  • USB flash drive, USB SSD, etc. compatible
  • aarch64 images for Raspberry Pis (significant performance improvements over armv7/32bit ARM)
  • Read-only filesystem (no more broken SD cards)
  • Browser cache can be cleared at configurable intervals
  • HTTP watchdog (website needs to send heartbeat messages via XHR/AJAX to localhost)
  • Force specific resolution (1080p on 4k screens, broken EDID, etc.)
  • Configurable audio output (HDMI, 3.5mm, USB audio, etc.)
  • Hard NTP handling (will wait for NTP at boot)
  • SSH support
  • VNC support
  • SSH tunneling support (for remote-access without port-forwarding, on DS-Lite/cellular connections, etc.)
  • Support for multi-touch touch-screens and gestures
  • Dark mode support
  • Configurable timezone and keyboard layout
  • Local webserver with PHP support (can host simple HTML, landing pages, slideshows, iFrame mechanisms, etc.)

Supported platforms

  • Raspberry Pi 3, 4, 5, Zero 2 (W)
  • PCs with UEFI (Intel, AMD or Nvidia GPUs)

not recommended, but working

  • Raspberry Pi 1, 2, Zero (W) (very slow, 32bit only, try to avoid, use armhf images)

Application examples

  • Digital signage
  • Video streams (Cameras, Livestreams, etc.)
  • Grafana dashboard
  • Public transport timetable
  • Digital picture frame/slideshow
  • Victron Solar dashboard
  • Interactive maps
  • Digital concierge
  • Magic mirrors