Raspberry Pi Dashboard with Dakboard

A while ago I bought a cheap Raspberry Pi touchscreen. This like so many impulse buys spent many months gathering dust in a cupboard but given the progress of my webserver, I thought I'd try setting it up as a display.

I was inspired by the excellent Scott Handelman blog to setup a dashboard  using Dakboard and my Raspberry Pi display.

Back when I first got the display, I'd set the screen to portrait mode, but with the stand I have I needed to reset it back to landscape.  It took a while to remember how to do this.

First in  /boot/config.txt I'd added a line display_rotate=1 which rotates by 90 degrees. I removed this and rebooted.

Unfortunately, the response to the touch screen was still in portrait mode.

To change this I had to edit /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/99-calibration.conf

And change the SwapAxes option back from "1" to "0".

Section "InputClass"
        Identifier      "calibration"
        MatchProduct    "ADS7846 Touchscreen"
        Option  "Calibration"   "145 3995 290 3945"
        Option "SwapAxes"    "0"
EndSection

(I also needed to recalibrate, this is available from Preferences -> Calibrate TouchScreen on my device)

I then created a Dakboard account and setup a simple view; Date, RSS feed and local weather. You are then given a private URL which can be used to display this on any device.

In order to startup the Raspberry Pi displaying this page full screen with no mouse pointre,  I followed the instructions on Scott Hanselman's blog.

Edit (take a copy first):  ~/.config/lxsession/LXDE-pi/autostart

Replace contents with:

@xset s off
@xset -dpms
@xset s noblank
@chromium-browser --noerrdialogs --incognito --kiosk https://dakboard.com/app?p=
private-url

(There are also good instructions here)

Unfortunately, while it does look great, Dakboard doesn't quite work for me.
The ability to use a my own webservice as data input is only supported on the paid-for Premium plan. At $5.95 per month this is too much for me so I'm going to look into creating my own webpage. After all, isn't creating something all the fun!

As an aside. With a 750mA power supply the Pi shows the lightening bolt in the top right hand corner, which indicates it's underpowered. Not surprising given we're also powering the screen.
 

I have an 850mA supply, which is slightly better but I would need more if I wanted to avoid the computer crashing.