EasyComDisplay - Self hosted and flexible digital signage solution for the Raspberry Pi

EasyComDisplay is a web application for the display and management of information for small and medium organisations. EasyComDisplay targets the Raspberry Pi as its main platform, but other Linux environments can be used as well.

Requirements

Java 8

EasyComDisplay requires Java 8 to run. For the Raspberry Pi, the official Raspbian distribution ships with a Java SE environment.

PostgreSQL

EasyComDisplay stores its metadata in a PostgreSQL database.

sudo apt-get install postgresql

Next, create the EasyComDisplay database:

sudo -u postgres psql postgres
CREATE USER ecd WITH PASSWORD 'ecd';
CREATE DATABASE ecd;
GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON DATABASE ecd TO ecd;
\q

LibreOffice and Universal Office Converter (unoconv)

Those two applications are required to import presentations made with Microsoft Powerpoint or LibreOffice Impress. For the Raspberry Pi, the official Raspbian distribution already ships with LibreOffice.

EasyComDisplay 'talks' to LibreOffice through the unoconv (http://dag.wiee.rs/home-made/unoconv/) application. To install unoconv on the Raspberry Pi:

sudo apt-get install unoconv

Next, as root, install unoconv as a service declared in a unoconv.service file:

vim /etc/systemd/system/unoconv.service

[Unit]
Description=Unoconv listener for document conversions
Documentation=https://github.com/dagwieers/unoconv
After=network.target remote-fs.target nss-lookup.target

[Service]
Type=simple
Environment="UNO_PATH=/usr/lib/libreoffice/program"
ExecStart=/usr/local/bin/unoconv --listener

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

systemctl enable unoconv.service
systemctl start unoconv.service

ImageMagick

ImageMagick (https://www.imagemagick.org) is used to convert and resize the images used for your information stream.

Installation

TODO

For the developer

Requirements

• Maven 3
• npm

Prepare the database

See the requirements above for the PostgreSQL database configuration.

Before building the application, some sources must be generated with these commands:

mvn -f pom-for-generation.xml compile
mvn -f pom-for-generation.xml exec:java -Dexec.mainClass="org.chorem.ecd.Generate"

Frontend development

In the src/main/web directory, type the following command.

npm install

You can then start the development server that will listen on port 808O:

npm run dev

The frontend expects to find the backend on the port 8084.

Backend development

To package the application:

mvn package

To launch the application:

./target/ecd-app/bin/EasyComDisplay

TODOs

• Detail the installation procedure
• Translate the application
• Add acccess controls