KioskLite

KioskLite is a lightweight web-based digital signage system designed to run on older Raspberry Pi hardware.

It was created to provide a simple and low-resource information display using:

• Raspberry Pi OS Lite
• Xorg
• Openbox
• Midori / WebKitGTK
• PHP
• a standard web server

The Raspberry Pi only acts as a lightweight display client. The kiosk content, configuration and media are hosted on a web server.

Features

KioskLite currently supports:

• two independent slideshow zones
• images and videos
• configurable display duration
• media ordering
• enable / disable status
• start and end publication dates
• automatic single-zone expansion when only one side contains active media
• configurable kiosk title
• optional date display
• optional weather display using Open-Meteo
• browser-based administration interface
• media upload and deletion
• lightweight Raspberry Pi client configuration
• multilingual interface support
• English and French language files included

Tested Hardware

KioskLite has been tested on:

• Raspberry Pi 2 Model B — working
• Raspberry Pi 3 — working
• Raspberry Pi Zero — experimental

The Raspberry Pi 2 has been tested continuously for several days with no swap usage.

For details, see:

Hardware Compatibility

Repository Structure

KioskLite/
├── web/
│   ├── index.php
│   ├── admin.php
│   ├── api.php
│   ├── i18n.php
│   ├── config.local.example.php
│   ├── lang/
│   │   ├── en.php
│   │   └── fr.php
│   └── media/
│       ├── left/
│       │   └── .gitkeep
│       └── right/
│           └── .gitkeep
│
├── raspberry/
│   └── xinitrc.example
├── docs/
│   ├── installation.md
│   ├── configuration.md
│   ├── hardware.md
│   └── backup-pishrink.md
│
├── .gitignore
├── LICENSE
└── README.md

Installation

The Raspberry Pi client uses a minimal graphical environment instead of a full desktop.

See:

Installation Guide

The web application can be deployed on any PHP-capable web server.

For web server deployment and configuration, see:

Web Configuration Guide

Configuration

Local configuration files are intentionally excluded from Git.

The repository includes:

web/config.local.example.php

Copy it to:

web/config.local.php

and configure your local administrator password.

Runtime configuration and uploaded media are also excluded from version control.

For detailed configuration instructions, see:

Configuration Guide

Languages

KioskLite includes a simple built-in internationalization system.

Currently included languages:

• English
• French

Language files are stored in:

web/lang/

The language can be selected directly from the administration interface.

The selected language is stored in the user session and in a browser cookie.

Additional languages can be added by creating a new translation file based on:

web/lang/en.php

Translation keys should remain unchanged; only the translated values need to be modified.

Media

Runtime media files are stored in:

web/media/left/
web/media/right/

Only .gitkeep files are tracked by Git.

Images and videos uploaded through the administration interface are therefore not committed accidentally.

Raspberry Pi Client

The Raspberry Pi starts a minimal X session automatically and runs Midori in fullscreen mode.

The supplied X startup configuration automatically restarts Midori if the browser exits unexpectedly, allowing the kiosk to recover without restarting the Raspberry Pi.

An example X startup configuration is provided in:

raspberry/xinitrc.example

Replace the example kiosk URL with the URL of your own KioskLite installation.

Project Status

KioskLite is currently under active development.

The current PHP version is the first public version of the project.

Future versions may include additional features and alternative server implementations.

License

See the LICENSE file.