Nature is healing: Shhh. It's a lesser spotted Pi Bork nesting behind the bushes at IKEA

Nature is healing and bork has returned to the wild. Or at least nestled within the plastic greenery in a Birmingham Ikea. An RPi at Ikea in emergency mode Lo! The Flat Pack Of My West Midlands Homeland Spotted by a Register reader in the Wednesbury branch of the flatpack fetishist, the screen tucked away behind the …

[IGotOut]

"We imagine that pretty much anything one wants to do in digital signage using Windows can be done equally well on the Linux-based Pi."

Until you want to run multiscreen video. But your point is valid in most cases.

[John Robson]

You mean with the dual video outputs on the Pi4?

Or you mean driving a video wall?

I imagine that's pretty niche for any OS... and isn't really digital signage any more.

[Red Ted]

Given the bulk of digital signage will be one computer driving one screen, a RPi should be perfect.

Once you get to big (multi screen) or large pixel for the side of a building, then these setups are so expensive that the cost of the computer driving it is not a factor any more.

[snellasaurus]

My wife uses tons of Pi 3 running screenly for digital signage.

The only failures they tend to have are

1)SD card failure (eventually they all succumb)

2)Overheating die to some stupid installation spots

3)Cables getting pulled by cleaners etc.

The great thing is that they are cheap enough to have spares and you can be back up and running in 15 minutes

[karlkarl]

Not quite screenage, I use them for security cams and the SD card failure can be completely avoided by booting into a read-only system. Its a bit of a faff but she might want to consider it if it is becoming an issue.

I have a tutorial for OpenBSD here: http://thamessoftware.co.uk/openbsd_readonly.html

I use OpenBSD on the Pi because I am more familiar with it but I am sure similar can be done with Raspbian / Pi OS.

As for overheating, perhaps just polling the temperature, set a flag, reboot and sleep for a bit before resuming if it gets above a threshold.

Though a Raspberry Pi 1 or 2 could help with the heat issues and for signage could still be fast enough.

[snellasaurus]

That's a good shout BUT the paid for version has got a black box approach to the OS. Entirely managed via a webUI so I am not sure if this is an option - I'll look into it. There is a free version where you have more control but no support but, as I recall, her employer preferred the paid for version. Pi 3b only supported version at the time

The overheating was one sitting on top of a polystyrene floor tile with some type of insulation blanket over the top. In free air they are fine :-)

[John Robson]

Can you black box the OS off either the network or a USB drive for the more recent versions which support said boot modes directly?

[Chael]

Read-only f/s on a Pi with Linux

It used to be more of a faff to set up, but Adafruit have made a script to make the Pi's filesystem read-only:

https://learn.adafruit.com/read-only-raspberry-pi/

which should hopefully reduce the risk of card corruption on surprise power removal.

[James Hughes 1]

raspi-config now has an option for setting up a R/O FS that should make things much more reliable. Although in our testing (RPT), Sandisk cards are extremely robust anyway.

[MacroRodent]

Börkäge

If you are going to write fake Swedish, remember the only non-seven-bit-ASCII characters it uses are ä, ö and å. The æ and ø appear only in Danish and Norwegian (in them they substitute for ä and ö, respectively).

[Irony Deficient]

Re: Börkäge

Note that é and ü also appear in loanwords adopted into Swedish, e.g. idé, müsli.

[Xalran]

Re: Börkäge

but those are also found in other countries... aprés tout c'est pas comme si le Français était pas plein de caractères accentués. On as même le œ dans Cœur, le u tréma existe aussi ( tout comme le e et le i )... j'ai juste pas de mot avec sous la main...

( after all it's not as if French Language didn't have lots of accentuated characters... we even have the œ in the French for Heart, the ü also exists ( as well as the ö and the ï ) I just cand find a word right away with it. )

[Irony Deficient]

Re: Börkäge

Of course they’re found in languages of other countries — but the topic being discussed here was which non-ASCII letters are used in Swedish. The Swedish é in the loanword idé came from French idée.

L’ü français est utilisé dans les noms propres, par ex. Haüy.

[David 132]

Re: Börkäge

So what you’re saying is that I should refrain from posting the news of the Møøse that bit mi sister…

Oh, you’re no fun any more.

[jake]

Re: Börkäge

So presumably röckdöts are OK?

[Irony Deficient]

Re: Börkäge

Only for Spin̈al Tap.

[jake]

Re: Börkäge

That's Spın̈al Tap, Shirley. But only them?

If I were paranoïd, I'd suspect you had something against Lemmy and contemporaries.

[Chris G]

Bork

Presumably, whoever installed it, never looked at the instructions and had some bits left over that were thrown away.

[SgtFalstaff]

Re: Bork

Surely said bits were put in a drawer to never be thrown away no matter how many times SWMBO asks you to even though their purpose is long forgotten and the original item they came with was disposed of ages ago.

[NorthernCoder]

Halp, I am stück în ëmërgëncy mødë

Hälp, I am stuck in emörgäncy måde

TFIFY

[Potemkine!]

Halp, I am stück în ëmërgëncy mødë

Reminds me that one

[Anonymous Coward]

That looks like Fädöra

From what I can read:

- Starting File System Check on /dev/disk/bla-bla-bla

- Starting Flash Journal to Persistent Storage ...

- Started Show Plymouth Boot Screen ...

[ ... ]

- Reached Target Local File System ...

[ ... ]

- Reached Target Network ...

And something about type journalctl -xb to view system logs ...

I see systemd is fully in control ...

[John Jennings]

Re: That looks like Fädöra

Looks like you have too much time on your hands :)

[Old Used Programmer]

Minimal model....

With 4 Raspberries at the top, it's at least a Pi2B, though a Pi3A+ is also possible.

There was a time that Pi A+ boards practically disappeared because the East Asian "smart display" makers discovered that an A+ was adequaute to the task and really cheap ($20).

[Stuart Castle]

Good to see a Pi being used for this sort of stuff.

I know when I see these sort of news articles, I often say I think it's because System center makes managing a fleet of Windows machines easier (I am well aware "easier" is relative and Windows can be a pain in the arse). But I also think there is a fair amount of playing it safe, and even laziness in that decision.

I also think that, apart from that, a full Windows PC is overkill for running a digital sign (generally, there are times it isn't). The Pi is more than adequate for most of these displays, and has the advantage of both being a lot cheaper, and using a lot less power. Important for any company claiming to be serious about the environment.

Glad to see Ikea hasn't gone down the Windows route.