Good Morning from my Robotics Lab! This is Shadow_8472 with a side project of the week. Let’s get started!
A situation at my church’s elementary school has recently come to my attention: the library lacks a computer, the conference is pushing online timesheets, and the librarian doesn’t use a smartphone. I know a little about get-me-online machines, so when I felt a little prompt from On High, I got to work.
My first thought was to shift directions on the old church office computer from my recent work with Puppy Linux, but it lacks a monitor, mouse, or keyboard. Then my sister’s netbook surfaced (Toshiba NB505). As spiritual predecessor to Chromebooks, netbooks are perfectly sized for toddlers. The original power brick had a frayed cord, but I found a spare. It booted to Windows 7 Starter Edition (32 bit). It reportedly slowed way down at some point. Even Puppy Linux (running 64-bits) felt sluggish running Firefox. Nevertheless, I accessed the timesheet website.
I soon learned about Firefox’s –kiosk mode; it got me thinking about launching it as part of boot directly to the needed webpage. Instead, I sought out a specialized kiosk distro and downloaded myself Porteus Kiosk. I substituted my Ventoy USB for whatever the oddly worded instructions aimed at store managers would have me do. The install media (“first boot”) walks the user through connecting to the Internet, downloading Firefox or Chrome, creating or loading a config file, and flashing (“burning”) a customized image to a hard drive.
The system took a night’s work to install a few times and harden. I password protected the BIOS and disabled booting the Windows drive because I’m more worried about the SD card surviving an accidental removal and landing last in the boot order than someone using a strange, bootable USB. I tediously refined my installation procedure until I was consistent. Its slow boot wasn’t fun.
I had 15 minutes the next day with the school Wi-Fi. Much of that was tracking down the password. Once online with browser obtained, I loaded my config file from the previous night, flashed the SD card, and rebooted, ticking away what time we had scheduled and more – only for a failure to reach the Internet. Discouraged, I packed up left – my only consolation a surplus Valentine’s Day goodie bag.
We figured it was probably some network whitelist until the kiosk worked properly back at home. Had the it failed? I didn’t catch the success/failure message flashing by earlier, so maybe? Another day’s attempt at the school involved accessing site with a laptop from a different school-owned network. I paid close attention to the allegedly successful output, but it again found my Wi-Fi and not the school’s.
Just as I was about to start report a failure for now, I noticed my home Wi-Fi name and password hidden in the config file I was loading each time after the first. I slapped the school’s credentials and left it for my mother to deploy, though not without a Puppy Linux USB as a backup plan. I wrote detailed instructions on getting online and saving the first day’s session. Thankfully, they were unneeded.
Takeaway
Production. I’ve never done a project intended to operate outside my supervision before. I’m proud of this project, and I’m glad it will be of service while until a more permanent solution.
Final Question
I noticed this week how much I seem to be using my Ventoy multi-boot USB. What is your most valuable tool?
Let me know in either the comments below or on my Socials.