Setting Up A Raspberry Pi Zero As A Slideshow Exhibitor: Adrián Gil Gómez - Giakonda It

SETTING UP A RASPBERRY PI
ZERO AS A SLIDESHOW
EXHIBITOR
Adrián Gil Gómez – GiaKonda IT
SETTING UP AN AUTOMATIC SLIDE SHOW
Open your selected slideshow presentation with LibreOffice Impress, then right-click on any slide
and click on Slide Transition
In the Slide Transition panel on the right, check Automatically after under the Advance slide
section and set the timer to whatever time you want your slides to advance automatically (I will set
it up to 5 sec for the moment), then click on Apply to All Slides.
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Now click on Slide Show under the toolbar and then click on Slide Show Settings.
Under Type, click on Auto, and set the timer to 00:00:00 (Else an ugly countdown will show up
everytime after the slide show finishes and before it starts again). If you want to set up any
transitions whatsoever you can do that now or just click on OK if you‘re done.
Click on Save or press Ctrl + S to save your slide show settings and you‘re good to go! Save on
your home folder for easy access later on.
2
START A SLIDE SHOW ON BOOT
We are going to do a little tinkering with the Linux terminal now. In order for the presentation to
run just as you plug your Pi Zero in we need to create a file to specify that it‘s going to run once the
Pi Zero gets to the desktop. Open a Terminal by pressing Ctrl + Alt + T or just by clicking on the
icon above
ls .c
We need to create a .desktop file, which will indicate which and how programs run after the system
finishes booting up to the desktop. I will create a file called LibreOffice.desktop, although you can
call it whatever you want as long as the file‘s got the .desktop extension. Write sudo nano
.config/autostart/Libreoffice.desktop on the terminal and press Enter.
3
The file will have the following structure. Change it as you see fit.
[Desktop Entry]
# The type as listed above
Type=Application
# The name of the application

Name=LibreOffice
# A comment which can/will be used as a tooltip. This is optional.

Comment=This will run a slideshow automatically
# The executable of the application. Here we will pass all the arguments that
we need so that the slide show runs automatically. Change the file location to
wherever your slide show is and if your slide show‘s file name contains spaces
it must be written with backslashes before the spaces.
Exec=sudo libreoffice --norestore --nodefault --nolockcheck --show
/location/of/your/file.odp
# Describes whether this application needs to be run in a terminal or not

Terminal=false
When you‘re done press Ctrl + O to save the file and then press Ctrl + X to exit. If it tells you
there‘s no such file or directory you‘ll need to create the autostart folder by exiting nano (Press
Ctrl + X) and write sudo mkdir .config/autostart, then go back to the aforementioned nano
command (Tip: Press the arrow key up to browse the history of the commands you have input).
4
We will need to tweak something else before we‘re done. By default Raspbian (the OS running on
the Pi Zero) will shut the screen down after ten minutes of inactivity, unfortunately the slide show
won‘t count as activity so we need to change that. In the terminal write sudo nano
/etc/lightdm/lightdm.conf and press Enter.
5
Search for the line xserver-command under [SeatDefaults]. Tip: You can search lines in nano by
pressing Ctrl + W and writing the line you want to find.
Change the line to the following:

xserver-command=X -s 0 -dpms
Press Ctrl + O to save and Ctrl + X to exit. Now whenever you boot your Pi Zero it will start you
slide show automatically.
6
I DON‘T WANT THE SLIDE SHOW TO RUN ON BOOT
ANYMORE/I WANT TO CHANGE THE SLIDESHOW
That‘s pretty easy! You can just remove the file we created earlier if you don‘t need it anymore by
opening up a terminal and writing sudo rm -f .config/autostart/Yourfile.desktop then pressing
Enter.
If you just want to change the slide show you want to start automatically open the desktop file with
nano and change the location of the file:
7
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SETTING UP A RASPBERRY PI

# The name of the application

# A comment which can/will be used as a tooltip. This is optional.

# Describes whether this application needs to be run in a terminal or not

Change the line to the following:

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