Puppy used in VendaVision machines!

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VendaVision
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Puppy used in VendaVision machines!

#1 Post by VendaVision »

VendaVision - single serving art movies.

The idea is simple - insert a dollar coin to watch an independently produced art movie, curated by me, and get an absolutely free can of ice cold pop! The artist gets 25 cents per play and the landlord gets nothing. I laugh all the way to the bank, if it weren't for all the maintenance. Then I met Puppy...

VendaVision (http://www.harmsen.net/vendavision) has until now used an ordinary DVD player at the heart of each machine. The problem was that they'd wear out without warning, on a semi-regular basis, given that they were never designed to run 24/7. Yesterday I put Puppy Linux and my DVD VendaVision programme data onto a $12 usb memory stick ram drive that boots on power up, then launches gxine full screen with my specially programmed VendaVision DVD. Being a total noobe, I was up to 3am doing that, with a little help from Puppy's IRC channel. The hardest part was loading gxine full screen automatically AFTER the window manager so it would display properly, which I did using an ampersand. From now on VendaVision will run SOLID STATE on "broken" laptops - no working hard drive, keyboard or disk drives or moving parts required. What's more, used CRTs are cheaper and better than the used TVs I've been using.

Image

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Gekko
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#2 Post by Gekko »

You cheated :P I helped you :D so was it & or &&?

amish
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#3 Post by amish »

this is really cool. good luck!

raffy
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good project

#4 Post by raffy »

Excellent - promoting art while recycling PCs and quenching thirst. :D

I put this project on the puppylinux.org front page. Good luck!

EDIT: In what city is this, and is it in Canada?
Puppy user since Oct 2004. Want FreeOffice? [url=http://puppylinux.info/topic/freeoffice-2012-sfs]Get the sfs (English only)[/url].

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Lobster
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It may be Pop Art

#5 Post by Lobster »

I am sure Tate modern in London, if you can cycle that far, would be interested as this seems a work of art in its own right

http://puppylinux.org/wikka/LatestNews

You might ask them incidentally when the Lobster room (Art themed around Lobsters) is ready. The National Gallery in Trafalgar Square now has information on Lobsters in its staff manual (after my efforts) which includes only 5 known portraits in their catalogue featuring Lobsters. The most exciting is "Lobster with Dead Chicken" which they assured me did not exist until I found it.

:oops: Anyway enough self promotion from me

good luck
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Puppy Links Page http://www.smokey01.com/bruceb/puppy.html :D

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BarryK
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#6 Post by BarryK »

That's a wonderful success story with Puppy!

J.S. Garrison
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#7 Post by J.S. Garrison »

Every commercial endeavor that uses puppy is another inroad for the best little Linux to come down the pike since the beginning of Linux itself. Congratulations
to the VendaVision. I hope we see more projects like this one. Puppy Power!

VendaVision
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Answers

#8 Post by VendaVision »

Yes. I'm in Toronto, Canada. The two main machines so far are in the lobby at the 401 Richmond Street West Arts Building and in the downstairs lobby at Buddies in Bad Times Theatre, 12 Alexander St.

I used '&', '&&' didn't work perhaps because by the time the window manager finishes loading it no longer executes the .xinitrc script. I wonder if there's some way of loading xine full screen from command line puppy directly without needing to load the desktop at all ... anyone?

Future developments (so far just in my imagination) would include wifi so my machines could mooch from a nearby AP and I could upload new programming to the machines from home! I could even schedule a daily show! I could get it to update a data file at my web server on the hour with the number of vends. It could email me when it sells out of something. If it fails to report then I'll know it needs fixing and it won't just sit there unattended.

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MU
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#9 Post by MU »

try:
exit X to console, then type:

xwin gxine -f yourmovie.avi

If it fails:
xwin jwm
to get your desktop back.

Mark

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MU
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#10 Post by MU »

to run it with the windowmanager in /root/.xinitrc:

put BEFORE the line
exec $CURRENTWM
this one:

sleep 3 && gxine -f yourmovie.avi &

The "&" starts it in background.
Mark

VendaVision
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Unattended restart after powre failure

#11 Post by VendaVision »

Vendavision is selling movies and giving away pop then suddenly... zonk! The power goes out for a moment - it can do that sometimes. When the power comes back the computer powers on, puppy boots (good puppy!) but xwin whimps out and and leaves the machine at the command line because it didn't like how it was shut down last. If I came with a keyboard and typed "xwin" and hit enter everything would be fine, but it is an unattended kiosk so I'm not there. Wildo had the same problem with his kiosk installation, but the suggested solutions didn't work, so he gave up. Any ideas or a solution out there?
Image
Crash Proof Puppy[/img]

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MU
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#12 Post by MU »

this check is in /usr/X11R7/bin/xwin.

So you had to comment the appropriate line.

Code: Select all

It seems that last time X ran, the computer hung and you had to reboot.
Have now dropped down to the commandline. If you want to run the Xorg
Video Wizrd, type "xorgwizard", and after configuring /etc/X11/xorg.conf
(hopefully correctly this time!) type "xwin" to start X.'
  echo -e "\\033[0;39m"
  rm -f /etc/.XLOADED #otherwise cannot start X.
  exit
 fi
fi
In my Muppy007, this part is around line 240.
So change the "exit" like this:

Code: Select all

#  exit
Then the script will no longer stop.

Mark

VendaVision
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Success - Puppy Crash Proof!

#13 Post by VendaVision »

Thanks especially to Guest-too and Mu for their pointers and suggestions. The way Puppy starts is evolving fast so I don't know in which versions this will work, but here is what worked for me using 2.14:

1. A "frugal" install to the hard drive was required, with grub to boot it.
(google or search for "puppy frugal install" for more info on that)

2. Edit /etc/rc.d/rc.local and add the following line:
echo -n "false" > /etc/.XLOADED
This fools Puppy into thinking it didn't crash even if it did, so it won't over-react, wimper, and dump you at the command line rather than with a desktop. Bear in mind that if something actually is badly screwed up with your xwin configuration then you may have to boot from the live-CD to fix it.

I did not have to backup pup_save.2fs or replace it before booting. Although it does back-up quite nicely, even when it is being used! More demanding / interactive kiosks might benefit from replacing pup-save.2fs with a known good saved copy because it would reset the user data completely to be "like new" with every reboot. My kiosk just plays dvd from the hd.

What didn't work for me: Editing /usr/Xw11R7/bin/xwin did not work for me. Simply removing the lines about checking .XLOADED doesn't stop xwin from refusing to restart on its own. I still got dumped at the command prompt with no explaination and couldn't figure out why. I tried a bunch of things with the xwin script, none worked.

Once again: Thanks everyone! Now you can unplug and plug in my puppy - and he's up and running again!

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