StickyCEF

A CEF Browser For Headless EPD Devices, created for EEE Final Year project at University of Nottingham.

The program is currently a work in progress, and is mostly functional using a Raspberry Pi 3 B+.

Installation:

The entire project can be installed using CMake on the target device with the usual dependendencies alongside the inky library for the display IO and libgtkglextmm-x11-1.2-dev to include x11.

reccomneded build steps from the project root:

1. $ mkdir build && cd build
2. $ cmake -G 'Ninja' ../
3. $ sudo ninja install

Usage:

once installed SticyCEF can be run headlessly on a raspberry Pi through the following command:

StickyCef --headless --no-sandbox --use-gl=egl --disable-gpu-blacklist -url [url]

this will display rendered web-content on an inky-WHAT perpetually. Unfortunately the CEF switches used in are required as compatibility work-arounds.

Additionaly, a minimal GUI is available here.

Notes:

• This project is inteneded to display web-pages developed with EPDs in mind, as such not all pre-existing web-pages display well (or at all) on the device.
• If no url is specified, StickyCEF will default to this webpage.
• The browser renders a page with the dimensions 400x300
• If you are using the device entirely headlessly use xvfb to create a virtual display:

  Xvfb -ac :99 -screen 0 1280x1024x16 &
export DISPLAY=:99
  

References

1. browser functionality extended from: cef-forum
2. CMAKE setup from: cef-project
3. Display library from: Pimoroni