Virtual Keyboard (toutch screen)

Hi !

I’ve been playing with a raspberry pi, raspbian, volumio and hifibery dac+, and the Super simple Raspebry pi audio receiver script for some time.
Up to know I used the rpi headless, but I’m considering getting a touch-screen, and I’ve seen that volumio now provides a plug-in for toutch screen.

The question is, is there any virtual keyboard ?

It would be great to be able to use volumio on a single device.

I’ve seen a couple of post in the forum in this respect but they all seems to be walkaround.

Any update on this would be appreciated.

Redards

Try doing a forum search for ‘matchbox-keyboard’. I went through a similar exercise a few days ago.

yop

I did it yesterday and found this post before posting mine, just wonderer if there were any more vanilla approch, plug-in based or so.

Thank’s for your reply!

All best

I’ve done it with matchbox and altered the XML file to change it to a standard rather than extended keyboard.

This increases the key width but not it’s height.

It’s ok but the keys are difficult to press on smaller RPI screens. The styling isn’t that hot either. It would be great if someone could produce a purpose built kiosk virtual keyboard for Volumio running on RPi Touchscreen.

I’ve attached my minimal keyboard if it’s useful. The only way to increase button height was by deleting keyboard rows. I deleted top & bottom rows & crammed digits on the right side. Ugly but just marginally functional on a 5" display. The file only seems to work as a replacement for original in usr\share\matchbox-keyboard.
keyboard.zip (482 Bytes)

That works great on a 7" official screen! Nice work!

Hello people !
Sorry but I am a very “beginner” with Volumio and Rasp.
I have download the file keyboard.xml…
But how to use it ? :confused:
Sorry but this question may look very stupid ! :blush:
Does it have something to look with SSH command ?
thanks a lot for any help !

@Habby virtual-keyboard-kiosk-mode-t4995.html (from a forum search)

Yes, you will need command line access to do this, either by ssh or directly on a keyboard with monitor.

The xml file presumably that you downloaded from above is to replace the one in the matchbox installation??

Hello @chsims1 !
Thanks a lot for your answer !
I discover Putty and succed to connect with ssh.
I’have done “sudo apt-get install matchbox-window-manager matchbox-keyboard”
it is ok - I think the installation is done
I reboot Volumio > nothing > no keyboard ! :blush:

so I try to do “nano /opt/volumiokiosk.sh”
and add the lines “matchbox-keyboard -d &
matchbox-window-manager -use_titlebar no &”
and press CTRL + O

but it tell me “permission denied”

ANd still no keyboard on the volumio…Did I miss a step ? :question:

1 Like

You need root permissions to edit volumiokiosk.sh :wink:

sudo nano /opt/volumiokiosk.sh

aaaaah !
oups !
thanks @gvolt I will try today !

Yes !
It works ! :smiley:
And now… how do I do to have the “small” keyboard of @AndrewHeard ?
Is it with using the SSH process too ?

:smiley:

In order to get the keyboard.zip file to your Volumio connect via ssh. Then download the file

wget https://volumio.org/forum/resources/file/2123 

If you like to preserve the original keyboard.xml file it is now time to rename it:

sudo mv /usr/share/matchbox-keyboard/keyboard.xml /usr/share/matchbox-keyboard/keyboard.xml.org

The downloaded file is a zip file called just 2123. It contains the keyboard.xml of @AndrewHeard. Unzip it into /usr/share/matchbox-keyboard/ with

sudo miniunzip 2123 -d /usr/share/matchbox-keyboard/

If you want to delete the zip file execute

rm 2123

Hi Habby

Do this first sudo chmod 777 /opt/volumiokiosk.sh

I would refrain from chmod 777. This would give full access (read, write and execute) to an executable file to all users which was not intended by the creator of the system. So without need I would avoid changing file permissions (or at least return them to the previous state after editing the file). As described in my earlier post it is possible to edit volumiokiosk.sh by calling nano with sudo.