Working virtual keyboard in Volumio3 with Touch Plugin

Help and Support
1

thank you, i have it working now… but still no on screen keyboard!

2 Likes
2

I am the author of the Virtual Keyboard plugin. Unfortunately it cannot be ported easily. Up to now I did not find a way to make the method it uses to display a keyboard on the screen work with the current chromium browser… and I am afraid it will not be possible.

Maybe there will be another solution in the future, but it is nothing I would be able to do within the next days or even weeks. Time is sparse and I do it as a hobby only :wink:

2 Likes
3

A reinstall helped.
Thanks a lot :+1:

4

Will become a challenge…

5

Ahhh the need for constant revolution eh? no wonder people complain about the good old days… of version 2! :slight_smile:

6

@Wheaten @ianpaulstone I need an onscreen keyboard on one of my Volumio Pis, too. For that reason this will (have to) stay on Volumio 2 for now. ATM I don’t think this is a bad thing, because it works stably and reliably. But as time allows I certainly will look for a way to get a virtual keyboard for Volumio 3, too.

7

I appreciate that!
Virtual keyboard for volumio3 would be great!

Many thanks in advance.

Best regards
Eduardo

8

Any news on this people? Thanks!

9

Would still be very helpful.
I just tested the " Virtual Keyboard" extension from xontab.com on my PC (Windows 10 / Chrome 102) - this works in regular input fields but not in the address field. On some websites, it displays the keyboard but ‘Enter’ does not start a search.
Assuming that the underlying technology is the same, there should be a way to make it work.

10

I thinking to downgrade to 2 too as I don´t see chances to get the keyboard in version 3.

11

Please please… would some awesome developer please develop the onscreen virtual keyboard for volumio3!?

One year ago, I postponed the update to volumio 3 because many plugins were not migrated at the time… today (one year later) I found out, that the last plugin that has not been migrated to run my setup perfectly is the virtual keyboard - that means, I still cannot update.

… I’ll check next year again. :blush:

1 Like
12

The best I got is this.

Which seems to do the trick.

image
image998×567 35.7 KB

2 Likes
13

Well that pretty much solves that problem. Thanks.
I held out with v. 2 until the Spotify issue came up. Now I can have a keyboard again.

I wonder if the Chrome extension could optionally be installed along with the touchscreen plugin, inlcuding a toggle switch in the settings to enable/disable? Or maybe just the same brief instructions provided above in the settings, perhaps with a link to the Chrome store. This seems like information users of the touch plugin should have easy access to.

Thanks again,

Kevin

14

I don’t think you can add screenshots to the Plugin settings page, maybe a link to this topic can do the trick

16

Unfortunately, the extension isn’t in the Chrome Web Store anymore: Virtual Keyboard (dead link)

The extension is, however, on GitHub: chrome-virtual-keyboard

Does anybody know how to install Chrome extensions with the source code? The Chrome extensions seem to be in /data/volimiokiosk/Default/Extensions. Simply copying the extension folder there does not work, however.

P.S. There are other “virtual keyboard” extensions in the store but they do not seem to work (e.g. they’re only visible by clicking on an icon which is not available in kiosk mode etc…).

17

Hello

Here is a link prepared by audiophonics to install the virtual keyboard

Christian

3 Likes
18

Wow, thank you! That worked! You can even get the latest release (currently v1.11.3) by adapting the commands like this:

cd /home/volumio/
wget https://github.com/xontab/chrome-virtual-keyboard/archive/refs/tags/v1.11.3.tar.gz
tar -xvzf v1.11.3.tar.gz
rm -f v1.11.3.tar.gz
sudo sed -i 's/http:\/\/localhost:3000.*\?$/http:\/\/localhost:3000 --load-extension=\/home\/volumio\/chrome-virtual-keyboard-1.11.3/'  /opt/volumiokiosk.sh
systemctl restart volumio-kiosk

This version works better for me. It even has keyboard layout options which can be set at first start (quit with [ALT] + [F4]; however, I do not know how to access these options later on).

EDIT:
Instead of using sed, you can also just edit the file /opt/volumiokiosk.sh (e.g. sudo nano /opt/volumiokiosk.sh) and add the parameter for loading the extension. In my case it then looks like this:

#!/bin/bash
while true; do timeout 3 bash -c "</dev/tcp/127.0.0.1/3000" >/dev/null 2>&1 && break; done
sed -i 's/"exited_cleanly":false/"exited_cleanly":true/' /data/volumiokiosk/Default/Preferences
sed -i 's/"exit_type":"Crashed"/"exit_type":"None"/' /data/volumiokiosk/Default/Preferences
if [ -L /data/volumiokiosk/SingletonCookie ]; then
  rm -rf /data/volumiokiosk/Singleton*
fi
openbox-session &
while true; do
  /usr/bin/chromium-browser \
    --simulate-outdated-no-au='Tue, 31 Dec 2099 23:59:59 GMT' \
    --force-device-scale-factor=1 \
    --disable-pinch \
    --kiosk \
    --no-first-run \
    --noerrdialogs \
    --disable-3d-apis \
    --disable-breakpad \
    --disable-crash-reporter \
    --disable-infobars \
    --disable-session-crashed-bubble \
    --disable-translate \
    --user-data-dir='/data/volumiokiosk' \
    --load-extension=/home/volumio/chrome-virtual-keyboard-1.11.3 \
    http://localhost:3000
done

EDIT 2:
You can get to the options panel again by clearing the Chromium cache and restarting the service (close panel with ALT + F4):
rm -rf /data/volumiokiosk/Default/*
systemctl restart volumio-kiosk

EDIT 3:
For an install script or plugin it would be nice to preset the extension options (and make them editable elsewhere). So the extension option page wouldn’t be shown up at first start (–> confusing and annoying if you don’t have a physical keyboard connected). These options seem to be stored in a LevelDB database in /data/volumiokiosk/Default/Local Storage/leveldb/. However, I have no clue how to edit such a database.

2 Likes
19

@gvolt i this a option to include ?

20

I created a pull request to install the touchscreen keyboard as part of the touch display plugin. Hopefully that’ll be enough to get it included.

1 Like
21

Version 3.5.0 of the Touch Display plugin includes Volumio’s fork of xontab’s virtual keyboard extension and is currently available as beta.

5 Likes