How to hide desktop screen when raspberry turned on?

[bretonesf]

Hello everybody,

I’m currently working on the software part of my first mirror, installed MM 3.11.0 and first modules, everything is going well.

I rotated the screen by 90° also and reduced my borders to 0px, no problem.

The thing is, as I’m quite concern about power consumption (and environmental matters), I’m thinking about how to turn on and off the whole mirror (display AND pi3B+) when (not) needed.

This leads to one aesthetical “problem” for which I haven’t found any solution yet : at startup before I get to MM screen, I see the splash screen, then the 4 raspberries screen, then the desktop screen (I installed full raspbian buster).

Question is : is there a way to hide all of these, so at startup, the screen s powered, but remains black until the MM screen is displayed?

Thanks y’all for your help

[bhepler]

Yes, you can. The problem is that as you go closer and closer to the Pi booting, you incur more and more risk. The good news is that you can get most of the way there with no problems.

First, you can turn off the splash screen in the Pi configuration. Type raspi-config at the terminal or via SSH connection.

Second, you can remove the desktop background and just have a black field. You’ll still see the menu bar, but most of your mirror will just look like a mirror for a minute or so.

Third is where it gets tricky. Several people out on the internet have created a silent boot sequence for the Raspberry Pi. You can apparently get the Pi to not display the boot checks that scroll across the screen at the start. You can certainly do the same, but you’re getting into some dangerous areas of modifying your operating system. I don’t believe anyone here has written up a guide for it. If you go this route, please tell us your experiences.

Lastly, I have my home mirror hooked up to a smart plug and integrated with my Alexa. The mirror is on a schedule so it shuts off after I leave for work and late at night. I can also manually trigger the mirror if I’m working from home. That may solve your power consumption concerns.

[bretonesf]

Thanks for the reply.

Following your advice, I used a black background for the desktop. I also realized that it’s possible to remove the trash bin icon, then put the background of the taskbar in black, reduce its size, use auto-hide and even delete all its component one by one (by right clicking on the taskbar).

I also found the way to hide all the boot screens :

Rainbow screen :
- add disable_splash=1 at the end of the line in the file /boot/config.txt

4 raspberries logo :
- add logo.nologo at the end of the line in the file /boot/cmdline.txt

texts :
- in file /boot/cmdline.txt, add quiet at the end of the line and change console=tty from 1 to 3

cursor :
- add vt.global_cursor_default=0 at the end of the line in the file /boot/cmdline.txt

Now when the raspberry boots up, The screen remains fully black until MM starts and all the modules are loaded, except one white flashing screen at the startup of MM, I don’t know why.

Also, from turning on the raspberry until full loading of the MM and modules, it takes 49-50s. Is this normal?

About your comment on the power consumption, mine will be installed in the bathroom, so I intend to turn it on when I switch the light on, as per local electrical regulations, there can’t be no power inside a bathroom when it’s not switched on in purpose.

[sdetweil]

@bretonesf said in How to hide desktop screen when raspberry turned on?:

Now when the raspberry boots up, The screen remains fully black until MM starts and all the modules are loaded, except one white flashing screen at the startup of MM, I don’t know why.

its a bug in Electron browser, long talked about but not solved. MM sets its background to black before opening the page

[bretonesf]

@sdetweil good to know, thanks for the tip.

According to you, the 50s I’m talking about is ok or long?

[bhepler]

@bretonesf - That’s about right for a RPi 3B+.

[bretonesf]

@bhepler - Nice, thank you.

[BKeyport]

FWIW, there’s lots of modules available for turning off/blanking the screen when not needed - that way you can leave the pi running (at minimal power use) and just have the screen turn off and on with a sensor or button…

[sdetweil]

@BKeyport or webcam in my case

[BKeyport]

@sdetweil I’d put that under “sensor” – but how do you do that?