In this article I’ll be describing a way to quickly start the applications with a shortcut on the desktop. For a good working smart mirror I will need to start at least the following applications :
- The smart mirror software itself
- The Java Client
- The Wake word agent
In order to avoid hooking up a keyboard every time I want to start them, I will create desktop icons. That way I’ll only have to connect a mouse to start the applications.
Turns out that’s quite easy.
Log on to the Raspberry Pi with ssh, or take over the screen using VNC, and open a terminal on the desktop.
Next, navigate to the Desktop directory :
cd Desktop
Create a new file called client.desktop :
nano client.desktop
This will automatically open the nano editor. There is a fixed format in which these files are structure. First of all, it needs to start with [Desktop Entry], and the settings are key value pairs separated with an equals sign. The settings to start the java client are as follows :
[Desktop Entry] Encoding=UTF-8 Version=1.0 Type=Application Path=/home/pi/smartmirrorproject/alexa-avs-sample-app/samples/javaclient Exec=mvn exec:exec Terminal=false Name=client
A few settings are important :
- Always use “Application” as the Type.
- Set a path. It is the working directory for the application where it can find its configuration files etc.
- Set Terminal=false to avoid starting a terminal every time.
More info on the other settings can be found here.
I’ve pasted the settings for the smart mirror and the wake word engine below.
[Desktop Entry] Encoding=UTF-8 Version=1.0 Type=Application Path=/home/pi/smartmirrorproject/Smartmirrorproject/ Exec=npm start Terminal=false Name=mirror
[Desktop Entry] Encoding=UTF-8 Version=1.0 Type=Application Path=/home/pi/smartmirrorproject/alexa-avs-sample-app/samples/wakeWordAgent/src Exec=lxterminal -e "/home/pi/smartmirrorproject/startup.sh" Terminal=false Name=wwa
Notice above how the “Exec” value is configured. For the wake word engine a script is started instead of an executable. In order to show its progress in a terminal I chose to start is as a command with inside a terminal by using the lxterminal command.
The result looks like this :