If the slide contains links to external data, such as another libreoffice file, how can I have the slide refresh every 30 seconds or even as soon as the source data has been updated?
Is this possible?
The hardware (a simple IP TV box running Armbian Ubuntu Noble) is connected to a monitor and the internet.
The OS is configured to autorun a Libreoffice impress file in SlideShow mode.
Any help or guidance is appreciated.
I wouldnât recommend doing this in LibreOffice per se; that is I wouldnât use LibreOffice to run the presentation for a couple of reasons. Firstly youâd have to use a macro to refresh the document in between it finishing the presentation and starting again in order to get the latest data. Secondly LibreOffice isnât really designed to run in this way and would likely show the user interface in between the end and start of the presentation.
In my humble opinion youâd be better off either using software built specifically for this job (Iâm not aware of any) or:
Thank you for your comments.
I actually did some more testing and I think I can use the âInsert External Linkâ option in LibreOffice Calc Spreadsheet instead.
This will automatically refresh the data within a cell based on data in a cell from another sheet.
Now I just need to figure out how to access the source sheet over the internet.
LibreOffice Calc does not provide a Slide-Show feature, however, I can turn off the grid lines, all the tool bars and status bar, then put it in Full-screen mode.
This will still show the sheet name at the bottom of the screen, but I can live with that.
The reason I am trying this method with LibreOffice is because I have tried to follow instructions for using the Kiosk application for Ubuntu, but it took me many attempts to find the revisions for the my specific hardware platform and then there were driver dependencies that I needed to sort through.
Too time consuming and frustrating for me.
I think I will continue with the LibreOffice Calc solution assuming that I can get the file update based on a file located on a cloud drive.
If anyone else has any other suggestions, please let me know.
A database form showing the latest entry on slide and auto-refreshing in regular intervals.
Demonstrating the idea. Does not work with impress.
form_slide.odt (38.6 KB)
Hi, this is an interesting idea and I will research this further to see if I can get this to work with a database table located outside the the local network.
I will post my findings once I have tested this.
Thank you!
For the Office-Connection you need some ODBC or JDBC connection to a running server. Anything similar to MySQL will do. Then you need the maintainer connection to the outside world (VPN?) and the rest is SQL.
Please notice, that my super simplistic Basic macro prevents LibreOffice to be closed. On LInux I have to kill soffice.bin before I can start LibreOffice again.
Hi, so after playing with the database solution (unsuccessfully), I decided to go with a new approach.
I realized that even after getting the database solution working, I still needed to figure out how to have the system bootup automatically into an application and then ensure that access to external (web) files is available.
So, I installed Tailscale and RealVNC and now I can login remotely into the box (while still logged-in and apps running) and update the file or the application directly.
My only issue now is figuring out how to setup Autologin for this Armbian/Ubuntu system.
Since this is a new ask, I will start a new thread unless someone can point me to a thread that already exists for this subject.
Thanks for all the suggestions here !
I am thinking maybe what you need is some kind of âshared whiteboardâ app, not a presentation software.
Here is a starting point, but there are many other options online.
Relevant search terms: whiteboard collaboration share multiplatform open
Hi, thank you for your suggestions.
My application is really not complicated and I thought that I would be able to find a simple solution using free, off-the-shelf, standard apps. But was not able to find anything, yet.
Just in case anyone is wondering, this is what I am aiming to accomplish;
1 - Show one page of information on a 24" monitor for the purpose of informing an elderly person of their appointments, medications, or other activities that they need to be aware of during any particular day.
2 - The information needs to be editable via a remote connection for immediate update to the screen.
3 - In the event of a power failure, the screen should display the last message or default to a standard message.
So you need only a website locally or on the web, wich is the starting page of the default browser and has autorefresh?
Thank you for your suggestion, but I would prefer to keep this application on the local network as it may contain sensitive information.
Ideally, I would be satisfied with a RDP or VNC connection to this box, however, from my experimentation & research, there are many incompatibilities when using a simple IP TV box as host hardware.
You are aware, that you can have .html-files on your local disc. âŚ
.
My default in this company is a file shared locally in LAN, but any file on my own Drive would work as well.
Yes, I understand, however, I still need to update the data from a remote location (outside the local network).
No need for any kind of office suite. A minimal web server, with a minimal database and restrictive access control will do. The result will be visible on any kind of browser on any kind of device. You can edit the database with a web-form or with any other frontend such as LibreOffice Base.
Well, I will review both your suggestions (the Form idea and this web browser idea to see which one will work best for me.
I will respond this weekend once I have had a chance to test.
Thanks!