Balena Dash WPE Remote URL management

PatrickEntabeni · August 17, 2020, 10:05am

Hello, I am trying to get a faster UX on my Balena Fin, I am using a curl request to manage my Fin’s chromium browser, When I send a request to open a website it opens the splash screen for about 3 seconds, then shows the updated site, On the youtube video shown It has an instant reload?

github.com

mozz100/tohora/blob/master/README.md

# Tohora

A web UI to run on [balenaDash](https://www.balena.io/blog/make-a-web-frame-with-raspberry-pi-in-30-minutes/).  Make `post` requests with a URL parameter to have the server launch a subprocess and show the submitted URL on screen.

<img src="screenshots/web-ui.png" width="711" />

* I wrote a [blog post](https://www.rmorrison.net/mnemozzyne/2019/03/07/tohora-instant-control-balenadash/) about the project.
* See also [resin.io's excellent instructions for using this system](https://www.balena.io/blog/control-your-balenadash-display-with-a-web-browser-http-api/)

Quick video demo below (click to play on YouTube).  The "Hello World" page is our base `WPE_URL`:


[![Tohora demo](https://img.youtube.com/vi/UPdwW90czG4/0.jpg)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UPdwW90czG4)

## How to compile

To compile for raspi:

```
env GOOS=linux GOARCH=arm GOARM=5 go build

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This slow time even happens if I open a page on the same website? Is there a way I can force chromium to aggressively cache the site? Why is the splash showing?

anujdeshpande · August 17, 2020, 10:21am

Hi Patrick

Does this happen every time or is it only limited to the first time you load a page?
What kind of network speeds are you looking at? You can use something like fast.com to check and let us know here

PatrickEntabeni · August 17, 2020, 10:27am

Thanks,

I have got 7.5MB per second download
This happens everytime - the splash occurs almost instantly after I send the curl request

Here are the pages I am toggling between
https://ecommerce-demo.entabeni.tech/
https://ecommerce-demo.entabeni.tech/login

pranasziaukas · August 17, 2020, 11:40am

Hello. As a comparison, have you tried loading some really lightweight sites and seeing if there’s any noticeable difference?

PatrickEntabeni · August 17, 2020, 12:02pm

Yes its faster if I load www.google.com, however the Balena splash screen is still appearing for about 1.5 seconds
Is there a way to avoid the splash?

pranasziaukas · August 17, 2020, 1:58pm

I can reproduce the behavior (splash screen), albeit for less than a second, never considered it to be a problem.
I double-checked with the maintainers, and it works by restarting the container every time a new URL is passed. So there’s no way to completely avoid some interruption. Would it help to make the splash screen different?