Date: Mar 9, 2019
I believed I blog this “Matchbox Keyboard” before. But just to be sure, let’s write a blog entry on a year 2020 version.
When you have a small 3.5″ LCD monitor, and to make it portable, you will need a on-screen keyboard that you can toggle so to enter your commands.
Here are the steps you need to perform to make this keyboard appear in the top menubar.
Just to be sure, first updates the apps.
sudo apt update
sudo apt upgrade
After that, you can then install the Matchbox-Keyboard.
sudo apt install matchbox-keyboard
Once it is installed, you can launch it via the top menubar.
i.e. Menu -> Accessories -> Keyboard
Just in case you need to launch it on the Terminal, run the command
matchbox-keyboard
Now, we need to add the on-screen keyboard toggle to the taskbar
sudo nano /usr/bin/toggle-keyboard.sh
Write the following scripts into the file, i.e. toggle-keyboard.sh. This script should be easy to understand. If the keyboard exist (already running), kill it. If the keyboard is not there, run the keyboard program.
#!/bin/bash
PID=
`pidof matchbox-keyboard`if [ ! -e $PID ]; then
kill $PID
else
matchbox-keyboard &
fi
Remember to make it executable.
sudo chmod +x /usr/bin/toggle-keyboard.sh
Next, you will need to add this into the desktop menu bar
sudo nano /usr/share/raspi-ui-overrides/applications/toggle-keyboard.desktop
Write the following into this toggle-keyboard.desktop file. Basically, this will instruct the Rasbian desktop to put an keyboard icon at the top menu bar there. And once press, it will execute the toggle-keyboard.sh script.
[Desktop Entry]
Name=Toggle Virtual Keyboard
Comment=Toggle Virtual Keyboard
Exec=/usr/bin/toggle-keyboard.sh
Type=Application
Icon=matchbox-keyboard.png
Categories=Panel;Utility;MB
X-MB-INPUT-MECHANISM=True
In order to make this keyboard icon clicable. There is another file needed to be created.
nano /home/pi/.config/lxpanel/LXDE-pi/panels/panel
And palce these lines at the last of the file.
Plugin {
type=launcher
Config {
Button {
id=toggle-keyboard.desktop
}
}
}
Once all these are done, simply reboot.
sudo reboot
Hereare the keyboard in action.
This is how you can add the applications onto the menu bar. You can add other things in a similar manner too.
Thanks for your helpful article! I ran into a little issue trying to run your script and, after some fiddling and online searches, came up with the following:
#!/bin/bash
if ! pgrep matchbox-keybo > /dev/null; then
matchbox-keyboard
else
kill $( pgrep matchbox-keybo )
fi