Raspberry Pi digital signage: the complete setup guide

A Raspberry Pi is one of the most cost-effective digital signage players you can buy. For the price of a cheap accessory it will drive a full-HD or 4K screen and run 24/7. Here's how to set one up with DigitalWall.

What you'll need

• A Raspberry Pi 4 or newer (3B+ works for lighter content) with a power supply.
• A microSD card (16 GB+) flashed with Raspberry Pi OS (with desktop).
• An HDMI cable and your screen.
• Network access (Wi-Fi or Ethernet).

Step 1 — Install Raspberry Pi OS

Use Raspberry Pi Imager to flash Raspberry Pi OS (with desktop) to the SD card. Set your Wi-Fi and enable auto-login to the desktop in the imager's advanced options so the Pi boots unattended.

Step 2 — Install Chromium (if needed)

sudo apt update
sudo apt install -y chromium-browser unclutter

Step 3 — Add the DigitalWall kiosk script

Download the ready-made Raspberry Pi kiosk script to the Pi, then make it executable:

chmod +x digitalwall-rpi-kiosk.sh
./digitalwall-rpi-kiosk.sh

It opens the DigitalWall player full-screen in Chromium and disables screen blanking so the display never sleeps.

Step 4 — Auto-start on boot

Create ~/.config/autostart/digitalwall.desktop:

[Desktop Entry]
Type=Application
Name=DigitalWall
Exec=/home/pi/digitalwall-rpi-kiosk.sh
X-GNOME-Autostart-enabled=true

Now the Pi boots straight into your signage — ideal for unattended screens.

Step 5 — Pair the screen

On first launch the player shows a 6-character code. In your DigitalWall console, add a screen and enter the code. Point a campaign at it and content appears instantly, updating in real time whenever you change it.

Reliability tips

• Use a quality power supply — undervoltage is the #1 cause of flaky Pis.
• Leave the player on boot-start so a power cut recovers on its own.
• The player caches content, so short network drops won't blank the screen.