SKipper desktop tricks

SKipper for Linux, MacOS and Windows allows you to customize your SKipper experience with multiple arguments on the command line.

Changing location and size of the SKipper window

You can pass -location x,y,width,height to place SKipper at specified location in a window with a specific size (in pixels). This is handy when you want to automatically start SKipper on another screen, or start SKipper on just a part of the screen.

You can pass --no-exit to SKipper to hide any Close SKipper menu items. This is handy if you don't want to exit SKipper at all.

Switching off device when I close SKipper

You can pass --shutdown-on-exit argument when launching SKipper and when you click on Close SKipper it will execute shutdown command for each platform (Windows, Linux, MacOS).

Note

One note user must be able to execute shutdown command without sudo on Linux. This argument is working from version 1.0.23.

Override profile folder location

If you want to override the default location for storing settings, profile, and Signal K tokens, you can pass -profile "/new/path/to/store/profile".

Override cache folder location

SKipper uses temporary storage to store a few files. If you need to change that location, you can pass -cache "/new/path/to/store/cache".

SKipper on Linux with DRM/Frame buffer

SKipper can run without any X/Wayland UI; all that's required is Linux DRM (recommended) or frame buffer.

SKipper on Linux with DRM is rotated on my screen

SKipper doesn't honor DRM rotation for now, you can use new argument -soft-rotate {degrees} to rotate UI

NOTE

This argument is available from version 1.0.23

Raspberry PI OS Lite

SKipper can run on Raspberry PI OS Lite with a few modifications.

First you need to flash your SD card / flash memory with the latest Raspberry PI OS 64Bit Lite.
Drawing via DRM or Frame Buffer requires a few more libraries to be installed. Use terminal/SSH to install them:

sudo apt update
sudo apt upgrade
sudo apt-get install libgbm1 libgl1-mesa-dri libegl1-mesa libinput10

Install SKipper using Getting started for Linux.

When you're done with the installation, try running SKipper from the shell with command:

/usr/local/bin/skipper/SkipperApp --drm

SKipper should be running on your screen. Now close it. You need some kind of auto start mechanism, you can use systemD service for that.

NOTE if you need to specify the card for DRM because SKipper outputs couldn't open /dev/dri/card1, just change the card using -drm {path to card} for example /usr/local/bin/skipper/SkipperApp -drm /dev/dri/card0.

Version 23 Version 23 brings better support for detecting DRM driver card when there are multiple of them in the system. For example if you have RPI4/RPI5 there is always card0 and card1, but the real number of card that allows DRM changes randomly between each boot. Now SKipper will try all cards until one of them works. You can still specify card with -drm /dev/dri/cardX, but if you use --drm with new version it will iterate all cards available to find correct one.

Open your favorite text editor to create new .service file.

For example:

sudo nano /etc/systemd/system/skipper.service

And paste the following definition:

[Unit]
Description=SKipper app service
After=network.target

[Service]
ExecStart=/usr/local/bin/skipper/SkipperApp --drm
KillMode=process
Restart=on-failure
User=pi

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target
Alias=skipper.service

Note If your system doesn't support DRM you can use frame buffer, just change argument --drm to --fb.

Also if you're running SKipper on Raspberry PI Zero 2 W, please use -drm /dev/dri/card0 as the start argument.

Great! Service definition is set. Now we need to reload daemons and enable the service.

Type the following commands to get your SKipper service ready:

sudo systemctl daemon-reload
sudo systemctl enable skipper

Now, to start SKipper, run:

sudo systemctl start skipper

And that's it! Anytime your Raspberry PI is booted SKipper will automatically start!