Sync private iCloud calendar with MagicMirror

[Albinolan]

@maros One problem (which this thread was originally trying to solve) was the inability to prevent others from accessing the calendar. If a web crawler can find your link, they too will be able to read your calendar.

[Maros]

@Albinolan but in icloud calendar Birthday calendar have not option to public.

it’s marked as others

@justjim1220 i’ve tried also this in gmail i’ve copied url for birthday calendar (public url to this calendar) and add it to my calendar module

{
symbol: “calendar”,
url: “https://calendar.google.com/calendar/xxxxxxxxxxxx”
},

but it’s not showing any upcomming birthday

ok i’ve made temporary solution but it’s not ideal …

what i’ve done - open Google Calendar - Export and Import
exported all calendars to .ics
i’ve copied birthday calendar to rpi (using scp birthday.ics pi@:MagicMirror/modules/calendars)

in config.js i’ve creaded new entry for newly created calendar.

problem is it’s static so if you want to add new birthday you have to edit file birthday.ics

[jhp392819]

@Beh

First, thank you! This is great. I got three different iCal calendars to all work perfectly.

I can’t, however, seem to get a holiday calendar to show. The vdirsyncer discover doesn’t show the iCal US Holiday calendar, so I can’t use the one that is provided by iCloud. So I decided to use the calendarlabs that comes as a default with MagicMirror. But it’s showing up on electron when I npm start

I’ve included my code below. Can anyone tell me why the calendarlabs US holiday calendar isn’t showing up?

Do I need to create a 4th .ics file form calendarlabs to store locally to use with vdirsyncer? Is that why the default code in MagicMirror for calendarlabs no longer works?

Thanks.

{
    module: 'calendar',
    position: 'top_left',   // This can be any of the regions. Best results in left or right regions.
    config: {
        colored: true,   // Activate coloring
        maximumNumberOfDays: 10,
        maximumEntries: 7,
	timeFormat: 12,
        calendars: [
                // "ME Calendar"
                {
                        url: 'http://localhost:8080/modules/calendars/home.ics',
                        symbol: 'calendar',
                        color: '#5bc0de'   // Assign color
                },
                // "YOU Calendar"
                {
                        url: 'http://localhost:8080/modules/calendars/work.ics',
                        symbol: 'calendar',
                        color: '#FFF000'  // Assign color
                },
		// "ME & YOU Calendar"
               	{
                    	url: 'http://localhost:8080/modules/calendars/65839DD3-D523-48E6-931B-D2DB201A1C36.ics',
                        symbol: 'calendar',
                        color: '#5bbf21'  // Assign color
               	},
		// "Holiday Calendar"
               	{
                    	url: 'http://www.calendarlabs.com/templates/ical/US-Holidays.ics',
                        symbol: 'calendar',
                        color: '#ab00ff'  // Assign color
               	}

        ]
    }
},

[yk]

Fantastic effort! Thanks!
I’ve got everything working except the timer functionality (just doesn’t seem to take). Any ideas?

[showbizkid]

Thanks gentlemen for allowing me to join your group. I am presently stuck on the " touch ~/.vdirsyncer/config". My pi claims I am unable to use touch. error is touch: cannot touch '/home pi/.vdirsyncer/config. No such file or directory. Do I need to be in the MagicMirror directory to execute this command?

[Beh]

@showbizkid Did you create the .vdirsyncer folder first? Sounds like it is not present…

[Beh]

@yk Dis you activate the systemd unit for the timer? You can enable it with sudo systemctl enable vdirsyncer.timer you can also check via sudo systemctl status vdirsyncer.timer, is it’s enabled already. If so, it should work…

[Gullfrode]

Does the https://caldav.icloud.com still work for you guys?
My credentials are right, the rest of the conig is same as the config,
I get this error:

pi@raspberrypi:~ $ vdirsyncer discover
Discovering collections for pair iCloud_to_MagicMirror
Mirror:
  - "HERE-GOES-THE-UUID-OF-THE-CALENDAR-YOU-WANT-TO-SYNC"
warning: Failed to discover collections for iCloud, use `-vdebug` to see the full traceback.
error: Unknown error occured: 401 Client Error: Unauthorized for url: https://caldav.icloud.com/.well-known/caldav
error: Use `-vdebug` to see the full traceback.
error: 1 out of 1 tasks failed.

Get an error if I type vdirsyncer discover -vdebug (no such option)

Have tried both Norwegian and US accounts, with and without two-way authentication.

[Gullfrode]

I forgot that apple had changed all its calendars this fall. Generated an app+spesific password, and it worked…

[Sammie1232]

@Beh I followed your instruction step-by step but I can’t find the .vdirsyncer/config. I get the same error as @bgz. Do you know the solution to this problem? I tried creating the vdirsyncer folder but i got the message “Access denied”.

[Beh]

@Sammie1232 Seems like the folder and/or the file do not exist. Please create them if they are not there.

The folder needs to be owned by the current user. On a Raspi, this command would look like this: chown -R pi:pi /home/pi/.vdirsyncer

[htilburgs]

You can make a iCloud Family Calendr ‘public’ by following the next steps:

On an iPhone

• Go to Calendar app
• At the bottom you see ‘calendar’
  click on it
• click on the ‘i’ behind the family calendar
  go to the bottom and make sure ‘public calendar’ is selected
• select option ‘share’ and then select copy
  Now you have the public url and can use

On a Mac

• open calendar app
• select the family calendar on the left
• right click on the ‘wifi’ symbol
• select settings for sharing
• select public calendar and you can copy the url

[Beh]

@htilburgs This is exactly what I‘m trying to prevent/workaround with this tutorial.
Using a public calendar URL allows anyone to see your calendars without any authentication at all. This way your calendars are open and accessible by anyone who knows the URL. (URLs can be crawled by machines ;))

This here is just a secure method to sync your calendars.

If you don‘t care about having your personal life available to anyone or anything, it‘s your business.

[bachoo786]

@Beh thanks for this. everything is working fine for me just a small error I wanted to ask about in my /home/pi/.pm2/logs/MagicMirror-error.log, it complains the following:

ERROR! Could not find main module js file for calendars

Its not a show stopper but because the calendars folder is created in the modules folder this is why it is asking for a js file.

[thisistheplace]

Hey, I hope someone can help.

Everything is running fine, except my reminders.

No matter I put item_types = [“VEVENT”] or item_types = [“VEVENT”, “VTODO”] in the config, it discovers everytime a collection named tasks “Erinnerungen” (which is reminders in german) but the tasks.ics is completely empty…

Does anybody have a running configuration for icloud reminders?

Since MMM-iCloud-Client seems not working anymore I’m also interested in fetching iCloud Birthdays.

[bartzzz]

This post is deleted!

[yk]

Having an issue with daylight savings. Could this be vidirsyncer?

https://forum.magicmirror.builders/topic/11538/default-calendar-daylight-savings-issue

[mdefrancesco]

So i’m not sure if anyone is still watching this thread but I’ve been banging my head against the wall trying to sync. The tutorial is awesome and clearly there was a ton of work put in, so I don’t ask questions lightly.

I followed the directions to the letter but i can’t seem to control the sync. one time it took 2.5 mins and the next time it took 9 mins.

here is my timer…
GNU nano 2.7.4 File: /etc/systemd/user/vdirsyncer.timer

[Unit]
Description=Synchronize vdirs

[Timer]
OnBootSec=1m
OnUnitActiveSec=1m
AccuracySec=1m

[Install]
WantedBy=timers.target

that’s the only thing i have changed. it’s like i can’t get the sync to activate.
I have maybe 5 different modules running but nothing crazy (weather, clock, jeopardy, etc)

if i manually vdirsyncer sync and then reload the mirror AWESOME, no problems. just cant get the damn timer to work

any help or suggestions would be greatly appreciated…I’m still new to all this so thanks

[Beh]

@mdefrancesco Sorry for the late reply.

Hmm… that’ weird. Did you get it working by now?

If not:
Did you use the --user flag when activating the timer? And what does systemctl --user status vdirsyncer.timer say?
And did you try different times in the timer file? I could imagine that setting everything to 1 minute could cause problems…

[cagey]

@Beh first and foremost, thank you very much for setting out clear and detailed instructions. I’m a complete newbie but by following your instructions it works perfectly.

I saw that, when I run “vdircyncer discover”, I receive a list of all my calenders and, in addition, my iCloud reminders. The reminders seem to have similar UUIDs to the calendars.

I tried following the same process for my “Family” reminders by creating a CALDAV sync (in the vdirsyncer config file) called “pair iCloudTD_to_MagicMirrorTD”, including the Family UUID in the “collections” section and creating a %.ics file in /MagicMirror/modules/calendars/%s.ics. I have items_types as “VEVENT”, “VTODO”.

I also inserted the %.ics file as a calendar entry in the “calendar” module in MagicMirror.

However, the to do list does not appear in MM (it just says “No upcoming events”). The calendar however works perfectly.

I’m guessing it’s not possible to import iCloud reminders in the same way as iCloud calendars but I thought I’d ask before I spend more time reading through the vdirsyncer documentation and other Google searches.

Is there a config setting I’m missing or is it not possible at all? I’m struggling to understand the difference between VTODO and reminders.