Sacrilegious Non-MM MagicMirror :)

DennisFaucher

[Edit: I updated the Android System WebView app and not MM runs within the Android Fully Kiosk Browser app. Yay!]

So, I love MagicMirror and have the code running on a huge extra monitor in my office. The problem is, I am too cheap to buy a huge piece of two-way glass/plexi to build a proper MagicMirror. I came up with an unorthodox alternative - A super old 7" Android tablet placed behind a piece of two-way plexiglass in an existing frame. Here is what I did:

Found an old frame that was deep enough to hide an old Nexus 7 WiFi tablet behind
Order a piece of two-way plexiglass to fit the frame from www.tapplastics.com. My piece was 12"x16"
Cut a 7.8"x4.5" hole in the back of the frame backing for the Nexus 7 tablet to poke through.
Spray paint the frame backing gloss black to match the Nexus 7 and make the two blend in better
Drill a hole in the frame side to insert a Mini-USB charging cable for the Nexus 7
Attach the Nexus 7 to the frame backing. I am using strong tape at the moment
Install VMLite VNC Server app for Android just in case I needed remote access to the tablet
Install the Fully Kiosk Browser app for Android on the Nexus
Here is where the problems started. It turns out that the Fully Kiosk Browser does not support the JavaScript in our beloved MagicMirror. That made me sad. I could display the clock but not the Dark Sky weather module. I tried a bunch of other full screen browsers but they would not work either. Chrome worked but would not go full-screen.
My solution was to use the Fully Kiosk Browser with DAkBoard.com instead of MagicMirror. Sad, but it works great.
Power draw was my second problem. The Nexus 7 will only draw about 380 mA from a 2,100 mA charger. The battery would actually drain while plugged in and the screen on. To fix this, I dropped the system brightness to about 20%. Now the Nexus 7 stays charged.

[For some reason, my inline photo would not display, but you can find it here: https://github.com/DennisFaucher/MagicMirror/blob/master/MagicMirror.jpeg]

lavolp3

Thanks for reporting the blasphemy :-)

Taking a tablet is a good idea with regards to display quality, since OLED has a much better black level and contrast. But of course it is only rather small.
Using DAKboard is something I wouldn’t prefer because I love the community around the third-party modules and the fact that I can easily amend any module to my liking.
On the other end, it seems to be a nice full-service solution. And saves lots and lots of time…

DennisFaucher

@lavolp3 Thanks for the comment. I agree, MM is so much better. I have a feeling that if I used a newer tablet that supported a more modern version of Android, I could find a full-screen browser that supports JavaScript and MM.

lavolp3

@DennisFaucher Or you could flash Debian on your tablet :-)

DennisFaucher

@lavolp3 Believe it or not, I tried. :) Linux load on the Nexus 7" tablet was dropped recently.

j.e.f.f

@DennisFaucher said in Sacrilegious Non-MM MagicMirror :):

I could display the clock but not the Dark Sky weather module.

I wrote the Dark Sky module. It uses the Nunjucks HTML templating system… I wonder if that has anything to do with why you couldn’t get it to run? Maybe it’s just a case of manually installing Nunjucks.