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.