Newbie MM Husband trying to make a MM for wife for XMAS

Piznapple · Dec 23, 2020, 3:22 AM

I don’t think that I bit off more than I could code lol, I seen a video on youtube and definitely thought that a MM would be a great addition for my wife’s crazy work and life schedule. Being that she is a Respiratory Therapist during this whole covid thing, and being a mom of one ( in all honesty lets just say a mom of two since I am a child myself). But… I followed the 6 steps here on the page just as everything said to do. And the mirror booted up and everything and works… but I’m seeing people log in via remote… and I know that I will have to install a module for that. But People are also saying that they are accessing their MM via server? made or from other computers in their house to update the MM. I’m just a bit overwhelmed by everything like being fresh out of the police academy on your first call. This is scary and I’m trying not to dissapoint. I know she’ll love it, but I’m trying to get a bit of a better understanding of things as she will want to add her personal schedule to the MM and Covid updates and Hospital stuff, and Traffic info along with weather updates. I just wanna help give her a great gift and just have a lot of questions and would love a sherpa to help guide me. I need that Obi to teach me the way.
I’d love some pointers and would more than welcome constructive criticism. I did change the built in compliments to things that i would say to her along with her name in it. So I think I’m heading in the right direction. Will Post pics of the build.

bhepler · Dec 23, 2020, 2:38 AM

Welcome to the community! Congratulations upon completion of your first magic mirror. We’ll get you hooked up.

Lots of information in your post, so I’m going to hit the highlights and break it into parts. Feel free to ignore my advice as I am frequently wrong. :)

“Mirror booted up and everything works” - Dude, you are 90% of the way there. Even if you stopped work and just wrapped the thing, she’s going to love it.
“I’m seeing people log in via remote and I know that I will have to install a module for that” - This can mean a couple things. There is a mobile app to configure a Magic Mirror via your smartphone. This is optional. There is another module (MMM-Remote-Control) that will let you restart or refresh your mirror or turn modules on/off. This is also optional. By far, most people log into their mirror via an SSH terminal. This does not require a module on your mirror. It requires a desktop computer and some free software. I happen to like BitVise SSH for Windows machines. We can walk you through logging in to your Magic Mirror remotely.
“she will want to add her personal schedule to the MM” - Should not be a problem. First bit of information you will need to know is which calendar service does she use? This usually boils down to “Does she have an iPhone or an Android phone?” as they tie in to the two most popular calendar services.
“COVID updates” - Also not a problem. We have a couple really nifty COVID-19 tracker modules available. I use MMM-COVID19-SPARKLINE and it works quite well.
Pretty much everything else you mentioned is doable. See below for details.

bhepler · Dec 23, 2020, 3:07 AM

Magic Mirror Basics, part 1: Logging in remotely.

This usually means establishing a connection from your laptop or desktop to your magic mirror and using the command line to make changes to your magic mirror. Once you’ve built your mirror, it’s very inconvenient to make changes directly on the mirror. You have to plug a mouse & keyboard into the Pi which is usually buried behind the glass & frame. It’s much easier to establish a connection from your main computer to the Pi and use that to make changes.

Your goal here is to establish what’s called an SSH connection between your nice computer and the wimpy computer that drives the mirror. If you’re using Windows, I suggest downloading & installing Bitvise SSH on your main computer. This will ease the process of establishing the connections.

The Raspberry Pi has the capability to host SSH connections, but you need to tell it to turn this feature on. Plug a keyboard into your Raspberry Pi and press Ctrl + Alt + t (control, alt & tee). That will open up a window with command line access to your Raspberry Pi. Once you see the window with the command line, enter sudo raspi-config and press enter. You’ll see a very basic interface appear with some options. Use the arrow keys and the enter key to navigate down to Interfacing Options and press enter, then navigate to P2 SSH and press enter.

When it asks you if you want the SSH server to be enabled, make sure <Yes> is highlighted in red and then press enter. It will confirm your selection, then kick you back to the main menu. Use the TAB button to navigate to Finish and press enter. Your Pi is now ready to receive connections.

You will need to know your Raspberry Pi’s IP address so you know how to connect. Enter the following on the Pi’s command line: ip a | grep wlan0 and press enter. It will spit back two lines of text, the 2nd one should look like this:

inet 192.168.0.10/24 brd 10.0.0.255 scope global wlan0

That string of numbers after the word inet but before the /24 is what you’re looking for. In the above case, the IP address is 192.168.0.10. Yours may be different. Write it down, 'cuz you’ll need it.

On your main computer/laptop, open up Bitvise and create a new profile. Name it something easy, like “Magic Mirror” and save it to your desktop. In the Host text box, enter the IP address you just wrote down. The Port value is 22. Over on the right, the username box should contain pi. Initial method is “password”. Once you’re ready, click on “Log in” at the bottom of the Bitvise app and it will establish a connection to your Pi and ask you for a password. By default, the password is raspberry (assuming you didn’t change it).

It should automatically open two windows. The first will be a command line window. Congratulations! You have remotely logged in to your magic mirror. The other window is a file transfer window. You can use this to upload pictures, sound files, movies, etc. to your mirror (or download things too). The left side is your desktop/laptop and the right side is your mirror. You can copy either direction by dragging files & folders from one side to the other.

You now have remote access to your mirror.

bhepler · Dec 23, 2020, 3:19 AM

Magic Mirror Basics, part 2: Modifying your mirror

You’ve already done this a bit, but I want to expand upon modifying the behavior of your Magic Mirror. The vast majority of the time, you will be able to change the behavior of your magic mirror to your will by doing two things:

Installing modules in the /home/pi/MagicMirror/modules folder
Modifying the config.js file.

You’ve already taken a crack at modifying the config.js file. You’ve changed the default compliments to include your wife’s name. That’s pretty much half of the journey right there. The compliments and calendar modules are included with the basic magic mirror framework, so you don’t need to add those modules separately. Adding the modules developed by the community is only slightly more involved.

The basic steps to adding a third-party module are:

clone the module into the /home/pi/MagicMirror/modules folder
run the installation script, if necessary
edit the config.js file to tell the magic mirror framework to look for the new module.

The only complex part of the process is that the section of the config.js file for the new module isn’t included in the default file, so you’ll have to add it from scratch. It’s not terribly difficult and the read.me file in each module should give you an example of the relevant code to copy into the config.js file.

sdetweil · Dec 23, 2020, 3:22 AM

@Piznapple welcome, see the two topics in my signature… they are the starter topics… @bhepler has got you going a long way…

bhepler · Dec 23, 2020, 3:25 AM

Yeah, what he said.

Tell you what. Read those two links and try to add the MMM-COVID19-SPARKLINE module. If you hit a snag, come back here and tell us what happened. We’ll get you sorted out.

You have a mirror and a plan for specifically what you want to see on the interface. You’re almost there and I don’t think you’re going to need much guidance.

Piznapple · Dec 23, 2020, 7:32 PM

Thank you guys!!! so so much!!! I havn’t wrapped it up yet just because I wanted to see what you guys said first. She does use an Iphone, but she is old school, she hand writes he schedules out. The MM is my hope to replace that and so all of us can see if we have events going on say we are walking out the door or anything. But I will be giving your post a run through later on today and i will keep you guys posted. I am so thankful for your help and input with this project for her.

ruff.hi · Dec 27, 2020, 11:47 AM

this is impressive … getting started is one thing, finding this forum is a second … the most impressive (to me) is the community help you got.

BTW … pictures would be good :) What size / type of screen did you use?