Screen saver module that displays photos

[cpcode]

I have my mirror mostly done. Right now, the screen turns off after 10 minutes of inactivity (RPI default screensaver). I want to do something different - I’d like to create a module that does the following:

• When the screen has been idle for a specified time, the display goes to a “photo frame” mode where everything is hidden except for a rotating image from local storage
• When the screen is touched, things go back to the regular mirror contents (I have a touch screen)

Additional nice-to-haves:

• Some modules could remain visible: for example I might want my Clock module to stay up
• When the screen is touched, I’d want to go back to a specific page
• Between certain times of day (at night), the screen just goes blank or turns off

I’m happy to develop this, and I’m looking for the simplest path forward - I would prefer not to reinvent the entire wheel.

I looked around and found a number of modules that can display photos, I think that part is fine. I’m already using MMM-BackgroundSlideshow, in fact.
I also found MMM-PIR, which seems to be able to a) do something after X minutes of inactivity, and b) do something else after the screen is touched.
However, the code for MMM-PIR is fairly complicated for me and I’m not sure I can just borrow the pieces I want. Right now I would try to fork it and make some minimal changes to do what I want instead.

Questions for the community: Are there other modules I should look at, with some of this functionality but maybe easier to fork or borrow from? Are there existing forks of MMM-PIR or other modules that you can share, if you did similar stuff?

[sdetweil]

@cpcode havent seen anything similar, don’t see in 3rd party list

you could modify background slideshow a little

change its z-index to plus number , 500 to put on top
minus number to put it back below

other post recently mentioned button wouldn’t work cause other module was at plus 9999

allow modules thru? make their z-index plus more than your full screen (new parm for list to surface)

listen for notifications to wake up for other reasons, pir
new parm for what to listen for as wakeup events

touch is a fun one
make an empty window above all else to catch the click events

powering off/on is the hardest as most monitors are not friendly that way anymore, and the os keeps changing the tools needed (look at mmm-pir as example)

probably less tgat 25 lines of code til you get to power off/on

[cpcode]

@sdetweil that’s an excellent suggestion! Forking MMM-PIR seemed daunting, but forking BackgroundSlideshow and using the z-index trick should indeed be simple, and it separates the problem of turning off the screen at night. Thanks!

[wishmaster270]

@cpcode Hi, I use a similar thing in my mirror.

I use MMM-ProfileSwitcher with MMM-ProfileControl to realise pages.

My MMM-Screen-Powersave-Notification supports switching to a specific profile instead of turning the screen off.

I my case I display MMM-BackgroundSlideshow of one of my pages (one profile) and switch to this page during Screensave.

I installed MMM-Touch and send a USER_PRESENCE notification if the screen gets touched.