How to add modules. For absolute beginners.

TheSij

@sdetweil. Thanks, Sam. That’s helpful to explain the general rules.

I’ve made a slight amendment - I figured that the timezone parameters was not correctly entered (see below - this time just showing the modules before and after). To answer your last point, I did remove the lat/lon values to hide my exact location (this time I’ve put in made-up numbers). With the slight amendment to the code, it’s still not working - do you think it’s the ‘timezone’ value that is causing the problem? I’ve not made any changes to the other modules.

{
			module: "weatherforecast",
			position: "top_right",
			header: "Weather Forecast",
			config: {
				location: "London",
				locationID: "2643743", //ID from http://bulk.openweathermap.org/sample/city.list.json.gz; unzip the gz file and find your city
				appid: "1ab234c567defgh89012ij34k56l78mn"
			}
		},
		{
			module: 'MMM-PrayerTime',
			position: 'top_left',	// This can be any of the regions. Best result is in the top_left/top_right.
			config: {
				apiVersion: '1.0', // please, leave unchanged. reserved for future use.
				lat: 12.3456789, // latitude of your position (city)
				lon: -0.1234567, // longitude of your position (city)
				timezone: date_default_timezone_set('Europe/London'), // please refer to http://php.net/manual/en/timezones.php
				timeFormat: 24,
				method: 5,
				playAdzan: ['fajr', 'dhuhr', 'asr', 'maghrib', 'isha'],
				notDisplayed: ['midnight', 'sunset'],
				useUpdateInterval: true,
				updateInterval: 86400 * 1000, // How often do you want to fetch new praying time? (milliseconds)
				animationSpeed: 2.5 * 1000, // Speed of the update animation. (milliseconds)
				language: config.language,
				showAdzanAlert: true,
				showTomorrow: true,
				vertical: true, // set false for horizontal view
				alertTimer: 15000
			}
		},
		{
			module: "newsfeed",
			position: "bottom_bar",
			config: {
				feeds: [
					{
						title: "New York Times",
						url: "https://rss.nytimes.com/services/xml/rss/nyt/HomePage.xml"
					},
					{
						title: "BBC World News",
						url: "http://feeds.bbci.co.uk/news/world/rss.xml"
					},
					{
						title: "Reddit",
						url: "https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/.rss"
					},
					{
						title: "Buzzfeed",
						url: "https://www.buzzfeed.com/world.xml"
					},
					{
						title: "Al Jazeera",
						url: "http://www.aljazeera.com/xml/rss/all.xml"
					}

sdetweil

@TheSij yes, still timezone., that syntax says call a function named date_default_timezone_set

but I don’t know where that would be.

just comment out that one line. add // at the start of the line

TheSij

@sdetweil - thanks! Unfortunately, still no luck on adding // at the start of the line, or after ‘timezone:’. According to the module creator, the timezone is a required field. I went to the php website that the module creator refers to, but it just doesn’t make sense to me - the coding information on that website is vast and much too advanced for me. I may have to abandon my desire to add this particular module. :-(

Mykle1

@TheSij said in How to add modules. For absolute beginners.:

I may have to abandon my desire to add this particular module.

Don’t give up! I just installed this to test it for you. I can see why it was confusing for you but it does work. Here is my config entry. Use it as a template for yours, replacing your info for mine. The following screenshot shows it working.

Screenshot from 2020-07-27 17-02-42.png

{
		module: 'MMM-PrayerTime',
		position: 'top_center',	// This can be any of the regions. Best result is in the top_left/top_right.
		config: {
			apiVersion: '1.0', // please, leave unchanged. reserved for future use.
			lat: myLat, // latitude of your position (city)
			lon: myLong, // longitude of your position (city)
			timezone: 'Europe/London', // please refer to http://php.net/manual/en/timezones.php
//			timeFormat: 24,
			method: 5,
			playAdzan: ['fajr', 'dhuhr', 'asr', 'maghrib', 'isha'],
			notDisplayed: ['midnight', 'sunset'],
			useUpdateInterval: true,
			updateInterval: 86400 * 1000, // How often do you want to fetch new praying time? (milliseconds)
			animationSpeed: 2.5 * 1000, // Speed of the update animation. (milliseconds)
	//		language: config.language,
			showAdzanAlert: true,
			showTomorrow: true,
			vertical: true, // set false for horizontal view
			alertTimer: 15000
		}
	},

sdetweil

@Mykle1 thx!

so the original problem was the timezone wasn’t quoted.

Mykle1

@sdetweil said in How to add modules. For absolute beginners.:

so the original problem was the timezone wasn’t quoted.

That and language: config.language, was causing an error. I simply commented it out and the module uses the config language by default. :-)

Edit: Oh, and timeFormat: 24, in the module’s config entry, as well. Again, I commented it out as it was redundant.

sdetweil

@Mykle1 yep, didn’t see that right… because the javascript source code processor is in the process of reading the config object definition

var config= {

the config object is not yet defined. so config.language cannot exist (yet)

but the timeFormat can be present AND redundant and not cause a startup error

TheSij

@Mykle1 thanks to you and @sdetweil for helping me with this. It’s much appreciated. Deep down I’m reluctant to give up, because I don’t like quitting. I’ve literally just copied your config entry, and simply adding my own lat/lon figures. But now the MagicMirror shows up as a blank black screen and the window is named ‘Electron’, rather than ‘MagicMirror2’.

I’m checking, double-checking and triple-checking and I can’t see where the discrepancy is compared to your entry. Could having too many modules be an issue? Can I also check - both of you have commented that the ‘timezone’ is causing an error, but your config entry doesn’t show that it’s commented out…?

sdetweil

@TheSij how do you start MM? npm start, or pm2 start ?

if npm start, look at the messages shown in the terminal window after the npm start, or better yet, redirect the messages to a file, so you can look at them later
npm start >somefile 2>&1
(same as on windows)

if pm2, then pm2 logs --lines=100 should display the messages…

black screen,m typically means some library required by a module is not loaded, usually because of a missed install step for the module…
the area u read on github, is the same as the file README.md after the git clone, so you can look at the instructions

git clone
cd modulename
npm install

TheSij

@sdetweil - this is the log when I started MM just now…

0 info it worked if it ends with ok
1 verbose cli [ '/usr/bin/node', '/usr/local/bin/npm', 'start' ]
2 info using npm@6.14.7
3 info using node@v10.19.0
4 verbose stack Error: missing script: start
4 verbose stack     at run (/usr/local/lib/node_modules/npm/lib/run-script.js:155:19)
4 verbose stack     at /usr/local/lib/node_modules/npm/lib/run-script.js:63:5
4 verbose stack     at /usr/local/lib/node_modules/npm/node_modules/read-package-json/read-json.js:116:5
4 verbose stack     at /usr/local/lib/node_modules/npm/node_modules/read-package-json/read-json.js:436:5
4 verbose stack     at checkBinReferences_ (/usr/local/lib/node_modules/npm/node_modules/read-package-json/read-json.js:391:45)
4 verbose stack     at final (/usr/local/lib/node_modules/npm/node_modules/read-package-json/read-json.js:434:3)
4 verbose stack     at then (/usr/local/lib/node_modules/npm/node_modules/read-package-json/read-json.js:161:5)
4 verbose stack     at /usr/local/lib/node_modules/npm/node_modules/read-package-json/read-json.js:382:12
4 verbose stack     at /usr/local/lib/node_modules/npm/node_modules/graceful-fs/graceful-fs.js:123:16
4 verbose stack     at FSReqWrap.readFileAfterClose [as oncomplete] (internal/fs/read_file_context.js:53:3)
5 verbose cwd /home/pi/MagicMirror/modules/MMM-soccer
6 verbose Linux 4.19.118-v7l+
7 verbose argv "/usr/bin/node" "/usr/local/bin/npm" "start"
8 verbose node v10.19.0
9 verbose npm  v6.14.7
10 error missing script: start
11 verbose exit [ 1, true ]