I have started my new build from scratch and used your install script.

There are a number of ‘vulnerability’ warnings that show, and I’m curious if I should actually try and repair them with the suggested npm commands or not.

Also, so far, the screensaver does seem to be disabled, but I haven’t yet jumped into the MM configuration to put in place the same modules I had been using on the other setup as of yet.

@sdetweil said in How to disable auto update from MMM-GooglePhotos:

@ember1205 i was being general… 1 file or more, its the same problem.

Yes, true.

To me, the solution here seems to be a combination of a cron tool to download an image when it gets updated, a trigger to either restart MM or send a notification to the module to re-read the image, and the ability to simplistically display that singular image as the background for MM.

@sdetweil

I got the sense that there is only one file and that it gets updated once per week. So, there is no need to cycle through a batch of photos because there is only one. I don’t see a way of changing the behavior without modifying the underlying code because it’s built to cycle through a collection of photos, not just display a single one.

@sdetweil said in Initial Setup Q's and Some Doc Feedback:

@ember1205 thanks… I wished we had worked on it a little more…

i have a script that just does setting screensaver off…

haven’t had it fail on anything in a while… just tested Zorin OS. it worked properly

I’m going to try a fresh build and will use your script to see how it fares on this exact version of Raspbian…

@dsegel said in Initial Setup Q's and Some Doc Feedback:

@ember1205 There are three locations where the screensaver might be starting from, and only one of them is actually run (I believe the first found in this order):

/home/pi/.config/lxsession/LXDE-pi/autostart
/etc/xdg/lxsession/LXDE-pi/autostart
/etc/xdg/lxsession/LXDE/autostart

Raspbian recently changed to not having the first one, so the second is now the preferred method.

So… None of that works. The ONLY way I could get the screensaver to shut off was to do:

sudo apt install xscreensaver

And then run the Screensaver Preferences setup and set it to disabled. Anything else I tried ultimately allowed the screen to go blank (black) after about 15 minutes.

@BD0G said in PDF Implementation:

If others load one .pdf file to the google drive and then delete all other files in that directory well then the file extension would still be .pdf (right) ? So then one could script it using *.pdf (file that ends in .pdf)

So whatever actions that were taken were performed upon a file that ended with .pdf

The file name becomes inconsequential. Just grab all .pdf files (as there will only be one) , download them to a specific directory you create on a local system (ftp sounds like it may be a good option for this) and then use the convert action that @ember1205 speaks of within ImageMagick, upload back to Google Drive via ftp and then (damn! Google Drive will then rename it with another file ID and then the URL that is within the config.js that points to the url will be broken and not display -ugggggg) . I think I understand now.

Here is a Google Chrome Add on that allows one to Overwrite the same file without changing the file name. It “may” be helpful?
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/drive-overwrite-file-repl/llanhaaigblafdecdihpppjaeekpddfl?hl=en-US

It really sounds like you may have to delve into Google App Script to accomplish this. https://developers.google.com/apps-script

If you have questions about using this scripting tool then I think there is support over on www.stackoverflow.com

I am not a Google Script Coder so I cannot be of any help there.

Download from Google drive to the MM device. Convert. Store converted file locally. Load local file.

Less complicated than downloading, converting, pushing back up, figuring out new ID, etc.

@JohnDelta said in PDF Implementation:

@ember1205 so I’ve tried. But that’s just a few unnecessary steps to take once a week so I find.

That was why I had mentioned doing it with ‘convert’ from ImageMagick - you can script it and then make it into a cron job. Pull the PDF down to the local device, detect that it’s a different PDF (not necessary), and run the convert tool to make it into an image file stored someone on the local filesystem. Done.

@JohnDelta

You could also convert the PDF to JPG or similar with the ‘convert’ utility from imagemagick and then just display it as an image.

@sdetweil

Sigh. Best laid plans… lol

At any rate - I actually rm’ed the original dir and re-did the clone using YOUR version. Came right up and started working properly right out of the gate.

Thanks for not only all of the help, but all of the patience. I do learn quickly, and this should now remain fairly firmly entrenched in my brain going forward.

Now I’m off to see how to modify the CSS of MM to change some of the font aspects for text!

@sdetweil

I followed the directions on the page for your module:

Clone this repository inside your MagicMirror's modules folder

cd ~/MagicMirror/modules

git clone https://github.com/roramirez/MMM-ImagesPhotos.git.

I saw the reference to roramirez, but as I said - I don’t do a lot with git, so I have to go with what’s on the page. Did that install the original?