Hi, all.

Long-time linux admin (25 years) and technologist (30 years worth!) that is always looking for ways to add “cool” things to make my home and life nicer and easier. I came across MM recently and am very intrigued in potentially building something out for my home and possibly someone else’s as well.

I have been using an out-of-service iPad Air as a sort of digital photo frame for 9 months or so. While it does show photos, there are some things about it that I would like to change if I could. For example, I have to upload the photos from my Mac into iCloud, wait for them to sync to the cloud, wait for them to be available for the iPad, shut down the slideshow, copy them to the local photo folder, then restart the slideshow.

Similarly, I had a Samsung Galaxy Tab Pro that I set up with Fotoo and gave it access to a specific Google Drive account where I would push photos from my phone (or my Mac). I never had to touch Fotoo, including if the tablet restarted (I configured Fotoo to auto-launch on device startup). It would periodically read the Drive location and pick up new photos and constantly show a randomized photo slideshow. This was very nice for the in-laws while we were on a cruise - we would occasionally upload a couple of photos that we took during the trip, and they would automatically get that photo on their frame.

The Galaxy Tab has been taken out of service due to a battery issue (it swelled and pushed the display out) and I just haven’t gotten around to fixing it yet. The iPad is ok, but at 12’ away the pictures are a bit small. And, as mentioned, I don’t like the way I have to interact with it (including if there’s any notification that pops up on the screen and shuts the slideshow down).

I’d like to take on some testing of MM and would be interested in being able to access a Google Calendar, Weather, and a local file folder on the device to show random photos from. Ideally, I would like to be able to copy down data from a Google Drive location into the local directory so that I’m not constantly pulling the content across my data-capped Internet connection every time I want to show a photo. If that isn’t a viable option, I could use a cron job with rsync to auto update the directory on the local Micro SD card from a Linux server (including across the Internet for the remote device) if I had to.

While I take a lot of photos with my phone and can push them directly to Drive, I also take a LOT of photos with my DSLR when we travel and would like to drop them into a specific folder on my local server after I’ve edited them and have them be shown on the MM/frame.

Is there any sort of module or configuration that would allow me to split a display into multiple areas and have each one show a different photo, and have the photos change on their own random / semi-random intervals?

Any thoughts, help, guidance, etc. would be appreciated. Thanks in advance!