Hi all:

I had a fully functioning MM install on a Pi3 and I wanted to try to add Alexa functionality. I installed Alexa following:

https://lifehacker.com/the-simplest-way-to-build-a-raspberry-pi-powered-amazon-1794218212

because I could not get the MMM-Alexa app through the Amazon sign-up.

I was connected to the MagicMirror through an SSH and I had fixed the ip to 192.168.0.254 which was free and in my reserved area on my router. In working through the steps, it appeared that my USB sound card wasn’t working so I shifted to getting the sound card working for both recording and playback (I have one of those USB sound cards with both mic and headphone jacks). The very first step was to do an update and upgrade:

$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get upgrade

Well, it got through the update okay so I started the sudo apt-get upgrade command and left it alone. When I returned the SHH was disconnected and it seemed that an error had occurred somewhere. I rebooted and did an ipscan and I could not find my MagicMirror! No device at 192.168.0.254. It’s possible that in registering my Alexa app to Amazon (which was completed successfully) that the fixed ip had been overwritten to be a dhcp device but no other connected device appeared to be my magic mirror. I have TWO Echo dots and when I look at the devices on my router there are THREE Amazon devices. Does this mean that the Amazon registration redefined the ip address for the MM because I registered the Alexa app? I tried remotely logging into each of these devices but none replied, so I couldn’t login that way.

So, I pulled the microsd card and put it in a new Pi3, connected a mouse, usb keyboard, hdmi monitor and a 2.5A, 5v microusb power connector to work on it directly. It boots up, opens my window environment and then the Magic Mirror. I get the captions but none of the internet content (its likely the machine is not connected to the internet). So I try to kill the Magic Mirror to get back to the windowing environment and it does not respond to any keystrokes or mouse clicks!! I’ve tried ctrl-c, ctrl-w, ctrl-q, ctrl-z, ctrl-x … and even the special functions keys that use to interrupt the MMM window so I could enter ctrl-c in it base window. In fact, even the caps-lock button does not even light up the LED on one of the keyboards … so it’s like the keyboard is not being recognized!! I’ve tried 2 keyboards, but neither allow me to interrupt.

If the keyboard and/or mouse are not being recognized, how do I interrupt the boot sequence or the MM autostart before they start the MM?

I really do not want to start over as I customized the MMM and had it where I wanted it configured.

Any one have any magic to try to fix this??

Re: MMM-awesome-alexa

Hi:
Thanks for putting this module together. But I need some help. I walked through your procedure as best I could trying to set up my own Alexa voice service and failed. I have created an Amazon device, but I cannot connect to it. The first wall I believe I ran into was that my Raspberry Pi would not accept the connection from Amazon (but there may have been another issue) because it hadn’t been authorized. Then I saw that there were a couple of ways to attempt to do this and they diverge in what you need to enter into the Amazon device. I tried both and neither seemed to work.
So now I’m very confused as to where I am, what I should do to move forward, etc. I’m thinking that I should delete the Amazon device and start over. But if I do that, which procedure should I follow? Is there a final defined procedure that is the best to use? If so, which one? If I can’t delete the Amazon device precisely how should it be configured to talk the the Magic Mirror on my RPi 3?

Thanks!

jproehl

@elmerito25 Hi:

Thanks for the reply. The PIR has two rheostats labeled Sx and Tx, so which is which. I’m tempted to dispense with the PIR altogether and just use the monitor on/off switch to activate the display. But, I’ll mess with the PIR when I get a chance and see if I can get anywhere. Using Board numbering, the PIR has its VCC pin wired to pin 4, its ground pin wired to Pin 6 and its signal pin wired to Pin 7. I set the pin number in my config.js file to 4 (Board pin 7 is GPIO pin 4). Would there be any problem with this wiring?

Hi: I’m having the same problem with the PIR sensor module - when motion is detected the screen comes on for about 1 sec and then shuts off. It operates like that for a minute or so and then begins to not respond or responds intermittently to motion. I’ve added a magnet ring, updated the OS and the MMM-PIR module, but still have the same issues. Any ideas what I should check? Thx!

@roramirez Nice work! Would it be difficult to create a module that loads a photo from a web site instead of from a folder? There are a bunch of photographers that have web pages with incredible photos that would be nice to cycle through.

@strawberry-3.141 Good point, thanks for the reminder. Maybe I’ll just stick with the RPi 3. The frame I’m making for my mirror will be two layers of 3/4" maple (I had some left over flooring material), since I’ve heard the RPi 3 can run a bit hotter than the other RPi models, would it be a good idea to leave off the top board on the back row (next to the wall) to allow for the heat to exit from behind the mirror?

@cowboysdude Great! Thanks, I’ll check it out. I’m trying to make a very compact mirror and the Pi Zero would assist the design, especially with the new wireless version of the Pi Zero just released.

@strawberry-3.141 Can the newly released RPI Zero W be used in place of an Rpi 3? I tried to swap my microSD card from an RPi 3 into a Pi Zero v1.3 and got an error on trying to start the Magic Mirror saying that the Pi Zero does use an acceptable version of some software.

Has anyone ported the Magic Mirror source code so that it does work on an RPi Zero? If so, is that code available? If not, how difficult would it be to port it for the RPi Zero W??

@jbeck615 The custom.css file is in the css directory in /pi/MagicMirror not within each module directory.

@jbeck615 Hi: That problem went away when I fixed a missing close bracket “}” in the custom.css. So, if you are getting the extra icon line in your current conditions display for the same reason I was, check to make sure that all of the entries in custom.css are of the form:

.“modulename” .“className” {
“parameter”: “value”;
}

A concrete example of this is:

.clock .time {
color: #99F;
}

One of my entries was missing that very last bracket. When I fixed that, the icon line went away and all the subsequent parameters that I was trying to change in the custom.css file also got changed.

I suspect that when that syntax error showed up the rest of the custom.css file was not processed and the parameter on which I left off the bracket and all the subsequent ones were never included.

Hope this helps! Good luck.

@broberg Okay, I’ll poke around in the codes. Thanks!

@strawberry-3.141 Hi: Can you point me to a reference where I can learn how to determine the precise terms to use for doing this? For example, how do you determine that “div.light.small.dimmed” was the proper parameter to enter to change the text I was after?

@strawberry-3.141 said in Throwing down the gauntlet:

.newsfeed div.light.small.dimmed {
color: #e54a1b;
font-size: 9px;
}
Great, works like a charm! Thanks again!

@Mykle1 Have at it! FYI: the one I can’t get to work is the .newsfeed .title I still get small letters in gray for “New York Times” and “BBC”. If I go into the main.css and change the color/size for “small” text, that works but hear that isn’t recommended since it will disappear if I update MagicMirror.

@Mykle1 Well, I applaud your efforts (it’s getting rarer in this messed up country) … I hope someday to figure this stuff out to a point where I can help another newbie. Thanks again!

@Mykle1 Okay, I got it! I was missing a close bracket in my

.MMM-WunderGround .min-temp

definition, and fixing that fixed everything!! Even the line of icons in the current weather disappeared!!

Thank you so much!

@Mykle1 Okay, thanks! I was way off! I made that change and now I get red text for the high temperature (so that’s progress, yea!!) but all the other stuff is still gray. I must still have some other syntax errors some where. Back to looking at the code …

@Mykle1 Doesn’t all of that text go within the body? There is a close } at the very end of the custom.css file that closes the body. Is that misplaced?

@jproehl Don’t know why it split the code like that, but is it a sign? I posted all of this as a block of text (file upload wasn’t allowed to my new user). So does this splitting of the text suggest a bad formatting command in either or both files?

@strawberry-3.141 Hey, thanks for the reply. I’m not totally sure where to add that text, so I appended it to my custom.css file. But I don’t see any difference in the MagicMirror view.

Here are my custom.css and my config.js (with the appid’s removed). You’ll probably see what I’ve done wrong right away

================== custom.css ==================

body {
.clock .time {
color: #99F;
}

.clock .date {
	color: #99F;
}

.calendar .header {
	color: #F00;
}

.newsfeed .title {
	color: #F00;
	font-size: large; 
}

.MMM-WunderGround .max-temp {
 color: #f66;

.MMM-WunderGround .min-temp {
 color: #0ff;
}

.MMM-WunderGround .weather-icon {
  color: #f93;
}

.MMM-WunderGround .day {
  color: #6f6;
}

.region.top.center .MMM-WunderGround table.small {
  display:none;
}

.region.top.right .MMM-WunderGround table:not(.small) {
  display:none;
}

.region.top.right .MMM-WunderGround table.small td:nth-child(6) {
  display:none;
}

.region.top.right .MMM-WunderGround table th {
display: none;
   }

}

==============================================

=================== config.js ==================

/* Magic Mirror Config Sample
*

• By Michael Teeuw http://michaelteeuw.nl
• MIT Licensed.
  */

var config = {
port: 8080,
ipWhitelist: [‘127.0.0.1’, ‘::ffff:127.0.0.1’, ‘::1’],
language: ‘en’,
timeFormat: 24,
units: ‘imperial’,

modules: [
	{
		module: 'alert',
	},
	{
		module: 'updatenotification',
		position: 'top_bar'
	},
	{
		module: 'clock',
		position: 'top_center'
	},
	{
		module: 'calendar',  // My Google Calendar
		header: 'My Calendar',
		position: 'top_left',
		config: {
			calendars: [
				{
					symbol: 'calendar-check-o ',
					url: 'https://calendar.google.com/calendar/ical/japroehl%40gmail.com/private-xxx/basic.ics',
					maximumEntries: 15,
					timeformat: 'absolute',
					getrelative: 96,
					fadepoint: 0.9
				}
			]
		}
	},
	{
		module: 'MMM-WunderGround',
		header: 'Current Weather in Cornish',
		position: 'top_center',
		config: {
		apikey: '', // private; don't share!
		pws: 'NH/Cornish', //weather station
		currentweather: 1,
		coloricon: true,
		hourly: 0,
		fctext: 0,
		fcdaycount: 0,
		fcdaystart: 0,
		hourlyinterval: 0,
		hourlycount: 0,
		animationSpeed: 5000,
		alerttime: 10000,
		alerttruncatestring: 'english:',
		roundTmpDecs: 0,
		UseCardinals: 1,
		layout: 'vertical',
		windunits: 'mph',
		sysstat: 0
		}
	},
	{
		module: 'MMM-WunderGround',
			header: 'Forecast for Cornish',
		position: 'top_right',
		config: {
		apikey: '', // private; don't share!
		pws: 'NH/Cornish', //weather station
		currentweather: '0',
		coloricon: true,
		hourly: 0,
		fctext: 1,
		fcdaycount: 7,
		fcdaystart: 1,
		hourlyinterval: 6,
		hourlycount: 0,
		animationSpeed: 5000,
		alerttime: 10000,
		alerttruncatestring: 'english:',
		roundTmpDecs: 0,
		UseCardinals: 1,
		layout: 'vertical',
		windunits: 'mph',
		sysstat: 0
		}
	},
	{
		module: 'newsfeed',
		position: 'bottom_bar',
		config: {
			feeds: [
				{
					title: 'New York Times',
					url: 'http://www.nytimes.com/services/xml/rss/nyt/HomePage.xml'
				},
				{
					title: 'BBC',
					url: 'http://feeds.bbci.co.uk/news/video_and_audio/news_front_page/rss.xml?edition=uk',
				},
				],
				showSourceTitle: true,
				showPublishDate: true
			}	
	 },
]

};

/*************** DO NOT EDIT THE LINE BELOW ***************/
if (typeof module !== ‘undefined’) {module.exports = config;}