@mezcalbomb
Not necessarily… you can use the one RPi remotely. Before I got the second RPi, I was doing testing and setup on the main one downstairs. It worked fine. I have a browser tab open pointing to it so I can see what’s going on.

You didn’t specify what hardware you wanted to wait on – I assumed you meant you wanted to get the MM set up before you physically built the frame and such for it. If you have an old monitor, you can plug your RPi into it or you should be able to run it without a monitor and just see the MM in the browser on your main computer.

I managed to scrounge up a second RPi which means I can break stuff on it while the first one is still (relatively) functional downstairs, even though I haven’t gotten around to building a frame or mounting it on the wall. But you could still set things up with just one RPi as long as you’re not trying to put it into production before you finalize everything. (Or if you back up your settings frequently. Get Sam’s backup scripts.)

I apologize for what I’m sure is a bonehead question… I had a stock calendar module to show events from one calendar (and a second, hidden instance of calendar) but when I tried to implement pages (MMM-Pages), it was loading the hidden calendar along with the non-hidden one.

So I thought I’d try CalExt3Ag to replace the visible calendar. The problem is, I want it to look like the stock calendar:

but the best I could get is this:

Is it possible to get a much simplified listing (one line per event, relative dates) of events using CalExt3Ag?

And now, having actually looked at the file in question, I see it includes latitude and longitude for each entry. Very cool.

@jimb I will always defer to @sdetweil 's greater knowledge and intelligence but another option is (I hope, anyway, since it’s what I’m using) to use the latitude and longitude of your location. I have the weather module set up to show my wife’s school using the coordinates. (We are known for our microclimates here – her school 2 miles away may have completely different weather from what we have at home.)

To get the coordinates, I went to maps.google.com, clicked on a location, then copied the resulting URL. It should look like this:

https://www.google.com/maps/@37.7761918,-122.4222641,16.25z?entry=ttu

The first number after the @ sign is the latitude; the second is the longitude. So you could put in your config file:

lat: 37.7761918,
lon: -122.4222641,

and it will show the weather for your location (or the San Francisco War Memorial Opera House in that example). This might be handy if you’re not near a city listed in the file.

@mezcalbomb If you have a Raspberry Pi, I highly recommend @sdetweil 's installation script. You can set up the pi, install everything and use PuTTY and your browser of choice to do all your testing from your main desktop. Then, when you’ve got it all the way you like it, set up your monitor and frame and all and it will run locally.

I have an RPi downstairs in the hall attached to an old monitor that will (eventually) get put in a frame and mounted in the kitchen. It’s running the MM as I have it set up thus far.

Meanwhile, in my office upstairs, I have another RPi that I am using to test modules – I use PuTTY to run MM and view the console log, WinSCP to transfer files and the same editor I use for work to edit files. Then I just have a browser tab pointed at the RPi’s IP address. (Actually, I have two such tabs, one for the dev machine and one for the one downstairs.)

So the fix appears to be* to add the following line of code to the MMM-BackgroundSlideshow.js file at line ~175:

    //Quick and dirty fix to redirect the notification
    this.socketNotificationReceived(notification,payload);

Seems to be working now.

* https://github.com/darickc/MMM-BackgroundSlideshow/pull/135/commits/48ae1cb12408a119ec9dd07927ce953f9eaa2bf0#diff-58dd4b5e083de0ddd663e45190feabf1cabee2f0e3f6ca048c0f64a731888ff8R175-R176

(Just adding this in case someone comes here to search for an answer first before going to Github.)

Never mind… it appears to be a bug in the module as discussed here: https://github.com/darickc/MMM-BackgroundSlideshow/issues/127

I’m probably doing something wrong but it seems to me that MMM-BackgroundSlideshow is not responding to notifications.

I have MMM-Keypress installed which works fine with MMM-Pages but when I try to set it up to send notifications to MMM-BackgroundSlideshow, it’s like BS is ignoring them. (Using the same exact keys/configuration to send a notification to MMM-Pages works fine.)

Here are my config.js entries:

		{
			module: "MMM-Keypress",
			position: "bottom_right",
			config: {
				notifications: [
					{key: "Enter", notification: "PAGE_INCREMENT"},
//					{key: "Tab", notification: "PAGE_INCREMENT"},
//					{key: "Space", notification: "PAGE_INCREMENT"},
					{key: "MOUSE_SCROLL_UP", notification: "BACKGROUNDSLIDESHOW_PREVIOUS"},
					{key: "MOUSE_SCROLL_DOWN", notification: "BACKGROUNDSLIDESHOW_NEXT"},
				],
			}
		},

		{
			module: 'MMM-BackgroundSlideshow',
			position: 'fullscreen_below',
			config: {
				imagePaths: ['modules/MMM-BackgroundSlideshow/Paintings/'],
				transitionImages: true,
				randomizeImageOrder: true,
				slideshowSpeed: 3600000,
				resizeImages: true,
				maxWidth: 1080,
				maxHeight: 1920,
				backgroundSize: "contain",
				transitions: ["opacity"],
				showProgressBar: true,
			}
		},

Note that I’ve tried a whole host of keys/keycodes and they work fine with MMM-Pages but do nothing for MMM-BackgroundSlideshow.

I’m not sure what I’m doing wrong.

@rmonkey

That’s awesome. Thanks for the additional info. I may try to do the same thing at some point, if I can get my wife to let me cut into the wall. 8^)

I’m planning on using a french cleat for my board that I’m working on in the kitchen; it seems the best way to go all around.

Great work and thanks!

Looks great!

I would love to see a picture of the recessed outlet and hear more about how you did that.

Also, is the monitor one of the portable monitors you can find on Amazon?