:experimental:

= Infoscreen

This document is about a screen that shows information.
Shocking, I know.

== Screenshot

.Screenshot of the Infoscreen
image::data_infoscreen/screenshot.jpg[Screenshot of the Infoscreen,80%]

I obfuscated a few things to protect my personal information.

== How it Started

A few years ago I bought a new monitor for my PC.
That left me with a monitor I could use for anything I want.

So I decided to hook a Raspberry Pi to it and show some useful information like weather, calendar, and news.
The monitor then was placed in the kitchen.

== History
=== The First Implementation

The first implementation for this was using vanilla JS (and of course HTML and CSS).
Even though I had not had too much experience in JS, I tried to use "good" software development practices, like class inheritance and https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Guide/Modules[ES-Modules]. +
I hosted it, using the default https://www.php.net/manual/en/features.commandline.webserver.php[PHP HTTP-Server] locally and opened a Chromium browser on localhost.

If you are interested in the code, https://github.com/C0ntroller/infoscreen-old[here] is the repository of the second version, which uses most of the code from version one.

=== Phase Two

The second version of this project basically took all the code from the first version and bundle it as an Electron App.
I hoped that the performance would be increased by not using _the whole_ Chromium bloat.
It (well, who would have guessed) didn't. +
The old code is still up, so if you're interested you can find it https://github.com/C0ntroller/infoscreen-old[in this repository].

=== Phase Three

When I started to learn React more, I realized that what I tried to achieve in the prior versions are just React components.
I rewrote what I had using React.
But I also had already learned about Frameworks for React that provide static site generation like https://nextjs.org/[Next.JS] and https://www.gatsbyjs.com/[Gatsby]. +
Gatsby looked like a good choice so I just went for it.

It gets hosted in a Docker container on my own home server and the Pi just opens up a Chromium again.

This marks the end of the development history.

== So what's on the Screen?

Currently, the following info is shown:

- Time
- Weather and weather map
- two RSS news feeds
- a Google calendar
- departures on the nearest tram station
- Spotify or info from my plant sensors

Also, the background image is cycled through 20-ish images.

=== Weather

For the weather, I used the https://darksky.net/[DarkSky API].
Because Apple bought it and (of course) shut down the public API I had to switch to https://pirateweather.net/[Pirate Weather]. +
Sadly the data from Pirate Weather seems to not be accurate most times.
In the future, I probably want to switch to another API.

=== RSS News

For news, I use the RSS feed of the https://www.tagesschau.de/[Tagesschau], one of the earliest and biggest news channels in Germany.
I also put in a few topics from https://www.der-postillon.com/[Der Postillon] a German satire news page. 
It's available on https://www.the-postillon.com/[English too].

=== Google Calendar

It uses the https://developers.google.com/calendar[Google Calendar API] and orders the event by a day.

=== Departures

My local public transport company has an API available to fetch data for the stations.
It's quite simple to use actually!

=== Spotify

This part shows which song is currently playing in the kitchen.
How it works is a project in itself.
A write-up will follow later.

If nothing is playing, information about a few plant sensors is shown.

=== Plants

This just fetches and shows the current status of the plant sensors from my https://www.home-assistant.io/[Home Assistant].