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An old monitor + previous generation Raspberry Pi: hangs on the kitchen wall to display Find My Friends in kiosk mode. Connected to a timer so it's on in the af

An old monitor + previous generation Raspberry Pi: hangs on the kitchen wall to display Find My Friends in kiosk mode. Connected to a timer so it's on in the afternoon until dinner so you can see the family come home. Really cute to see your children move as little picture icons across the map towards you from school.

chrisshroba 7y ago
Cool idea! What api did you use to query the data?
- speleding 7y ago
  The Find my Friends web page that apple provides through iCloud actually works really well in kiosk mode (automatically updating, zooming into the relevant part of the map). So I just used one of the many tutorials on how to set up a kiosk om the Raspberry Pi [1]. I augmented it with a little ruby script to check if the WiFi connection was up before loading the page. Also, iCloud logs itself out about once a month, so I put a VNC client on there to be able log back in (but you can also hook up mouse and keyboard). [1] https://pimylifeup.com/raspberry-pi-kiosk/ https://pimylifeup.com/raspberry-pi-kiosk/
compscistd 7y ago
Reminds me of the Weasley clock in Harry Potter[1]. Really cool, you can probably make a mechanical clock using zones and a simple location api. [1] https://harrypotter.fandom.com/wiki/Weasley_Clock https://harrypotter.fandom.com/wiki/Weasley_Clock
- speleding 7y ago
  That is indeed where I got the idea from :-)
Symbiote 7y ago
At what age do you disable the tracking? My parents' tracking of me in the 1990s was awful enough. I dread to think what they have set up I were 12 years old today.
- speleding 7y ago
  That discussion has not come up yet. The kids are old enough to be able to switch it off themselves on their phone if they wanted to but so far they seem comfortable with it. It works both ways: they can see at any moment in time where their parents are, which may be a soothing idea. With one parent travelling a lot for business the screen in the kitchen teaches them a bit about geography too. (What country is mummy in now?)
  - Symbiote 7y ago
    I felt "watched" from age 11 or so, once I saw other children had freedoms I didn't, like stopping by the Warhammer shop on the way home from school. I worked around some of them — I joined an after school club for a while, but rarely attended which gave me about 45 minutes to wander around the city. One friend's parents thought mine were ridiculous, and would lie for me if I'd said I was at their house but wasn't. It would have been a lot more difficult with an electronic tracker.

chrisshroba 7y ago

Cool idea! What api did you use to query the data?

speleding 7y ago
The Find my Friends web page that apple provides through iCloud actually works really well in kiosk mode (automatically updating, zooming into the relevant part of the map). So I just used one of the many tutorials on how to set up a kiosk om the Raspberry Pi [1]. I augmented it with a little ruby script to check if the WiFi connection was up before loading the page. Also, iCloud logs itself out about once a month, so I put a VNC client on there to be able log back in (but you can also hook up mouse and keyboard). [1] https://pimylifeup.com/raspberry-pi-kiosk/ https://pimylifeup.com/raspberry-pi-kiosk/

compscistd 7y ago

Reminds me of the Weasley clock in Harry Potter[1]. Really cool, you can probably make a mechanical clock using zones and a simple location api. [1] https://harrypotter.fandom.com/wiki/Weasley_Clock https://harrypotter.fandom.com/wiki/Weasley_Clock

speleding 7y ago
That is indeed where I got the idea from :-)

Symbiote 7y ago

At what age do you disable the tracking? My parents' tracking of me in the 1990s was awful enough. I dread to think what they have set up I were 12 years old today.

speleding 7y ago
That discussion has not come up yet. The kids are old enough to be able to switch it off themselves on their phone if they wanted to but so far they seem comfortable with it. It works both ways: they can see at any moment in time where their parents are, which may be a soothing idea. With one parent travelling a lot for business the screen in the kitchen teaches them a bit about geography too. (What country is mummy in now?)
- Symbiote 7y ago
  I felt "watched" from age 11 or so, once I saw other children had freedoms I didn't, like stopping by the Warhammer shop on the way home from school. I worked around some of them — I joined an after school club for a while, but rarely attended which gave me about 45 minutes to wander around the city. One friend's parents thought mine were ridiculous, and would lie for me if I'd said I was at their house but wasn't. It would have been a lot more difficult with an electronic tracker.