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My own family dashboard. I did not purchase it but wrote myself and it was a life changer. It is an always-on screen (during the day) where everything family o

My own family dashboard. I did not purchase it but wrote myself and it was a life changer. It is an always-on screen (during the day) where everything family oriented happens: all our calendars merged for today and tomorrow (and important events within 6 days), weather, when kids are back from school, info when I am on my way back from work, various alerts on stuff breaking at home, etc. When I finally installed it, my wife told me to get rid of this monstrosity. After a few days I just switched it off one evening and the morning after it was chaos at home. Switched back and fast forward to 7 years and there we are. Probably the most useful thing I built in my life.

morjom 3y ago
Care to detail it a bit more? How much did you use frameworks if at all etc (you did say you wrote it yourself so probably no framework, or?)
- BrandoElFollito 3y ago
  Thanks for your comment! I summarized the various points in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37764585 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37764585
endisneigh 3y ago
Seems like a fun project but couldn’t you do the same thing easily with a shared combined calendar and a tablet of your choice displaying said calendar?
- theshrike79 3y ago
  No, because then you're just limited into showing a single calendar. Some stuff you want in agenda-format (next 5 events on the calendar), others you want in a monthly view, others in daily or weekly. And then you have alerts, weather etc that doesn't really fit the calendar format that well.
  - endisneigh 3y ago
    interesting. in that case I'd use widgets on an ipad which support all of those use cases.
  - codingdave 3y ago
    You are over-engineering this concept. A simple shared calendar absolutely would work. If you want more features, go for it, but that doesn't mean a shared calendar is a non-functional solution.
    - BrandoElFollito 3y ago
      I really wanted more information on that dashboard (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37764585 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37764585)
    - theshrike79 3y ago
      Look at the sibling comment and the example image of the dashboard they built: https://imgur.com/a/pHSIBcO https://imgur.com/a/pHSIBcO How can you do this with a "simple shared calendar"?
dugmartin 3y ago
I’m planning on using MagicMirror (https://magicmirror.builders/ https://magicmirror.builders/) to do this in my kitchen but without the mirror part (just a TV mounted in a niche on the wall). Did you build your software from scratch?
- BrandoElFollito 3y ago
  I considered this too but finally realized I may want to have the information in several places, not all behind a mirror. But th eidea i neat. I summarized the points in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37764585 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37764585
theshrike79 3y ago
We're going to need some details :) I tried doing this with an Android tablet, but the screen is just way too small. Now there are really nicely sized (15.6") USB-C -powered displays for around $100 that could be paired with pretty much any Raspberry Pi to do the same. Or I could just shove an old 24-27" inch display on the wall with a VESA mount...
- BrandoElFollito 3y ago
  Thanks for your comment! I summarized the various points in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37764585 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37764585
BrandoElFollito 3y ago
OK, taken the unexpected comments :) I will do a longer write-up here and point to this block to join the comments together. The aim of this dashboard is to be always-on with the following information displayed (a link to an image of the dashboard, there is not much available at this moment: https://imgur.com/a/pHSIBcO https://imgur.com/a/pHSIBcO) - current time and date - current temperature as seen by Netatmo in my neighborhood - estimations for rain in the next 60 minutes - from Météo France - weather forecast for today and tomorrow - all family calendar merged for today and tomorrow + specific events within 6 days - alerts when there is a water leak, or when something is broken, or when flowers need water - when are kids coming from school today and tomorrow - information when I am driving or biking from the office with estimated arrival time This is powered by a keyboard- and mouse-less old Raspberry Pi and displayed on an old screen mounted on a wall (one day it will be neatly mounted IN the wall. One day.). It is displayed with I am not a developer but wanted to do the software part anyway myself. There were several changes over the last 7 or 8 years. Initially I wrote a backend that would query the information from the various sources but I ended up with a purely client-based SPA that connects to Home Assistant, which in turn retrieves all the information and keps state. The frontend was the opportunity to learn JS/TS/Vue and I rewrote it three times to learn Quasar and recently to move to a pure Vue3/Vite/TailwindCSS frontend. It was a fun trip. It helped me enormously to also learn how to interact with APIs in less-ideal conditions. I also tried to directly use the dashboarding capabilities provided by Home Assistant but I did not really like everything. I may revise this one day if I get a touch screen (a touch monitor) because then it makes sense to use the widgets HA has natively. Coming up next: the ability to have several screens switched by a button

morjom 3y ago

Care to detail it a bit more? How much did you use frameworks if at all etc (you did say you wrote it yourself so probably no framework, or?)

BrandoElFollito 3y ago
Thanks for your comment! I summarized the various points in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37764585 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37764585

endisneigh 3y ago

Seems like a fun project but couldn’t you do the same thing easily with a shared combined calendar and a tablet of your choice displaying said calendar?

theshrike79 3y ago
No, because then you're just limited into showing a single calendar. Some stuff you want in agenda-format (next 5 events on the calendar), others you want in a monthly view, others in daily or weekly. And then you have alerts, weather etc that doesn't really fit the calendar format that well.
- endisneigh 3y ago
  interesting. in that case I'd use widgets on an ipad which support all of those use cases.
- codingdave 3y ago
  You are over-engineering this concept. A simple shared calendar absolutely would work. If you want more features, go for it, but that doesn't mean a shared calendar is a non-functional solution.
  - BrandoElFollito 3y ago
    I really wanted more information on that dashboard (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37764585 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37764585)
  - theshrike79 3y ago
    Look at the sibling comment and the example image of the dashboard they built: https://imgur.com/a/pHSIBcO https://imgur.com/a/pHSIBcO How can you do this with a "simple shared calendar"?

dugmartin 3y ago

I’m planning on using MagicMirror (https://magicmirror.builders/ https://magicmirror.builders/) to do this in my kitchen but without the mirror part (just a TV mounted in a niche on the wall). Did you build your software from scratch?

BrandoElFollito 3y ago
I considered this too but finally realized I may want to have the information in several places, not all behind a mirror. But th eidea i neat. I summarized the points in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37764585 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37764585

theshrike79 3y ago

We're going to need some details :) I tried doing this with an Android tablet, but the screen is just way too small. Now there are really nicely sized (15.6") USB-C -powered displays for around $100 that could be paired with pretty much any Raspberry Pi to do the same. Or I could just shove an old 24-27" inch display on the wall with a VESA mount...

BrandoElFollito 3y ago
Thanks for your comment! I summarized the various points in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37764585 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37764585

BrandoElFollito 3y ago

OK, taken the unexpected comments :) I will do a longer write-up here and point to this block to join the comments together. The aim of this dashboard is to be always-on with the following information displayed (a link to an image of the dashboard, there is not much available at this moment: https://imgur.com/a/pHSIBcO https://imgur.com/a/pHSIBcO) - current time and date - current temperature as seen by Netatmo in my neighborhood - estimations for rain in the next 60 minutes - from Météo France - weather forecast for today and tomorrow - all family calendar merged for today and tomorrow + specific events within 6 days - alerts when there is a water leak, or when something is broken, or when flowers need water - when are kids coming from school today and tomorrow - information when I am driving or biking from the office with estimated arrival time This is powered by a keyboard- and mouse-less old Raspberry Pi and displayed on an old screen mounted on a wall (one day it will be neatly mounted IN the wall. One day.). It is displayed with I am not a developer but wanted to do the software part anyway myself. There were several changes over the last 7 or 8 years. Initially I wrote a backend that would query the information from the various sources but I ended up with a purely client-based SPA that connects to Home Assistant, which in turn retrieves all the information and keps state. The frontend was the opportunity to learn JS/TS/Vue and I rewrote it three times to learn Quasar and recently to move to a pure Vue3/Vite/TailwindCSS frontend. It was a fun trip. It helped me enormously to also learn how to interact with APIs in less-ideal conditions. I also tried to directly use the dashboarding capabilities provided by Home Assistant but I did not really like everything. I may revise this one day if I get a touch screen (a touch monitor) because then it makes sense to use the widgets HA has natively. Coming up next: the ability to have several screens switched by a button