My Pi Wall Clock / Calendar / Weather / Photo Frame

I just finished setting up one of my Pi-2’s that was sitting unused as a Smart Wall Display that utilizes DAKboard to turn your Pi into a Wall Clock/Weatherstation/Event Calendar/ Photo Frame.

I made use of a small 7” LCD monitor connected to my Pi but you can choose to use most any monitor you would like as long as it uses HDMI.

I still need to tidy up the wires but it is all together and in place where I want it.

Any calendar event I add on my phone now shows up on my wall display as well.

Some requirements to make this function;

Hardware: 

A Raspberry Pi (of course) and your choice of HDMI monitor, SD card for OS (8GB or larger is recommended)

Peripherals for use with the Pi, ie. Wireless dongle or Ethernet cable if you choose to hardwire to the router, usb wired or wireless keyboard and mouse (mainly just for setup purposes). HDMI cable (length depending on your placement of the Pi in relation to the monitor).

Software: 

Raspian OS  installed on the SD card for your Pi

I followed the tutorial here https://dakboard.com/blog/diy-wall-display/  for the most part. There are some options they would have you do that I did not do for my aplication.  You must create an account with DAKboard don’t worry it’s free (although some really neat features are only available with the Premium account). Once you have created an account with DAKboard you can set it up to use what ever calendar service you make use of and also set up the weather service you would like to use for your area, and set up access to your online photo accounts such as flickr or google photos. Once your setup is complete under the “account” tab you can find a private link to your DAKboard which is used during the browser setup on the Pi (bookmark).

The points I used from the tutorial are :

1- sudo apt-get install unclutter (this will remove the mouse cursor from the display after a few seconds of inactivity)

2- sudo apt update

sudo apt dist-upgrade

sudo apt install -y rpi-chromium-mods

(these steps ensure all software is up to date and what you need is installed).

I tried the next step from terminal but for some reason it would not recognize the file so I simply navigated to the proper folder using the file browser and chose to edit using the text editor. 

First open the File Browser then from the menu choose “Show Hidden Files” then navigate to .config/lxsession/LXDE-pi/autostart   and open with text editor.  Replace the existing text with the following :

@xset s off

@xset -dpms

@xset s noblank

@chromium-browser --noerrdialogs --incognito --kiosk

http://dakboard.com/app/?p=YOUR_PRIVATE_URL

I opted to leave out the  “--incognito” string as I found it quirky when accessing the “https” address that the site offers, you may have better luck with that, but it seemed buggy to me.

The highlighted line above is the one from your DAKboard account page on their website that I mentioned above.

Once the file is saved reboot and the Pi will start with your DAKboard displayed in full screen.