this is my digital dashboard that I just
made it sits on the wall right next to
my desk and it's just always there I've
got the local time
well time when going by us West Coast
time Joel should be asleep but he's
probably not I've got the local weather
my upcoming video plan and to do on here
and in the last two weeks that I've been
using it it has already made my works so
much more efficient because it totally
keeps me on track
I just always know what's coming up you
can use this setup for everything though
as a family planner a digital picture
frame or even with a much smaller screen
just as a desktop clock with your next
tasks coming up and all this is is a TV
and the Raspberry Pi so let me show you
how I build this one how I set
everything up to work smoothly from the
PI and its energy efficiently as
possible and what I would do differently
next time so let's go through what parts
I used first the screen this is a JVC 4k
43 inch LED TV it's really amazing how
cheap TVs have become just in these last
two years and the price difference
between a 1080p model and a 4k one has
also shrunk to almost zero so getting
the high resolution one was a no-brainer
as it makes especially that the smaller
text just so much more readable which
means I can actually make use of the
largest screen and put more stuff on it
of course you can also use an old
computer screen or any other spare
display but make sure it has decent
viewing angles especially if you plan on
mounting it in portrait mode and also
keep an eye on power draw I picked this
exact model because it's a good bit more
energy efficient than others and since
it will be on for 10 hours a day that
does make a difference in the long run
now for what's controlling this
obviously it's a Raspberry Pi for the
older PI's would have probably been fast
enough but don't support 4k output over
HDMI yes there are a few hacks that may
allow you to get 4k from them but I
wanted to eliminate as many potential
hiccups as possible there should be a
zero hassle and maintenance setup for me
and it was already enough work as is I
may still try and older Pi in the future
though so
the salsa is driving all of this there
are two maybe three ready to go
solutions for this the first one and
maybe the most obvious one is
magic-mirror
- that's a Raspberry Pi native softer
that's made to sit behind a
semi-transparent merit piece of glass
and shine its information through that
mirror creating that mirror mirror on
the wall illusion magic mirror - is free
and open-source and has a ton of plugins
and expansions but first the interface
is optimized to just be black and white
since it's made to shine through a
mirror and getting anything to look nice
without that mirror is going to take
some effort and the more severe issue
for me the way set up magic mirror is by
editing JSON files of a remote desktop
or through an SSH terminal yes there are
alternatives but those are also a lot of
work and I just don't have those sort of
masochistic tendencies so that didn't
particularly excite me but I tried
anyways and after digging through the
tons of different calendar plugins and
finding the one that seems to be the
go-to powerful option now I just gave up
when I saw the 50 page long
documentation how to write that JSON
that with display a shared calendar like
this shouldn't be so hard for me that's
not fun to set up and changing anything
in the future would mean relearning the
entire thing again it also kind of
explains that when magpie the official
Raspberry Pi magazine covered magic
mirror they spent five pages explaining
how to build the wooden frame which is
behind me right now and only one page on
software it would probably scare a lot
of people away if they covered it more
realistically which is the other way
around
one page on the frame five pages on how
to edit JSON files so the next
alternative is tack board and that's
actually the one that I'm using right
now it's not an open-source software
it's a paid software as a service which
I'm usually not a fan of but there is a
somewhat limited free version available
this project is not sponsored by them I
don't even have affiliate links for tack
board but there are Phillip links to all
the hardware and tools I'm using down in
the video description so the one massive
advantage that that board has is that
it's entirely browser-based both the
configuration and the dashboard itself
happen entirely in a browser window
which means you can use any kind of
hardware for the screen as long as it
can display a website and it can change
and update what's shown on the screen
from any other computer without remote
desktop open into the Raspberry Pi or
going through a console it took me all
of 10 minutes to get that board running
and then a bit longer to figure out what
I actually wanted to be shown on the
screen where how large is cetera there
is one more software that I found and
that's Maris Maris by glance err which I
believe is somewhat open-source it's
made by a guy from Berlin but it seemed
a bit too focused on living behind the
mirror again which means very simplified
graphics and the list of integrations
and features is also quite short with
each of these solutions there are still
a few things that I did to the Raspberry
Pi OS to make it work for this
application but I'll get to those
towards the end of the video but now
that I knew that the software worked and
did what I wanted it to it was time to
mount everything to the wall and to
build a bezel for the screen to make it
look a bit less like a failed home
cinema setup I started by installing the
wall mount for the TV itself this is a
standard off-the-shelf unit I tried to
get one that was reasonably thin since I
didn't want the frame to stick out too
far from the wall the TV is thick enough
as is most wall mounts let you mount the
TV in normal landscape orientation or in
portrait but if you have one that is
particularly flimsy the TV my tilt
forward a bit too much for comfort
mounts with a taller base like this one
tend to be sturdier and the bezel I'm
still adding will help hold it in place
too in case you're wondering no this is
this is not a stud wall this is not
drywall in fact this is a two flew brick
chimney that I'm mounting this to
usually you should never drill into a
chimney as that could allow for flue
gases to escape or create a fire hazard
but in my case one flew the one over
here has never been used and will never
be used and already carries the cables
before my solar panels from the roof
into the basement where the inverters
live and this other flew over here is
now double or actually triple lined with
polymer pipe ever since we upgraded to a
condensing gas heater that means in my
case this can be treated like is
solid bearing wall
[Music]
white suit red sky
reach out
[Music]
so now that the TV was mounted I could
get started on making the wood bezel I
picked up a few pine boards as they were
cheap and had a nice lively texture that
would break up the sterile look of the
dashboard I started by joining two
boards for the fascia and got to cutting
out the bezel area
sure there are more material efficient
ways of making a bed like this for
example by joining segments with minor
cuts in the corners but I wanted to
grain to run all in the same direction
in the front and while I'm assembling
this frame let's take a moment to talk
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i routed out a large lip or pocket for
the TV to sit further towards the front
it only needs to be this big on one side
but the spacing from the edge of the
visible screen to the rear box section
of the wooden frame needs to be the same
at all edges then I added a bunch of
chamfers on all sides of the bezel for
looks but also to make that second
fascia on top of the TV's original bezel
look as thin as possible
[Music]
now just because I'm using a bunch of
tools here it doesn't mean that you
can't make a frame like this if you
don't have all of them I'm not using any
of these tools particularly effectively
so all you need if you're a bit creative
is some sort of a saw sandpaper and wood
glue you can also get different raw
materials that need less work to get
them into shape to make your life even
easier like thin plywood for that front
fascia
[Music]
for the back portion of the bezel I
printed a bunch of grills to cover up
some cutouts for ventilation both the
screen and the pie do need some air flow
but passive convection should be enough
the back itself is a simple but joint
rectangle I added a few Brad nails for
strength and so that I could keep on
working right away the back frame then
simply gets glued to the bezel and after
that I was ready for a quick round of
sanding and the first coat of varnish
I looked into using a stain first but
since I wanted an almost black color
using Cowell varnish ended up being a
simpler more consistent and cheaper
option after a second coat of paint the
frame was done and ready to be mounted
[Music]
yeah I heard up yeah remember how I like
to measure from that 10 centimeter mark
on measuring tape so that I don't need
to deal with the wiggly end well it
turns out if you forget to subtract
those 10 centimeters from your
measurement tip to actually get the
correct dimension I already thought the
aspect ratio looked a bit off to be 16
by 9 but the dimensions on my sketches
checked out no well at least there was
an easy enough way to fix it and as you
can see it did work out I had thought
about tossing this frame and just 3d
printing one instead on that huge Raptor
2.0 printer but I figured I could reuse
this wooden bezel and just cut a chunk
out of the top and bottom glued back
together
send it down and give it a fresh coat of
paint so that's what it did and yeah you
can still see where it's got joined back
together if you know what you're looking
for but if you don't you can't really
tell so for mounting the frame I use
pieces of what you'd call one by two in
the u.s. commonly known as duct Laden
here and to align the frame to the
screen I used some double-sided tape to
temporarily stick down the slot then
unscrew the frame and anchor just a
slight down in that position work really
well and of course you can always find
to you in the position with a hammer
next I needed power and remember how I
said this was a chimney well that makes
it easy I fished up a wire through the
flute and then had a licensed
electrician
hook up the connections I first thought
I'd need to add an extension to this
frame on the bottom too high a power
strip and wiring but it turns out there
was enough space behind the screen to
hide a full power strip and USB supply
and for the Raspberry Pi 4 well I just
taped that to the back of the TV there's
no need to choke it even more with
putting a printed case around it after
all it is already enclosed by the frame
at all and know what this pie is doing
it definitely does not need a fan or a
heatsink so back on goes the bezel these
two vent grills on the bottom and top
also hide the screws that mount the
bezel to the wall just to make it a bit
prettier I mean it's not like anyone is
ever going to see it but still
so how did I set up the Raspberry Pi it
all starts with these standard raspbian
setup since I used the Raspberry Pi 4
it's the newest one they offer it as of
today which is August 2019
I did all the regular things that this
set of assistant walks you through that
is Wi-Fi and changing the password but
after that it was mostly making the PI
work smoothly in this use case reading
off all the commands I used is not super
fun for a video so I linked the article
on Thomas video of org in the
description where I have all the steps
listed in full detail so here's the
short version first I needed a way to
access the PI without attaching a
keyboard to it for that I enabled SSH
and VNC remote access with the raspy
config tool then I need a way to
automatically show the dashboard
interface on boot for that I added a
start up command to the LXDE desktop
environment that would launch chromium
just in full screen and that works very
nicely but there's still the issue that
this screen is rotated normally you can
easily configure the entire HDMI output
to be rotated with the boot convicts but
with a 4k screen the entire image will
get shifted off to the side so that most
of it is black and you're only seeing a
small slit of the actual image lock rate
so instead I tried a few chrome plugins
that would rotate just the website and
there are a bunch of prank plugins but
Pedro Tate did exactly what I needed
however you need to click it every time
which doesn't work here so I looked at
what it did to the actual web page and
replicated that essentially a weird
thing is it's creating an iframe which
is a virtual browser window within the
actual browser window and then it's
rotating that and it's entirely works
beautifully
next there there are two small
annoyances that I had to fix and those
were that the screen will go blank as it
just display black after 15 minutes
that's a simple fix in the desktop
environments conflict and the next one
was that there is a mouse cursor on
screen which we definitely don't need
that's fixed by installing unclutter and
adding it to auto story lastly I wanted
to schedule the TV turning on and off
because well what's the point of having
it on during the night so I set up hdmi
cec which lets the PI control the TV
over HDMI and turning
laughs we need make sure you've got the
pipe lot into an HDMI port that supports
CEC for that to work for the scheduling
I used cron the old-school Linux
schedule or so now the screen turns on
at 8 a.m. and turns off at 6 p.m.
nice 10-hour workday perfect and lastly
to save a bit more energy I turned down
the screen to minimum brightness it's so
very readable at that setting and
probably reduces power consumption by
two-thirds or so that's also one of the
reasons why I did not add a mirror in
front as I have to crank the brightness
just to make it through that mirror and
then I'd also have to compete with the
glare on top of that so yeah this is
good now for the actual DAC board layout
you can go with the free predefined ones
but I wanted to try creating a custom
one now what you put in here is up to
you but here's what I have on it up top
I just felt right to have the local date
and time and then next it I have some
world times for us West Coast lay East
Coast New York Hong Kong and Sydney so
these just always give me an idea of
what time it is for the people that I'm
talking to on Twitter or via email next
up weather kind of obvious and then the
calendar for the next 90 days right now
I'm only having it display my video
schedule but usually I also have my work
calendar on here with events and
deadlines I just hit that for the video
because that doesn't really need to be
public I really enjoy having the full 90
days in advance here that gives me a
chance to for example order stuff from
Aliexpress for an upcoming build and the
stuff actually getting here in time now
down here for now I've put a to-do list
but I'll probably still change that
around if you have ideas of what might
fit in this blank space down here let me
know down in the comments one of the
features that backboard is only
unlocking for paid users right now is
the option to use custom CSS that is web
page styling basically and that changes
how all this stuff looks but you can
also add that feature with a chrome
plugin that just applies it looks right
in the browser what I added here was a
consistent spacing in these calendar
cells by default they shrink and grow
based on how much information each row
has and then I changed some of the font
sizes and added
Lurie black shadow under all the text
and icons make it a bit more readable
there's still a few things that I may
add or change in the future and that's
for example a power button hidden
somewhere in the bezel and lets me
cleanly shutdown the pie because if you
just yank power switch of the mains fuse
you do that too often and at some point
it's just not going to boot up anymore
for now I've got a copy of the SD card
so if that ever happens I'll be back up
and running fairly quickly it could also
make sense to actually underclock the
pi/4 but since all that's doing is
limiting the maximum clock and this one
is idle most of the time anyways I don't
think it's going to make much of a
difference for heat and power draw but
when I will try is getting an older pie
to output 4k that way I can use this pie
for for more demanding tasks and
permanently deploy a pie one in this
dashboard and if I were to build this
again I would probably skip the entire
TV wall mount and just use the TV's
bezel and tape it directly to the wooden
frame there's more than enough contact
area here and knowing how well VHB tape
sticks I'd have zero doubts that it
would hold up over time that would make
aligning the frame to the screen just so
much easier and will also make for a
slimmer build that doesn't stick out as
far from the wall I'd also drill a small
hole in the bezel somewhere around here
where the infrared receiver lives to
make using the remote for the TV a bit
less awkward but like I mentioned I'll
have these softer guide linked in the
description below also down there you
can find the list of parts and tools
that I use if you're looking into making
one yourself and if so let me know in
the comments what do you think about
using this for and as always if you
found this video helpful interesting
entertaining leave a like get subscribed
and if you're up for it join in on
patreon or three new YouTube memberships
to support the channel thank you all so
much thanks for watching and I'll see
you all in the next one
[Music]
[Applause]
[Music]
[Applause]