[u-u] Electronic signage...

[William Park]

"Drop File" method is the first thing that comes to mind.  It's old school but it's also simple.
    1. Write data to files.  Eg. time to "time" file, temperature to "temperature" file.
    2. Convert the data files to a HTML file periodically, say every 2 sec.
    3. Show the HTML file in browser, refreshing periodically also.
-- 

William



> On Wednesday, July 13, 2016 9:40 AM, Colin McGregor <colin.mc151 at gmail.com> wrote:
> > This is a topic I will plan on picking brains at during this evening's
> UU meeting.
> 
> In summary I am looking for an easy way to program electronic signage
> for a local sailing club (Humber Bay Sailing).
> 
> What I would like to have is a Raspberry Pi displaying at least the
> following changing information (in no particular order):
> 
> - Current time
> - Sunset time (calculated from time and location)
> - Current temperature
> - Wind Speed / Direction
> - Barometric Pressure rising/falling
> - Upcoming events
> - Weather forecast for the next 3-5 days
> - Video stream from the docks (to see what boats are in/out of harbour).
> 
> In other words the information will be coming in from a variety of
> sources, most from sources in/on the sailing club building. All
> information that someone planning to take a boat out should be aware
> of.
> 
> The first part of displaying the above is easy enough, a browser the
> like of Chromium set up in kiosk mode. The code behind the above
> above, well... Javascript seems to assume a single thread / single
> task, a problem when you could have all of the above bits of
> information needing to (seem to) update simultaneously (yes, the
> events list might only change once a week, sunset time will only
> change once per day and weather forecast will only change a few times
> per day, but worst case they will all need to (appear to) change at
> the same time). AJAX appears to be a possible part of the solution,
> but... Is there an easier way?
> 
> I have been looking at some of the open source signage solutions, but
> they seem to have their own problems, most notably the ones I've
> looked at seem to assume one has a high speed internet connection and
> then stuff is provided via "the cloud". The sailing club is located in
> a corner of Toronto where DSL/Cable is not available, so any internet
> connection will have to be via 56K dial-up (which is still available
> via Toronto Free-Net) or via an expensive mobile phone based solution
> :-( . In other words the only affordable Internet solution is dial-up,
> good enough to grab weather information, but not good enough for much
> else.
> 
> So, is there a free application builder that will let me present the
> above information, without seriously diving into the intricacies of
> Java/AJAX, while for most practical purposes being independent of the
> internet?
> 
> Many thanks.
> 
> 
> 
> Colin McGregor
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