Timeframe

A web application for displaying information from various APIs on digital signage.

Project goals

• Serve as a test bed for learning new technologies.
• Long term: I expect to run this application for years, if not decades.
• Stability: I expect the application to run without maintenance indefinitely.
• Availability: 100% uptime.
• Fault tolerance: the application functions when no internet connection is available.

Architecture

• Signage endpoints
  • Visionect 13" displays (/thirteen)
    • Fetched by Visionect Software Suite running on local network and displayed on 13" Place and Play devices. Fetch interval is currently 10m.
  • Boox Mira Pro (/mira)
    • Fetched by a client Mac Mini with a Boox Mira Pro (25.3" 3200x1800px e-Paper display) running Google Chrome full screen.
    • Self-refreshes entire screen every 1s.

Todo list

• remove .stub from tests in favor of dependency injection
• Use PStore instead of SQLite
• run Rails server with launchd
• add health checks for home assistant automations
• set up remote chrome debugging on client display
• sync tempest weather data
• Dither images using this technique: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37837009
• Integrate with Home Assistant to show whether mail has been delivered today
• Use a pi for kiosk mode instead of a mac mini
• Alert on unavailable entities
• Baby age should be in months until 2 years+
• Add lightning warning

Local development

Setup

1) bundle install 2) rails db:setup 3) Copy .config.ymlfrom a friend. 4) rails s 5) Visit http://localhost:3000

Testing

bundle exec rake

Deploying

Currently, Timeframe runs on a local Mac Mini in development mode. There is no production deployment.

To fetch the latest version: git fetch --all && git reset --hard origin/main

To upgrade Visionect: docker-compose pull && docker-compose up -d

Rails server: SECRET_KEY_BASE="foo" RAILS_ENV=production rails s -p 80 -b 0.0.0.0 --no-log-to-stdout

BG jobs: RAILS_ENV=production bundle exec sidekiq