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riquezjp / kitchenTV

Kitchen TV; weather, clock, live news feeds & video for Raspberry pi using PHP/javascript
GNU General Public License v3.0
26 stars 12 forks source link

What additions would you like me to add to the project? #1

Open JoshuaKimsey opened 7 years ago

JoshuaKimsey commented 7 years ago

Aside from the bug fixes I did, what other additions would you like for me to add to the GitHub project here?

Here are the additions I have made:

If you'd like, I could add all of the changes I have made to my fork of the project, then let you look through and decide exactly what changes you'd like for me to add! 😄

riquezjp commented 7 years ago

Hi J95, thats great. Nice one! Yes please add to the fork & ill check it out.

There are also many things that could be done to polish up this project for general use. A few of them that cross my mind... • making settings more user friendly. (config file) : adding channels, weather days 3, 5, 7?, clock themes, • better fluid css for screen sizes. • better solution for web browsing (frame is not compatible with many websites, but needs a way to exit back to the K.TV)

So if you have any ideas of good solutions for those let me know & we can collaborate to improve it!

JoshuaKimsey commented 7 years ago

Ok, I have added my revised files to my fork, which you can view here: https://github.com/hsoj95/kitchenTV

The biggest change was the addition of a second php file called stream, that is actually the old, original index.php file. The new index.php has the iframe link to a static page of weather underground for the specific location shown in the url. This is because of my limited data plan from my internet carrier! A few things aren't quite ready yet, for example, the "News" button links to nothing right now, but will soon.

As for your suggestions, I think having the setup would definitely be more user friendly, but I'm unsure how you'd go about making just one central user theme without the use of something like python to edit the files, unless PHP is capable of that. (I know next to nothing about php, and in fact have learned more about it just looking at this project than I have before.) Adding channels really isn't that hard right now as it is, but if it could be factored into a central config file, that would certainly make it easier to use! For now, the simpleWeather jQuery plugin only has up to a 5 day forecast, but that could change in the future! I haven't messed with changing the clock themes, as I liked the default look you had! But again, if any, or all, of these things can be put into a single config file, that would greatly improve the user experience.

With the more fluid CSS, that might be an issue. I suspect to achieve that to its fullest extent, the project would require a full rewrite into something like Bootstrap in order for it to become properly responsive on different size screens! It honestly might just be easier to create a couple of different versions for the most common resolution screens, like 480p, 720p, 1080, 1440p, and 4K, than trying to rewrite the whole thing in SCSS with Bootstrap.

With the better web browsing thing, I actually haven't run into an issue with the iFrames not working, but I haven't tested that to a wide extent either. I suspect the only real alternative to using frames would be to somehow make Chrome open a new tab that people can just close out of to get back to the Kitch.

I'd love to help you improve this project man! You really have a great thing going! I actually am getting a 1080p touchscreen and a third Raspberry Pi 3, and I plan on having this be the primary front for it when I set it up on my dresser in my bedroom! 😄

JoshuaKimsey commented 7 years ago

I noticed looking though the commit to my fork of the project that there is some missing content from you're version on here. The main thing missing are the comments that explain what some things do. That's because the version I downloaded from Google Drive from your video didn't have those comments. They could probably be easily added back in without much hassle!

JoshuaKimsey commented 7 years ago

Lol! I realized I was a bit of a moron and left the file extensions in the php files as .jsf to work around apache not working correctly! You can remove those to make it work properly!

riquezjp commented 7 years ago

Hi J95, Sorry I havent had chance to check this out yet :-( I've been super busy. As soon as I find a spare evening, hopefully in the next few days, Ill go through it & we can get straight - thanks for your input ill get back shortly! :-)

JoshuaKimsey commented 7 years ago

No worries man! I may add a few updates I've made to my fork of the project. Fixed a few things I had messed up. Also, I have a few ideas for add ons that might really add to the programs functionality! :smile:

JoshuaKimsey commented 7 years ago

Out of curiosity, have you tried KitchenTV with any other distros for the Pi, and if so how did it perform? I ask because I am currently trying to run it on a new Pi I got running Ubuntu Mate, and it runs quite poorly! The biggest issues have to do with sound output via HDMI (BIG ISSUE) and video quality. I could run it perfectly on Raspian, but couldn't get any of the live streams to work properly, and even normal YouTube ran very poorly. Even some of the JS seemed broken in Chromium on Ubuntu Mate, which makes absolutely no sense at all, as the browser should run independently from the OS distro. I may try one or two other distros for the Pi, but it unfortunately looks like I'll be stuck with Raspian until Ubuntu Mate can come up to speed with working right. :disappointed:

JoshuaKimsey commented 7 years ago

Well, after much tinkering, I decided to scrap trying to use a prebuilt distribution/desktop environment and I have built my own using Jessie lite and XFCE. Now it's running quite well! The KitchenTV runs great in Chromium, although there's still some quirks that have developed that apparently need fixing in the actual KitchenTV code.

I haven't worked on the code any on my end, although I will be doing that shortly, because I've been busy getting my Pi and monitor setup how I want it! Also, I've had a wicked chest cold the past few days... 🤧

But, I'll get back to working on it and get my fork updated here shortly! 🙂