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PI-CHRONOS

GOAL

To combine a NAS with a clock and a digital photo frame

CONCEPT

Needs to share a USB 3.0 Hard Drive over the network.

Needs to run 24/7 365 days a year

Must display the time and date that can be read from 2 metres away

Must be able to add photos to the digital photo frame.

PURCHASES

Controller	Raspberry Pi 4 Modell B 4GB ARM-Cortex-A72 4x 1,50GHz, 4GB RAM, WLAN-ac, Bluetooth 5, LAN, 4x USB, 2x Micro-HDMI	£47.99
SD Card	SanDisk Ultra 256 GB microSDXC Memory Card + SD Adapter with A1 App Performance Up to 100 MB/s, Class 10, U1	£29.99
Case	Argon ONE Raspberry Pi 4 Case	£25.00
Power Adaptor	CPC Official Raspberry Pi 4 USB-C PSU, UK Black	£11.00
Touch Screen	7 inch Portable Touchscreen Monitor for Raspberry Pi 4, Capacitive IPS Touch Screen Display 1024x600 Game LCD Extend Second Monitor	£44.99
Powered USB Hub	Atolla 4 ports USB 3.0 Hub SuperSpeed Data Transmission with On Off Switch + 1 Charging Port with 15W(5V/3A) Powered Supply Adapter and 1M USB 3 Exten	£21.99
Light Sensor	sourcing map Photoresistor Sensor Module Light Intensity Detection Digital Switch	£4.99
Temp Sensor	AZDelivery Compatible with DHT11 Temperature and Humidity Sensor Module 3.3V 5V with Cable compatible with Arduino and Raspberry Pi including E-Book!	£3.49

TOTAL		£189.44

IMPLEMENTATION

I decided to create an Electron app for the user interface and used a .NET Core service to provide an API to list all the files in a shared folder on the USB drive.

The first step was to upgrade the Raspberry PI:

sudo apt-get upgrade

Next I needed to create a folder to host the app:

#create nasclock folder mkdir NASClock sudo chmod -R 777 /home/pi/NASClock

Now I needed a folder to host the images shared on the network so first we install samba:

#install samba sudo apt-get install samba samba-common-bin

Now we set up the configuration to share the directories:

sudo nano /etc/samba/smb.conf

Adding the two sections below:

[USBDrive] path=/media/USBHDD read only = no writeable = yes browseable = yes guest ok = yes create mask = 664 force create mode=664 security mask=664 force security mode=664 directory mask = 2775 force directory mode = 2775 directory security mask=2775 force directory security mode = 2775 public = yes only guest = no [NASClock] path=/home/pi/NASClock read only = no writeable = yes browseable = yes guest ok = yes create mask = 0777 directory mask = 0777 public = yes only guest=no

The user interface for PI-Cronos is an electron app which requires node to run. So we need to install it:

#install node and electron wget https://nodejs.org/dist/v18.12.1/node-v18.12.1-linux-armv7l.tar.gz sudo tar -xzf node-v18.12.1-linux-armv7l.tar.gz cd node-v18.12.1-linux-armv7l sudo cp -R * /usr/local

We also need to install .NET Core for the backend service:

#Install dotnet curl -sSL https://dot.net/v1/dotnet-install.sh | bash /dev/stdin --channel STS

So now we need to make sure the .NET service starts

sudo nano /etc/systemd/system/NASClock.service

And add:

[Unit] Description=ASP.NET Core App used by PI-CRONOS [Service] WorkingDirectory=/home/pi/NASClock ExecStart=/home/pi/NASClock/NASClock Restart=always # Restart service after 10 seconds if the dotnet service crashes: RestartSec=10 KillSignal=SIGINT SyslogIdentifier=NASClockapp User=www-data Environment=ASPNETCORE_ENVIRONMENT=Production Environment=DOTNET_PRINT_TELEMETRY_MESSAGE=false [Install] WantedBy=multi-user.target

Then run:

sudo systemctl enable NASClock.service sudo systemctl start NASClock.service

And now let's boot up to the electron app automatically:

sudo nano /etc/xdg/autostart/NASClock.desktop

and add:

[Desktop Entry] Name=NASClock Comment=Electron UI for NASClock Icon=app_icon Exec=/home/pi/NASClock/electron/node_modules/electron/dist/electron /home/pi/NASClock/electron Terminal=false Type=Application

Ok we are almost there. Raspbian has a screensaver which we need to disable:

#disable screensaver sudo apt install xscreensaver

This then allows you to go into the Raspbian ui and turn off the screensaver. Now last bit was to turn off the mouse cursor:

#turn off mouse sudo apt-get install unclutter sudo nano ~/.config/lxpanel/LXDE-pi/autostart

and add:

@unclutter -idle 0

ok optional step here. Replace the splash loading screen with the splash image in the NASClock folder:

cd /usr/share/plymouth/themes/pix

backup the old image:

sudo mv splash.png splash.png.backup sudo copy /home/pi/NASClock/splash.png ./

And that's it! Just need to reboot:

sudo reboot

I used Openscad to create a custom case which can be found here.

MULTIMEDIA

View Video View Video View Video View Video

CONCLUSION

Initial tests showed the PI could not power the hard drive and the touchscreen at the same time. So I had to purchase a USB powered hub choosing one that would allow me to power the PI from it thus only using 1 plug.

The glare from the clock was too much when I was trying to sleep though so I got the clock to change to a sleep mode of just the time after 12am.

Because this PI is on 24hours a day it made sense to add in some other features like a bittorrent client

mkdir -p torrent_inprogress mkdir -p torrent_complete sudo apt-get install transmission-daemon sudo usermod -a -G pi debian-transmission sudo nano /etc/transmission-daemon/settings.json

Look for and change the settings:

"download-dir": "/media/USBHDD/torrent_complete", "incomplete-dir": "/media/USBHDD/torrent_inprogress", "rpc-whitelist": "192.168.2.73", "watch-dir": "/media/USBHDD/torrents_todownload", "watch-dir-enabled": true

Then I thought I would add an alarm which would wake up to a sound or music file of my choice. So I added some PI speakers.

I then thought with the speakers I could also turn it into a sleep machine so I downloaded free sounds of rainfall and thunder and waves and put up an option to play them.

Next I thought rather than have a time sensitive clock display that turned to the nightmode at 12am I would add a light sensor and have it switch automatically.

So I purchased a LM393 chip Photoresistor Sensor Module for £4.99 and set up an event that fired when the light was turned on or off. This fed the Daylight setting in the main Settings event which when changed turned the display to day or night.

Then I thought I'd connect to the BBC weather feed to display the weather for the day next to the date. I also added a thermometer to give me the temperature.

I then decided to add in the chimes from my parent's clock so I recorded them and had PI-Chronos play them. It chimes every 15minutes and on the hour chimes the number of hours.

All in all PI-Chronos has been a really satisfying success.