Clocks - and generic information panels

[Tim Watts]

That thread on clocks and the mention of a WIFI clock got me thinking:

Has anyone ever made a clock based around an inexpensive Android pad or even a Pi + screen combo?

Something that just sits on the wall or the mantelpiece and displays the time (fake clockface, smartwatch style).

BUT is also user customisable to display any amount of other data at particular times, in a panel at a distance readable format.

Like:

7am - display weather and current realtime train info for your station in alternation.

Upcoming select entries from your calendar

Stuff connected with your home automation.

This is DIY-able as cheap pad, frame and custom app - but surely someone's already done this?

[newshound]

My phone and tablets already display date and time, calendar summary, and weather summary on their home screens.

[Richard]

[Richard]

Loads of stuff

[Andy Burns]

I have on old Nexus7 tablet with the docking station, sits on the side in the kitchen, as it's permanently powered it goes into "daydream mode" rather than into standby, which displays a big clock. Main use is to stream internet radio to a bluetooth speaker within the same room.

Unfortunately most apps such as BBC News, or BBC Weather have got too bloated for it to run without crawling on its knees ... so I don't use it for much more that a glorified clock/radio these days, e.g. it's quicker to walk to the lounge and change the heatmiser thermostat than wait for the app to launch ...

[spuorgelgoog]

A slightly non-obvious search term is smart mirror, eg

Presumably you don't have to use the 'mirror' part if you don't want to

Owain

[Tim Watts]

Cool - that's exactly what I'm thinking of - thanks. Bookmarked that.

[Tim Watts]

Cool - I love the mirror one. Cheers again!

[Tim Watts]

Yeah - this would need a custom app - possibly just one that displays nothing but HTML/CSS or SVG/CSS from a web server - and we do the information distillation and reformatting on the server where it's easier (compared to writing a super involved app)

[Terry Casey]

For a bit of nostalgia to go with your clock, try this:

(Requires flash)

Or, if that's not suffiently nostagic for you, you can always go mechanical:

You can even have it as a screensaver:

or: As a change from clocks, there's a lot more nostalgia here:

[tabbypurr]

or you can run the windows 2.0 clock.

NT

[Theo]

Pre-Android, but there was:

I bought a Joggler in the clearance sale. Their stock OS was pretty limited, but it's an x86 PC inside. Thanks to some hackers on the forum it runs Android OK-ish, but it has a habit of crashing and corrupting its USB stick (which holds the OS) and then refusing to boot. There's also some hardware limitations (small screen, no battery, no microphone, the stand is used as the CPU heatsink so it's unremovable)

The other thing about using something like this as a clock is that often the brightness doesn't go low enough. If it's night time, you might not want the room to be floodlit by the clock; even if it's on the lowest brightness setting displays can still be quite bright.

Plus expect to burn some power on running it 24/7 (although a tablet takes a lot less than the joggler with its netbook-class CPU).

Theo