Ask HN: Best ways to use old iPad as dashboard

Posted by ultrastable on Wednesday June 02, 2021 @04:13AM
from the ask-hn dept.

I've wall-mounted an ancient Ipad & I I'd like to use it as a dashbord: world clock, calendar + appts, tasks (ideally from Things.app), etc - all the better if it's easily extensible. Any recommendations? It's too slow to use for Yam/AirDisplay & the like. Thanks!

( 11 comments | 8 points | on HN )

Re:Ask HN: Best ways to use old iPad as dashboard by smt88 on Wednesday June 02, 2021 @05:45AM (#27366747)

I tried to do this with a webpage, but Safari wasn't stable enough on an old iPad. It would crash every few hours.

I'd suggest a native app instead, whether you write it or find someone else's.

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Re:Ask HN: Best ways to use old iPad as dashboard by schwartzworld on Wednesday June 02, 2021 @11:33AM (#27369860)

You could probably do a full page refresh every so often which would fix your memory leak issues: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Location/re...

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Re:Ask HN: Best ways to use old iPad as dashboard by speedgoose on Wednesday June 02, 2021 @07:29AM (#27367407)

That's a bit strange. Maybe the webpage had a memory leak.

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Re:Ask HN: Best ways to use old iPad as dashboard by smt88 on Wednesday June 02, 2021 @10:20AM (#27368994)

I'm sure it did, but it's hard to debug because of the depth and complexity of the stack (webpage code, rendering engine, browser, various OS layers).

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Re:Ask HN: Best ways to use old iPad as dashboard by darekkay on Wednesday June 02, 2021 @08:54AM (#27368112)

I've created a dashboard project [0], which you can open in any (modern) browser. Unfortunately, it's currently missing some major widgets. It's open-source, so contributions are welcome :)

[0] https://dashboard.darekkay.com

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Re:Ask HN: Best ways to use old iPad as dashboard by albertyw on Thursday June 03, 2021 @12:50PM (#27384024)

I set up an old iPad Air to show https://www.codemancer.com/ for the last two years. It's got a clock, weather, and appointments and is readable from across the room. I've also run into crashes from Safari, which I resolved by automatically refreshing the page once an hour.

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Re:Ask HN: Best ways to use old iPad as dashboard by schwartzworld on Wednesday June 02, 2021 @05:12AM (#27366551)

I would think a web page would be the simplest. Spin up a node JS or whatever server on your home network and serve up whatever you want.

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Re:Ask HN: Best ways to use old iPad as dashboard by ultrastable on Wednesday June 02, 2021 @08:28AM (#27367873)

this is above my pay grade techinically speaking - don't suppose you know of a guide to this sort of thing?

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Re:Ask HN: Best ways to use old iPad as dashboard by cpach on Wednesday June 02, 2021 @10:06AM (#27368836)

Don’t know about any complete guide. But tinkering with HTML and CSS can get you a long way.

See e.g. https://www.zeitverschiebung.net/en/clock-widget for how to embed a clock widget on a web page.

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Re:Ask HN: Best ways to use old iPad as dashboard by schwartzworld on Wednesday June 02, 2021 @11:31AM (#27369845)

There's a lot of guides, and a lot of approaches to making a dynamic page like this. Do you have any programming experience? What languages?

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Re:Ask HN: Best ways to use old iPad as dashboard by runjake on Wednesday June 02, 2021 @04:16PM (#27373534)

I just set the iPad up in kiosk mode and refresh a webpage every x minutes.

I don't have Safari crashing issues like the other commenter.

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