Dashboard

A clean, self-contained web dashboard designed for a vertically-mounted monitor. Zero dependencies, zero build step — just a single HTML file with embedded CSS and vanilla JS.

I tried Dakboard, and MagicMirror, and while both had great options, and a lot of extensibility, neither was able to do exactly what I wanted. Dakboard might have with the paid plan, but I didn't feel like paying just to have such a simple dashboard that didn't need any of the advanced integrations that make Dakboard and MagicMirror so appreciated by the people who do use the advanced features.

A simple display of date and time, weather with a 3-day forecast, and a calendar with no personal information, is all I wanted.

Features

• Clock — large, updates every second, 12 or 24-hour format
• Date — day of week and full date on a single line
• Weather — current conditions with icon, temperature, and "feels like" plus a 3-day forecast (via PirateWeather)
• Calendar — current month grid with today highlighted
• Background images — cycles through images in backgrounds/ with smooth crossfade transitions
• Auto-scaling — all elements scale proportionally to fit any browser size, from phones to large monitors

Requirements

• A web server (nginx, Apache, or python3 -m http.server for testing)

• A PirateWeather API key (free)

• Linux/Raspberry Pi only: install fonts-noto-color-emoji for weather emoji to render:

  sudo apt install fonts-noto-color-emoji

Setup

1. Copy the example config and fill in your values:

   cp config.js.default config.js

2. Edit config.js:

   • Get a free API key from PirateWeather
   • Set your latitude and longitude
   • Adjust units, time format, etc.

3. Create a backgrounds/ folder and add your background images (any resolution — they will be scaled to cover the screen):

   mkdir backgrounds
   cp /path/to/your/images/*.jpg backgrounds/
   ./update-backgrounds.sh

   This generates backgrounds.json, which tells the dashboard which images are available. Re-run ./update-backgrounds.sh whenever you add or remove images. The manifest is also re-read automatically on each cycle interval.

   Background priority by filename prefix:

   1. Date-specific (MMDD prefix, e.g. 0214-valentines.jpg) — shown exclusively on that date
   2. Month + Season combined — month-specific (MM prefix + non-digit, e.g. 02-snow.jpg) and season-specific (spring-, summer-, autumn-, winter- prefix, e.g. winter-frost.jpg) are pooled together and cycle as one set. Season detection uses astronomical dates and latitude from config for hemisphere.
   3. General (no prefix, e.g. bokeh1.jpg) — used when no month or season match exists

4. Serve with any web server:

   python3 -m http.server 8080

   Then open http://localhost:8080 in a browser.

Raspberry Pi Kiosk Setup

To run the dashboard on a Raspberry Pi in full-screen kiosk mode:

1. Clone the repo on the Pi and set up your config:

   git clone https://github.com/tksunw/SimpleDashboard.git
   cd SimpleDashboard
   cp config.js.default config.js
   # edit config.js with your API key, coordinates, etc.
   # add your background images to backgrounds/
   ./update-backgrounds.sh

2. Run the setup script:

   ./setup-pi.sh

   This installs nginx, emoji fonts, and unclutter (if not already installed), deploys the dashboard to /var/www/html, configures Chromium to launch in kiosk mode on boot, disables screen blanking, and hides the mouse cursor.

3. Reboot — the dashboard starts automatically.

To exit kiosk mode: Alt+F4, or SSH in and run pkill chromium.

To update files later:

sudo cp config.js index.html /var/www/html/
sudo cp backgrounds/* /var/www/html/backgrounds/
sudo bash update-backgrounds.sh

Configuration

All settings are in config.js:

Setting	Description	Default
weatherApiKey	PirateWeather API key	—
weatherLat	Latitude	—
weatherLon	Longitude	—
weatherUnits	'us' (Fahrenheit) or 'si' (Celsius)	'us'
weatherRefreshMin	Minutes between weather updates	15
backgroundCycleMin	Minutes between background changes (0 to disable); also controls how often the manifest is re-read	5
timeFormat	12 or 24 hour clock	12

Files

File	Tracked	Purpose
index.html	Yes	Dashboard (HTML + CSS + JS)
config.js.default	Yes	Example config with placeholder values
config.js	No	Your actual config (gitignored)
backgrounds/	No	Your background images (gitignored)
backgrounds.json	No	Auto-generated manifest of background images (gitignored)
backgrounds.json.default	Yes	Example manifest format
update-backgrounds.sh	Yes	Regenerates backgrounds.json from backgrounds/
setup-pi.sh	Yes	Raspberry Pi kiosk setup script