Wife and I are currently working to get my parents out of the house they can't afford any longer and into an apartment. One thing I wanted to do was give them some guidance on day to day activities.

I thought a digital calendar would be a good start. This is when I came across Dakboard.

I was going to just buy their $99 CPU setup but opted to just get a kit myself and save $30+

It's basically a Raspberry Pi running the Dakboard site and linked to a Google Calendar.

To start here is the Canakit Raspberry Pi kit.



Kit includes the motherboard, case, power supply, microSD card with preloaded OS, heatsink and a USB microSD adapter if you need to hook the card to a PC for whatever reason.

Looking forward to updates.

Cool.

I'm in.

Tagged.

The case.



The lid has a bit of a gap I'm guessing for airflow



A look inside the case. Nicely labeled.



The top comes off easy but the bottom is a little trickier and you have to be careful so you don't break the tabs. I didn't get a shot of the bottom but you'll see it in the next post.

Here the Pi has been inserted into the bottom section. As the READ ME FIRST sheet notes the board goes underneath those tabs at left.

They also tell you to NOT install the microSD or the heat sinks at this time.



Here the heat sinks have been installed. They have a sticky tape compound on the bottom. I used tweezers to install.

I can see why you wouldn't want to put these on before installing the middle section of the case you can now see installed. If you happen to offset the sinks to much the mid section would not go on correctly.



Here it is all back together and the microSD card installed.

In this shot I had fired up the unit and started the OS install.

This is on a display I had laying around but would really like to go at least 24" so they can really see it.

This display may have to do for now. I'm going HDMI out from Pi to VGA.

No room anywhere so doing this on the kitchen counter

Mas, Por Favor.

So while I was waiting on the Pi to arrive I setup a couple of items.

You'll want to go to DAKboard's website and setup an account. I am just doing the FREE account. It limits you to things of course like how often pictures change, how often the calendar gets update and so on.

I also setup a gmail account for them to give them a nice fresh address. Their AOL can go off and DIE! We want to disconnect them from any possible hacks/scams they may have been connected with

Once you're in DAKboard you can start setting things up. You can point to a photo site for where you want photos to go. You can select a calendar site, I went with Google Calendar. You'll also have your private DAKboard URL to use when setting up the Pi to boot right into your digital calendar.

The idea is to fire this puppy up and have it just sit on their counter in the kitchen. They will have no control over anything.

The calendar will be updated by me when they get new appointments. They will need to inform me when they get one and I will go into Google Calendar and update at that time.

I'll update more in a bit.

Very Interesting..

Once You have this up and running if you could post a list of where you got the parts from. I think this fits the need for me I wife and I and our hectic schedules with our children

No prob will do.

I really should be done with this thread already but with everything going on it's a bit crazy.

Stay tuned.

You do know that the really cool people don't use Gmail anymore.

I can always change it.

And they're not really cool

I’m definitely in for updates. Thanks for sharing!

DAKboard website

Through them you can get their "CPU" for $99 which is essentially what I am putting together from this kit off of Amazon. The Canakit comes w/ pre-installed OS so that saves you a bit since DAKboard wants like $25 or so for that on top of the CPU.

You can get the entire setup from DAKboard as well for $349.95

Once you get the kit together and powered up you just follow the instructions. I used both the booklet the kit came with and the online info in their DIY Wall Display page.

You pretty much just end up in the OS and setup WiFi and then you edit a couple of text files that do a couple things.

- Boots the system into the DAKboard calendar
- Turns off the mouse pointer after a few seconds so it's not lingering on the screen

I also went in and turned off screensaver.

Here it is during setup, not full screen at this point.



You can also setup portrait if you want.

I'll add some screenshots of the setup screen from DAKboard and the Pi desktop shortly.

Here is the SCREEN for the FREE account. If you pay for upgraded account you can use the CUSTOM one below. Anything can be selected but if on FREE account it will then popup a box that you'd need to upgrade. They could have greyed that crap out



Here is where you can setup how the calendar works



This part of the site lets you select where you want the background pics to come from.



This is where you get your private URL that you put into one of the text files on the Pi.



Here I put in a hockey game for today. Using the FREE account it takes items an hour to show up on your calendar. This is fullscreen mode. You can see the OPTIONS button I was hovering over to get back to the site to manage your calendar. I also added a NEWS feed as well. I didn't show all the options from the DAKboard site just some key ones.



This is how I have it at this point. Once we get them moved to their new place I'll set this up and mount the Pi to the back and tuck everything behind the display. There will be no mouse/KB for them. I will bring mouse/KB over when needed.

I would like to upgrade the monitor to something larger like a 24". This is just a spare I had and will use for now.



I'll post a pic of the setup when moved.

FYI - there are other DAKboard style alternatives out there.

Links?

Link

MagicMirror is open source

Much thanks!

Yes, I stumbled across Magic Mirror when I first started checking out DAKboard based on your original post - looks quite interesting - I have more Raspberry Pi boards of different vintages and capabilities collecting dust here that I will probably try dedicating one of them to that purpose, thanks OP...