QUESTION

How does MoBro Work?

3 people are following

I'm about to buy a new TFT screen (probably about 3.5 inches).  Ideally it would be great if I could find a cheap one on Amazon that did NOT have touch screen and still worked well.  After the screen is in my case there is no need to touch the screen.

While I was gearing up to latch on to MoBro and use it to make a custom stats readout for the inside of my case I started thinking about how MoBro works.  After reading your blog/articles/videos on how to set it up I assume the whole process works depending on a WiFi network.

Is there no way to connect the Pi to a com/USB port to get the data from the MoBro app?  The reason I'm asking is because my WiFi network restarts from time to time and I always have issues with my WiFi network (due to having 100,000 smart devices in the house).  Even with two APs I still find myself constantly cursing the dang things.

I would like to see if I can make a more closed system.  One where the Raspberry Pi does indeed get the information over a non-networked method.  I was thinking of something like what is done in the following video (in method #1 - via USB/COM)…

I would love to know two things if at all possible…

  1. Does your software currently support such method?  If so is there some documentation on it?  If not, would you be willing to look into it?  I would love to beta test it.
  2. When looking for a 3.5 inch TFT (touch not required) screen, do you have any suggestions on Amazon?  Something you guys know works.

 

Thanks for bringing us such a great product!

Replies 1 - 6 (6)

Side note…  Trying to post a link like http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q-G1gW_MbCI to my topic it would keep adding a YouTube video preview (which looked nice).  However, when posting it would remove the video preview leaving me with no way to post the youtube link itself.  As a work around I have to paste something like http://www.qyoutube.com/watch?v=q-G1gW_MbCI first then manually change the qyoutube to youtube.  Seems like the forum has some auto preview maker for youtube link pastes but it never does post them.

Hi @Arvo Bowen III 

Regarding the MoBro architecture:

The windows application has a webserver running which is serving the selected theme as a website to the connected devices.
Our custom Raspberry image handles the network configuration of the Pi and also locates the windows application within that network once the Pi is connected.
After that the Pi essentially just starts a chromium instance in kiosk mode and opens that website which is served by the windows application.
That's also why you can easily switch between themes or even add new ones from within the Windows application without having to touch or update the Raspberry Pi at all.

So yes, the whole thing is currently dependant on a network connection. It doesn't have to be over wifi though.
You could also connect your Pi by using an ethernet cable. Our custom image automatically detects that and you won't have to set up a wifi connection.

Details over here: Raspberry Pi setup

Regarding the display:

Pretty much every display that either connects over HDMI or does come with a driver for standard Raspian should work fine.
I'm currently using a 5 inch display over HDMI as I find the 3.5 inch one to be too small for me to read all of the values from a distance.
Mine theoretically has touch as well but i just didn't install the driver for that to work.

Regarding a connection over USB:

You could check out the post over here from EnDer WiGGiN and my answer regarding the use of RNDIS:
https://www.mod-bros.com/en/forum/t/using-rndis-ethernet-to-connect-raspberry-pi-zero-to-computer-network~926

But as I already noted there, we haven't tried this yet. So I can't tell you for certain if it works.
It looks pretty promising to me though, so you could give it a try if you find some time to tinker around a bit.

Hey @Arvo Bowen III,

Thanks for letting me know about that youtube link posting problem, we'll fix that soon! :)  

@Arvo Bowen III we've just updated the text-editor for the forum and I've already fixed the youtube link in your topic. 
Youtube links (and vimeo) will now get properly embedded :)

Thanks for reporting and letting us know!

 

GhosTz

@Arvo Bowen III we've just updated the text-editor for the forum and I've already fixed the youtube link in your topic. 
Youtube links (and vimeo) will now get properly embedded :)

Thanks for reporting and letting us know!

Awesome news!

 

Testing 123…
(testing timestamp start as well)

GhosTz

@Arvo Bowen III we've just updated the text-editor for the forum and I've already fixed the youtube link in your topic. 
Youtube links (and vimeo) will now get properly embedded :)

Thanks for reporting and letting us know!

GhosTz, Looks like the video embedding is working great.  However, just so you know timestamp starts are not observed.  Ex: (https://youtu.be/q-G1gW_MbCI?t=30) which should start at 30 seconds.

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