Since my last post a few days ago, I’ve been actively working on a kitchen internet display, which comprises of a digital display and application shown on screen.

The bulk of the work has been on the application, since I am developing a simple webpage to display in fullscreen mode:

It’s extremely basic right now. For starters, I just wanted the calendar day visible, as well as the current day’s high and low temperatures.

Remember, this display will be either in a corner, or perched up on something, so it needs to be readable from a good distance. I am not that concerned with the design of the webpage – I just want clearly readable information that can be noticed at a glance.

For the display hardware itself, I had an old netbook lying around that wasn’t getting use. The screen is a tad smaller than the iPad, but large enough to see from a short distance in my small kitchen. The netbook also has a monitor port, so I can connect a much larger monitor to it (after I buy it, of course – I don’t have one lying around).

Why this is useful to me

The calendar date is useful to me because I’m often checking expiration dates on food products in the fridge. I never seem to remember the actual calendar date, and none of my kitchen devices display the date – just the time (microwave, oven, coffee pot, etc).

Rather than looking for my mobile device (“where did I leave it last??”), or retreating to another room to look at a computer for the date, I can just quickly glance over to my kitchen internet display.

If you ask me, the kitchen is currently the least web/technical/connected room in the house, yet the most potential lies in this room for a good internet information service.

Regarding the weather, it’s probably obvious why this is useful, at a glance, but I should make one thing clear: when I’m at home, I’m less likely to carry around my mobile device – instead I typically set it down somewhere, and it stays there for a while. (Why carry it around from room to room?)

So an internet display, as I am describing, is useful because we need information at a glance, while in the house, not from our pockets. Even though there are many useful weather apps that exist for mobile devices, they are completely useless unless I have my device on me at all times.

Technical application details

Regarding the actual webpage I created, I have started with simply the current date, time, and the day’s high and low temperatures.
The current date and time is done using JavaScript (it obtains the date and time programmed into the computer), and the weather is obtained from two weather feeds:

• NOAA XML
• Yahoo RSS

I check NOAA first, and if there is a problem or no response is returned, I then try Yahoo. I check for an update every hour (the high and low temperatures change frequently on any given day) by running an Ajax call in combination with JavaScript’s setTimeout() function.

The idea is to never have to manually refresh the internet display – it should refresh on it’s own to provide a seamless viewing experience.

Future plans

The date, time, and weather may seem pretty dull, eh? I agree.

I have future plans to add many other data streams to my kitchen internet display:

• Last Foursquare check-in for my wife and I. (I’ll always know where she is, at a glance.)
• Last Facebook status update for my wife and I.
• Sports scores.
• Upcoming calendar events from Google Calendar.

The possibilities are endless, really.