delMar43 / TeleFrame

TeleFrame - a digital picture frame for telegram

TeleFrame is an open source digital image frame that displays images and videos, which were send to an Telegram Bot.

!!! IMPORTANT !!!

Before updating to 2.0.0, please read the release notes of release 2.0.0

Table Of Contents

• Table Of Contents
• Installation
  • Automatic Installation (Raspberry Pi only!)
  • Manual Installation
• Configuration
• Whitelist Chats
• Voice Replies using TeleFrame
• Touchscreen support
• Updating
• Bot only mode (no GUI)
• Building a TeleFrame

Installation

Automatic Installation (Raspberry Pi only!)

Electron, the app wrapper around Teleframe, only supports the Raspberry Pi 2/3/4. The Raspberry Pi 0/1 is currently not supported.

Note that you will need to install the lastest full version of Raspbian, don't use the Lite version.

Execute the following command on your Raspberry Pi to install TeleFrame:

bash -c "$(curl -sL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/LukeSkywalker92/TeleFrame/master/tools/install_raspberry.sh)"

Manual Installation

1. Download and install the latest Node.js version.
2. If you like to use the voice reply feature you need to install sox
3. Install Electron globally with npm install -g electron.
4. Clone the repository and check out the master branch: git clone https://github.com/LukeSkywalker92/TeleFrame.git
5. Enter the repository: cd TeleFrame/
6. Install and run the app with: npm install && npm start

Also note that:

• npm start does not work via SSH. But you can use DISPLAY=:0 nohup npm start & instead.
  This starts the TeleFrame on the remote display.
• To access toolbar menu when in fullscreen mode, hit ALT key.
• To toggle the (web) Developer Tools from fullscreen mode, use CTRL-SHIFT-I or ALT and select View.

Configuration

1. Copy TeleFrame/config/config.js.example to TeleFrame/config/config.js.
   Note: If you used the installer script. This step is already done for you.

2. Modify your required settings.

The following properties can be configured:

Option	Description
botToken	The token of the Telegram Bot, which will recieve the images. How to create a bot and get the token is explained here.
whitelistChats	Use this to only allow certain users to send photos to your TeleFrame. See hints below.
playSoundOnRecieve	Play a sound on recieving a message, set false to turn off.
showVideos	When set to true, videos that are send to the bot are also shown.
playVideoAudio	If recieved videos should be played with sound or not.
imageFolder	The folder where the images are stored.
fullscreen	When set to true, TeleFrame will run in fullscreen mode.
fadeTime	The fading time between two images.
interval	The time that an image is shown.
imageCount	Defines how many different images are shown in the slideshow.
newPhotoMessage	Message that is shown when the bot recieved a new image.
newVideoMessage	Message that is shown when the bot recieved a new video.
showSender	When set to true, TeleFrame will show the name of the sender when the image is shown.
showCaption	When set to true, TeleFrame will show the caption of the image when the image is shown.
fullscreen	When set to true, TeleFrame will run in fullscreen mode.
toggleMonitor	When set to true, TeleFrame will switch the monitor off and on at the defined hours.
turnOnHour	Defines when the monitor shuld be turned on.
turnOffHour	Defines when the monitor shuld be turned off.
keys	Defines an object with 4 strings specifying the keyboard shortcuts for play, next, previous and pause. Set to null for no controls
voiceReply	Defines an object with the config for sending voicemessages with TeleFrame, see info bellow

Whitelist Chats

When you start your TeleFrame and send a "Hi" to the bot it will send you back the current chat id. Paste this id or several of them into the whitelistChats config option to only allow only pictures from these ids (eg [1234567, 89101010]). Leave empty ([]) for no whitelist.

Voice Replies using TeleFrame

A very simple way to respond to the images is by using TeleFrame`s voice reply feature. The feature is intended to work like this: Who ever comes by the frame presses a button, speaks their message into the frame, when there is 2 seconds of silence or the maximum time is reached the recording will stop and the telegram bot will send it to the chat where the current image came from.

Option	Description
key	The keyboardkey to start the voice recording
maxRecordTime	How long the recorder will record if there is no silence detected (in milliseconds)
recordingMessageTitle	The title of the recording dialog displayed on the frame during record
recordingPreMessage	The message of the recording dialog displayed on the frame during record before chat name
recordingPostMessage	The message of the recording dialog displayed on the frame during record after char name
recordingDone	The message of the recording dialog displayed on the frame when recording has finished
recordingError	The error message of the recording dialog displayed when recording has failed

Touchscreen support

• Navigate through the images by touching at the left or right side of your touchscreen.
• Pause and resume the slideshow by touching in the middle of your touchscreen.
• Record a voice message and reply to the shown image by making a long touch in the middle of your touchscreen. The recording starts when you take your finger off.

Updating

If you want to update your TeleFrame to the latest version, use your terminal to go to your TeleFrame folder and type the following command:

git pull && npm install

If you changed nothing more than the config, this should work without any problems. Type git status to see your changes, if there are any, you can reset them with git reset --hard. After that, git pull should be possible.

Bot only mode (no GUI)

To run only the bot (without GUI), that saves the recieved images and videos into the folder specified in the config you need to run

npm run botonly

in the TeleFrame folder.

Building a TeleFrame

A detailed instruction on how to build your own TeleFrame will follow soon.