[Magi]

Greetings, 

As of yesterday I''ve started using NEMS and I don't know whether it would be possible to connect it to a screen used for monitoring, considering that it doesn't have a graphical interface for it to open a browser/other apps to show the state of the hosts.

Thank you!

[edembskey]

It does have a UI, which is accessible through a browser.

[Robbie Ferguson]

NEMS is a server. There would be no purpose in connecting it directly to a TV, and that'd be pretty boring to watch.

INSTEAD, what you want to do is boot up your NEMS server, and then access it through your browser. Then make it fullscreen if you want.

I'd suggest perhaps the NEMS Mobile interface would be good for this purpose. I've never made a straight-up "TV Screen" dashboard, though I'd be open to the idea and could just add it to the menu if it's something the community wants.

So to reiterate, connecting the NEMS server directly to a TV is pointless. What you're looking to do would be done through any other computer on the network, and you'd simply open your NEMS IP in your web browser (or https://nems.local if that works).

[Robbie Ferguson]

Hello.
Well, you got me thinking... it'd be kinda cool to have a NEMS server up on a TV in the server room. Plus, I kinda needed a break from the bug fixes and instead do something fun.

So I created NEMS TV Dashboard for you.

You'll see a new feature under "Reporting".

Also, you can optionally turn off passwordless access to NEMS TV Dashboard via NEMS SST. Just in case you want a bit more privacy on your network, but then you'd need a keyboard connected to the TV system.

   

See the documentation: https://docs.nemslinux.com/features/nems-tv-dashboard

Remember: NEMS is still just a server - you do not connect the NEMS server itself to the TV. Instead, you connect some other computer (maybe a Raspberry Pi Zero?) to the TV and open a web browser, and open NEMS TV Dashboard. F11 will make it fullscreen on most browsers.

Thanks for the fun idea! I hope you like it.

The dashboard I used is based on original early work by Morten Bekkelund & Jonas G. Drange, with a bunch of user contributions, and finally the efforts of fnordpojk. I then made some modifications to it to make it compatible with NEMS Linux, plus tweaked it a bit to my liking.

[JatBee]

Well I just upgraded to 1.4.1 from 1.3. I've been on all of the versions for a long time, but it kind of stalled out on 1.3 for a while. So far I'm totally digging what I see. I really kind of like the nems TV, I have a little Pi 7-inch monitor that it would work just great on. I've got it deployed there. 

There seems to be a very significant update lag however though, many minutes. Is this normal, I feel like I'm missing something really simple. It's long enough that when I see it all green, I don't trust it and still want to go check the main nems console. It does eventually get where it needs to be but it does seem to be pretty slow. 

I can see the update countdown in the corner and that seems to be working fine but the main console upgrade significantly sooner than the TV does.

Welcome any thoughts.

Jim

[Robbie Ferguson]

Hi Jim,
Glad you're liking NEMS 1.4.1 so far. It is about to be replaced with NEMS 1.5 so be ready to jump again! :P

NEMS TV Dashboard is not necessarily realtime - it depends on your notifications settings. For example, you might have a server offline, but your notification settings for that host are set to retry every 5 minutes with the first notification happening after 3 attempts. So in that example, NEMS TV Dashboard won't show the server as down for 15-20 minutes, as those are the notification settings you have in NEMS NConf.

You can adjust your notification settings in NEMS NConf to something more suitable. Check the settings on both your Host and Service.

Cheers,
Robbie

[JatBee]

Thanks. That makes perfect sense.