A bit of a strange one. I’m adding another tablet to our newly refurbed kitchen. It’ll have all of the usual tiles on it for CCTV, lights etc, but as it’s in the Kitchen, I’d like to put a tile on there that links to a recipes page for when we’re cooking. WAF is high for this, as trying to follow a recipe from a book and getting it covered in food, or using a phone and the display continually sleeping is a pain and Fully prevents that. I don’t want to use the internet, as these recipes (at least some of them will be ones that we’ve copied and typed out into a file, so I’d store them locally on the network or directly on that one device.
I wondered if I could set something up so that the tile opens another page and on that I have a list of links or tiles to either locally stored pdfs with the individual recipes or maybe I could save the recipes as webpages and have a url link to them. However it works I don’t want to exit out of SharpTools - I’d like to navigate it using SharpTools.
Any ideas or pointers would be appreciated. Tablets are Fire HD10 running Fully. TIA
So it looks like I might be able to do this by popping a microSD card in the Fire, putting some folder structure on that and then creating urls to open the files:
Looking through the available settings (and the notes about files from their website), I would have thought you could use Advanced Web Settings → Localhost File Access to accomplish your goal, but it doesn’t seem to work with PDFs.
When I enable that setting and download a different type of resource (like a jpeg image), I can then create a Hyperlink in SharpTools and link it in the format:
https://localhost/sdcard/Download/myfile.jpeg
But when I try to use a PDF file, it shows a 500 error when I try to load the PDF. I’m wondering if that might be a bug though? Have you tried reaching out to Fully Kiosk support?
Sure enough, right after I posted I tried a few more combinations of settings (that I could have sworn I already tried) and got it working:
Advanced Web Settings → Localhost File Access
https://localhost/sdcard/Download/myfile.pdf
Web Content Settings → View Remote PDF Files = Use PDF.js
I was originally tweaking the View Local PDF Files, but it’s the Remote setting that affects the special ‘Localhost File Access’ from Advanced Web Settings above.
With the PDF.js option, it even works if use have a Hyperlink pointing to the local PDF (in the format noted above) and use the Open in Modal setting on the Hyperlink Tile.
I didn’t bother with Fully support as I thought someone on here may have tried something similar and have an idea.
I’d already tried the localhost file access but had also tried the PDF.js on the local setting not remote. I got tied up with another issue yesterday so didn’t get any further but I should have time to set up the new Fire and adjust those options today.
As always thank you for the great support you guys provide whenever I’ve an issue or query
On mine I’m trying to open a pdf on the device directly - not the SD card. It doesn’t’ seem to work. I get a grey screen with file "not found /Documents/Test.pdf
I can’t find any info on the internet as to what the file path should be for the Documents folder.
Edit: Finally found it by checking properties on one of the file explorer apps. To access my file (test.PDF) in the documents folder I needed:
Thanks for the update! Glad to hear you got it figured out!
For devices that don’t have a separate File Manager app installed, you can also use either the Universal Launcher > Select Items or Screensaver > Screensaver Playlist from Fully’s settings to let you pick an item and then see the resulting file path.
/sdcard/ is an alias (symlink) for the internal storage on most devices and is easier to type out than /storage/emulated/0/
From what I recall, the ‘sdcard’ naming is a holdover from the very early days of Android devices and remains for backwards compatibility. In normal day-to-day usage, a normal user wouldn’t see these paths.
I would install paprika on the tablet, and your smart phones. They will sync with the paprika cloud service, but all recipes will be local. If the tablet is android or iOS, it will support direct links so you can launch the app from a shortcut URL you can put in your dashboards as a url tile. Paprika has a recipe clipper, shopping list feature, and an amazing print format that enables me to print 2 column recipes that fit on one page, with a nice photo of the dish. In this way, I can use the tablet, or I can print a 1 page document that is even more handy.
Thanks Armand. I’ve currently set it up using a text variable per tile and can have that tile open the local pdf file via it’s url in a modal. It works well and as I’ve set up a template to do the recipes they’ll all be in the same format and font size etc so they’re nice and clear. There is of course a lump of time needed to retype recipes from books, scribbled notes and magazine clippings so I will have a look at Paprika.
