Did you know that websites and content can be embedded in your SharpTools dashboards using the new Custom Tile feature? You can embed sites by either using the native ‘Custom URL’ option or the ‘Refreshable URL Embed’ custom tile linked below.
This is a community maintained wiki, so be sure to edit the post and add your favorite sites or content to the list!
Hi, this is great functionality added! I added a custom tile with the windy site and it looks great, but it does not refresh. I tried adding the same URL to a media tile, which has refresh rates - but that did not work. Is there a way to get the windy site to work on a tile that will refresh?
You could use a Custom Tile to add the periodic refreshing capability (though I’m surprised the Windy site doesn’t automatically refresh its own content periodically).
Here’s a Refreshable URL Embed custom tile I just put together:
Import the tile using the link above, then scroll down and press Save. Then go to your Dashboard → Edit → Add Tile → Other → Custom Tile → Refreshable URL Embed. Once you’ve added the tile, edit it and configure the URL and optionally a refresh interval (in minutes).
Thanks for this Josh. I did some experimenting, and when I left the page up on my windows PC since this morning, it displayed the time updated on my windy tile. It looks like it may have to do with the Fully Browser on the fire tablet, as it has been since this morning when I refreshed there, and it still shows 7AM-9AM. I’ll look at some setting there.
With a bit of developer skills, you might be able to use CSS within a custom HTML tile. In particular, I’m thinking you might be able to use a scale transform on an embedded iframe.
I’ve been using this custom tile, slightly modified, for a while now. But it’s recently stopped refreshing. I’m not exactly sure when it stopped, but it’s been within the last few weeks. I haven’t changed anything with it, I just happened to notice the content wasn’t refreshed. To rule out a device issue, I’ve observed it failing to refresh on both a “kiosk” tablet running Fully and on an iPhone. Any updates recently that may have broken this capability? Thanks!
Are you referring to the Refreshable URL Custom tile?
No, nothing has changed on the platform that should impact that. Have you tested other URLs or it’s just a particular URL that is experiencing the refresh issues? And what modifications were made? You might also see if you can reproduce it from a browser on a computer as you could check the browse logs for errors.
Yes, sorry for not clarifying that. I basically hard coded the URL (actually there are two of them that alternate every 5 seconds), commented out a couple lines that check if the URL variable is populated to initiate the refresh, and added some other styling. It’s 2 radar loops and it used to fetch the new .gif loop every 7 minutes. Now the images just become stale.
I just performed a couple of simple tests using the unaltered custom tile. Using the same URL, it refreshed no problem. So it must have something to do with the modifications I made. It’s just so odd that it’s been working with no problems for several months. It must have been luck that it even worked to begin with. Now I’m starting to wonder if Fully has something to do with it.
I’ll try it from a browser and see if it’s any different. When you say browser logs, are you referring to the developer console logs?
If it’s a GIF, I suspect it’s more likely that the image source is caching the image for a period of time.
Yes, by browser logs I was referring to the browsers developer console. Though in your case checking the network tab and seeing what cache headers are coming across for the GIFs might be more helpful if you’re familiar with that kind of thing.
