Meural Newspapers

Fetches newspaper front pages each morning and uploads them to a Meural digital frame.

Getting Started

1. Install prerequisites

   • Node.js and npm
   • ImageMagick for PDF to image conversion

2. Run the setup script

   npm run setup

   This installs dependencies, compiles the TypeScript sources and creates a config.json file if one doesn't exist.

3. Configure credentials Update config.json with your Meural email, password, device alias and gallery name.

4. Fetch and upload today's newspapers

   npm start

How it Works

• newspapers.ts downloads PDF front pages from the Freedom Forum and converts them into images.
• Image transformation and aspect ratio enforcement are handled with ImageMagick.
• Authentication mirrors the official Meural login flow using Amazon Cognito (@aws-sdk/client-cognito-identity-provider).
• The meural.ts client manages gallery creation, image uploads and pushing content to your device.
• Concurrency is controlled with p-limit, and network requests are performed with axios.
• Logging output is centralized through logger.ts.

Automating with Cron

To keep your frame up to date automatically, schedule the script with cron.

1. Open your crontab editor:

   crontab -e

2. Add a job to run the script at your desired time. For example, to run every day at 6:00 AM:

   0 6 * * * cd /path/to/meural-newspapers && npm start >> /var/log/meural-newspapers.log 2>&1

   This navigates to the project directory and runs npm start, appending output to a log file.

   Another example, running at 7:30 AM on weekdays:

   30 7 * * 1-5 cd /path/to/meural-newspapers && npm start >> /var/log/meural-newspapers.log 2>&1

Enjoy seeing fresh headlines on your Meural frame every day!