After I, retired to Florida from Pennsylvania, my mother, born in 1934 moved into an assisted living facility still back in Pennsylvania. As her son from afar, I wanted to stay connected with her in a meaningful way. This led me to experiment with various video chat solutions to ensure regular communication and keep her entertained. Over the past five years, I’ve fine-tuned a system that started with Facebook Portal and later transitioned to Amazon Echo Show devices.
Through trial and error, I’ve perfected methods not only for staying in touch but also for enriching my mother’s daily life with engaging activities. One of which is a Live stream of Others' Live Streams from all over the world, for my Mom to watch on her Echo Show, that typically changes every 15 minutes.
The following Snapshot is a typical routine, one of dozens to fill 24 hours.
Note the actions play on a Fire TV Cube. This Cube is hard wired (HDMI) into a Zowiebox ENCODER.
The ENCODER sends the stream to my YouTube Live Stream... embedded below.
...and routines written for my Mom for her entertainment when the Echo Show is not doing anything else; open via
"play the YouTube live video YUHOHN from My Loved Ones Place"
The live stream is below
Yes the video name YUHOHN is stupid but I needed something as unique as possible because YouTube likes to present you all kinds of junk when doing a search. (from dad's callsign K3YUH + my callsign WA3OHN)
If you are still here, hang in there I am getting to the point.. To keep track of all this I keep a CALENDAR for each event:
Every event repeats daily EXCEPT for things like SpaceX launches or Key West Cruise Ship Port arrivals and departures. The following two routines will repeat weekly.... I DON'T WANT THAT!
Finally; To help others provide this to their loved ones confined to homes, etc... I purchased a domain name and built a web site to show everyone how to do it;
Many thanks to reddit user u/mickAMMO
First understand my routine's NAMING convention
This routine disables both arrival and departure routines ...and then itself.