MMM-MinecraftStatus

A MagicMirror² module to ping a remote Minecraft server and report how many players are currently on. If the server can't be reached, this displays an alert.

Example screen showing two instances of MMM-MinecraftStatus config entries, one for Willowlands, and a second for Aliens:

Each entry has two metrics that are periodically updated on a schedule you set in the config.js file. The number of players is retrieved from the server, and the latency is measured as the total round-trip to contact the Minecraft server from the MagicMirror² server.

If MMM-MinecraftStatus can't contact the Minecraft server, it sends an alert message to the alert module.

Installation

Run these commands at the root of your MagicMirror² install:

cd modules
git clone https://github.com/ralberth/MMM-MinecraftStatus
cd MMM-MinecraftStatus
npm install
cd ../..

This module needs the npm install to pick up it's dependencies, including the minecraft-ping module that does all the real networking in here.

Upgrade

If you already have a version of MMM-MinecraftStatus, run the following to pick up new code changes and install necessary dependencies:

cd MMM-MinecraftStatus
git pull
npm install
cd ..

Configuration

Edit your config/config.js file and add a new object to the modules array like any other module:

var config = {
    modules: [
        {
            module: 'MMM-MinecraftStatus',
            config: {
                banner: "Red Mountain",           // Banner to display
                hostname: "redmountain.ddns.net", // or IP address
                port: 12345,
                intervalSeconds: 15               // how often to ping the Minecraft server
            }
        }
    ]
}

Option	Default	Description
banner	'Minecraft Server'	Name of the server to display on the screen above the number of players and latency. This length should be rather short, as long values drag the width of the player count and latency wider to match. Pick something small enough to distinguish one server from another.
hostname	'localhost'	DNS hostname of the Minecraft server to monitor.
port	12345	TCP port the Minecraft server is listening on.
intervalSeconds	30	How often the MagicMirror server should try to ping the Minecraft Server, in seconds.
alertSoundWhenPingFails	null	Name of audio file under modules/MMM-MinecraftStatus/public/sounds to play when a ping fails to return valid results, such as if the server is offline, network problems, or host down. Null means don't play a sound.
alertSoundOnFirstPlayer	null	Name of audio file under modules/MMM-MinecraftStatus/public/sounds to play when the server has no players and the most recent ping returned a non-zero value for the number of players. Used for an idle server to tell you when it's being used. Null means don't play a sound.

Published Messages

Messages published within the browser page by each instance of MMM-MinecraftStatus that is active (isn't covered or had this.hide() called on it).

Minecraft Server Failure: SHOW_ALERT

MMM-MinecraftStatus publishes a SHOW_ALERT message intended for the built-in alert module. This is available to all modules that choose to implement this.receiveNotification() in their module.

The message is sent whenever a ping to the configured Minecraft server fails for any reason. The cadence is set by the config entry intervalSeconds above.

Attributes of the published object:

• type: always set to notification
• title: always set to the value in the module config entry banner above
• message: string description of the problem, taken from the minecraft-ping library mentioned above.

Styling and HTML

Sample of the generated HTML from a browser, so you can restyle anything you like:

<div class="minecraftStatus">
   <div class="title">Willowlands</div>
   <table>
      <tbody class="successSection">
         <tr>
            <td class="iconbox"><i class="fa fa-user fa-fw"></i></td>
            <td class="value">0</td>
            <td class="label">players</td>
         </tr>
         <tr>
            <td class="iconbox"><i class="fa fa-clock-o fa-fw"></i></td>
            <td class="value">9</td>
            <td class="label">ms latency</td>
         </tr>
      </tbody>
      <tbody class="errorSection">
         <tr>
            <td class="iconbox"><i class="fa fa-exclamation-triangle fa-fw"></i></td>
            <td class="errorLabel">Error</td>
         </tr>
         <tr>
            <td class="errorText" colspan="2">blah blah blah</td>
         </tr>
      </tbody>
   </table>
</div>

Translations

MMM-MinecraftStatus is available in the following languages:

• Chinese
• German
• English
• Spanish
• French
• Italian
• Simplified Japanese
• Russian
• Swedish

The original translations were done by me with Google Translate. If you are a native speaker and have a better translation, please post a pull request! I'd love to improve on what defaults I could find. Big thanks to el97 for the Swedish translation that wasn't done using Google Translate.

Known Bugs

1. The default timeout is way too long for this use case. The current minecraft-ping library doesn't have a way to change this, so probably need to swap to another library.
2. If the browser-based timer stops, there is no restart watcher and the display will remain as-is even though there are no current updates. This leads to false-positives when the display contains stale data.
3. Translations were done mechanically instead of via a native human speaker.
4. This does not work well with older Minecraft servers due to the nature of the different ping protocols defined by Minecraft.
5. There is no backoff/retry logic with the Minecraft server: if it fails, it reports failure and waits the number of intervalSeconds before trying again. This can paint an unduly bad picture for at most intervalSeconds seconds before it tries again, even if the server recovered quickly.

Attributions

Software

This module is a wrapper around the Node.js module node-minecraft-ping available at www.npmjs.com/package/minecraft-ping. It was written by GitHub user deathcap and available in GitHub at deathcap/node-minecraft-ping.

This is a work by another person covered by the MIT license available here.

Sounds

The notification sounds in this module were acquired from Freesound.org and are covered under the Creative Commons attribution license v3.0. See creativecommons.org/licenses for details on this and what this means for you. Below are the attributions for each sound file under the MMM-MinecraftStatus/public/sounds/ folder with any special notes.

These sounds are works by other people, and do not imply or include any warranties.

Filename	Author	Changes Made for MinecraftStatus
alarm-1.mp3	jobro	Converted from ogg to mp3 format
alert-sound.mp3	philitup321	Converted from ogg to mp3 format
complete-chime.mp3	FoolBoyMedia
doorbell-notification.mp3	TheBuilder15	Converted from wav to mp3 format
level-up.mp3	rhodesmas	Converted from wav to mp3 format
notification-2.mp3	ebcrosby	Converted from wav to mp3 format
notification-bumptious.mp3	mickleness	Converted from wav to mp3 format
notification-chime.mp3	hykenfreak	Converted from wav to mp3 format
piano-notification-4.mp3	FoolBoyMedia
quito-mariscal-sucre-old.mp3	milton.	Converted from wav to mp3 format
signal-ring-1.mp3	Vendarro	Converted from wav to mp3 format
ui-confirmation-alert-b4.mp3	InspectorJ	Converted from wav to mp3 format

TO DO

Other ideas and things I'd like to build in eventually. Feel free to comment and suggest others.

• Send an email or TXT when goes from 0 to non-zero
• Add additional notification messages so other browser modules can react
• Accept other published messages so other modules can control this module
• Automate trying different pingTypes, then keep the one that works
• Config items to control styling
• MUCH faster timeouts! (mc socket in current library can't do this, switch libs?
• Show logged-in users