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Menus du Crous smart home integration, free and open source

Menus du Crous integration for Gladys Assistant

Daily menus of the Crous university restaurants and cafeterias, all over France.

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The daily menu of the Crous university restaurants and cafeterias in Gladys, all over France: open today or not, today's lunch and dinner section by section, the vegetarian dishes the restaurant marks, a dashboard widget with today and tomorrow, a scene action that reads the menu out, and triggers for a dish you watch for ("frites!") or tomorrow's menu.

The menus come from the public feed of the Crous Mobile app: no account, no key. This integration is not affiliated with the Crous or the CNOUS.

What you get​

  • One device per restaurant or cafeteria you add, chosen in your regional Crous (26 Crous, from Paris to La Réunion), nearest first if you give your home position.
  • An "Open today" feature and text features with today's lunch, dinner and vegetarian dishes, updated a few minutes after midnight.
  • A dashboard widget with today's and tomorrow's menus.
  • A scene action "Get the Crous menu" and two scene triggers.

Requirements​

  • Gladys Assistant 5.3.0 or later.
  • Internet access from the Gladys host (the feed is on the internet).

Installation​

  1. In Gladys, open Integrations → Install from GitHub.
  2. Paste https://github.com/guim31/gladys-crous and install.
  3. Open the integration's Configuration tab.

Configuration​

Settings​

  • Regional Crous: tick the Crous of your university town (Toulouse Occitanie, Paris, Lyon…).
  • Home position (optional): latitude and longitude, for example 43.6045, 1.4440 (right-click on a map gives them). The restaurants are then offered nearest first.
  • Restaurants offered: all those of the Crous ticked, or only those within 2, 5, 10 or 25 km of the home position.
  • Watched words: words to look for in the dishes, separated by commas (frites, pizza, couscous: the dishes are in French), for the "Watched dish on the menu" trigger. Accents and case do not matter; a word matches the start of a word (frite finds "Frites", riz does not find "Chorizo").
  • Refresh: how often the feeds are read (every 3, 6 or 12 hours).
  • Language of names and messages: the language of the feature names, the states and the scene sentences. Feature names are fixed when a device is added.

Adding restaurants​

Save the configuration: the restaurants appear in the Discover tab. Add yours to Gladys, rename it as you like: the widget and the scene sentences use that name.

Checking​

The Status action of the Configuration tab lists, per Crous, the restaurants found and how many have a menu, the time of the last reading, the last day published and the last error.

Devices​

FeatureContent
Open today1 when a menu is published for today (lunch or dinner), 0 otherwise
Lunchtoday's lunch, section by section ("Plat: … · Pâtes / pizzas: …")
Dinnertoday's dinner, for the few restaurants that serve one
Vegetarian dishesthe dishes marked vegetarian by the restaurant ("Veg …", a "Plat végétarien" section…)

When there is no menu, the text says why: Closed (the Crous publishes a closure: holidays, public holiday), Menu not communicated (open, but no menu given, or only the prices), Not served (nothing published that day, or no dinner), Menu not published yet (after the last day published). Dish names stay as the restaurants write them, in French. Breakfasts are not shown.

Dashboard widget​

Crous menus: one row per restaurant and day (today, tomorrow), with the first dishes and a "Veggie" badge when a vegetarian dish is marked. Tap a row for the whole menu, lunch and dinner. Settings: the restaurants shown (empty: all of them, four with tomorrow, eight without), show tomorrow, show the dinner.

Scene triggers​

  • Watched dish on the menu: a lunch or dinner dish of a watched restaurant contains one of the watched words, today (fired between 7:00 and 10:00) or tomorrow (between 17:00 and 22:00). The optional Word filter compares exactly: write it in lower case, as in the configuration.
  • Tomorrow's menu published: a watched restaurant has a menu for tomorrow, checked between 17:00 and 22:00 (not for a closure).

Both pass on the restaurant name, the date and the menu; the first also the meal, the word and the dish found. Each event fires once per restaurant, day, meal and word, even if the integration restarts in the window.

Scene action​

Get the Crous menu answers with a sentence ready for a message or a speaker: "Resto U' Arsenal, today. Lunch: Plat: Steak de poulet…". Fields: the restaurant (empty: every watched restaurant), the day (empty: today) and the meal (empty: lunch, and dinner when served). Outputs: the sentence and has_menu (1 when a menu is published), for a "Continue only if" step.

Scene examples​

  • At 11:00 on weekdays: "Get the Crous menu" for lunch, then send the sentence to your phone.
  • "Watched dish on the menu", day today, word frites: a notification.
  • "Tomorrow's menu published": a message with the menu of tomorrow.

Data and refresh​

The feed is the one of the Crous Mobile app, http://webservices-v2.crous-mobile.fr/feed/<crous>/externe/, one file per regional Crous (from 8 KB to 3 MB for Paris). It is only served in plain HTTP (public data, nothing is sent). One request per Crous at each refresh, conditional: an unchanged file is not downloaded again. The menus are published from a few days to a few weeks ahead, depending on the restaurant. Today's states are recomputed every 10 minutes, so the new day shows within ten minutes of midnight (Paris time).

Troubleshooting​

  • My restaurant is not in the Discover tab: tick its Crous and save; with a home position, widen the distance.
  • "Not served" or "Menu not published yet": the restaurant has not published that day; many publish only a few days ahead, and some never do. The Status action shows the last day published.
  • A trigger does not fire: check the time windows, the word filter in lower case, and that the restaurant is added to Gladys.
  • Logs: docker logs of the integration container, LOG_LEVEL=debug for each reading.

Limitations​

  • The menus are only as complete as what each restaurant publishes: some publish nothing, some only their prices.
  • The vegetarian dishes are those the restaurant marks; an unmarked one is not found. No allergens: the feed does not give them.
  • The feed is not documented: the Crous may change it without notice.
  • Developed without being a student there: feedback welcome.

Credits​

Data: the Crous and the CNOUS, through the Crous Mobile feed. Integration by guim31, Apache 2.0.

Configuration settings​

These are the settings Menus du Crous asks for in its configuration screen in Gladys.

SettingTypeRequiredDescription
How it workssectionNoTick your regional Crous and save: its restaurants appear in the Discover tab. Add yours to Gladys. No account, no key.
Regional Crousmulti_selectNoThe Crous of your university town.
Home positionstringNoLatitude, longitude: restaurants nearest first in the Discover tab.
Restaurants offeredselectNoAround the home position, when it is set.
Watched wordsstringNoComma-separated, for the "Watched dish on the menu" trigger.
RefreshselectNo
Language of names and messagesselectNoFeature names are fixed when a device is added.

How to install Menus du Crous in Gladys​

  1. In Gladys, open Integrations: Menus du Crous appears in the catalog, next to the native integrations, with a community badge.
  2. Click Install. Gladys pulls the Docker image (ghcr.io/guim31/gladys-crous:1.0.0), starts it in a sandbox isolated from the core, and generates the integration's interface (devices, discovery and configuration).
  3. Open the Configuration screen of the integration, fill in the settings, and save.
  4. You can also install it directly from its repository URL: https://github.com/guim31/gladys-crous.

Menus du Crous requires Gladys >=5.3.0. The catalog inside Gladys refreshes every hour, so a new version becomes available at most one hour after its release.

Not running Gladys yet? It is free and open source: follow the installation guide to get started.

About external integrations​

Menus du Crous is an external integration: a community integration packaged as a Docker container and published on GitHub, that Gladys installs in one click and runs in a sandbox isolated from its core. It is published and maintained by guim31, not by the Gladys core team.

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