Is an account required to view public dashboards?

[millercommamatt]

Is an account required to view public dashboards? I used to be able to share the link to my public dashboards with friends who didn't need Adafruit accounts to see the dashboards. I had someone ask me today if they needed an account and I was able to confirm what they were seeing by viewing my public dashboard in incognito mode where I was asked to create an account. Has there been a change to the service in the past few months and now requires account to view public dashboards? If so, it's rather BANNED.

[lorennorman]

Hey millercommamatt! Taking a look...

In incognito mode, not logged in, I can see your public profile page:
https://io.adafruit.com/millercommamatt/public

...which currently lists 2 public dashboards. When I view those dashboards, I see the dashboard widgets but they contain no data. I also see a blue message mentioning the need to "create an account". Is that what you are seeing?

I believe that the widgets are empty because the feeds backing them are set to "private" visibility. Visit them in your logged-in browser tab to check and update the visibility to "public", then refresh the incognito window. You should see data populated in your widgets now.

Let me know if that's not correct or you still have questions.

As for the account registration message, it says "To see streaming data...", which simply means the dashboards won't dynamically update without an account. An anonymous user should still see the widgets populated with data as it stands when they load the page.

Does that make sense?

[millercommamatt]

Setting the feeds that the dashboard uses to public resolved the issue.

I run this particular dashboard only in the northern hemisphere cool season. In prior winters I was able to just set the dashboard to public and keep the feeds set to private. I wonder what changed when to require that the feeds also be public.

[lorennorman]

Hey millercommamatt,

Glad that fixed your dashboards!

I looked through the code history and asked around, I can't confirm that it ever worked another way. It's possible that it automatically set your feeds public for you in the past, and some part of that got disconnected such that it seems like extra steps now. We'll be taking a look through all that in the near future.

Hope you have a great "northern hemisphere cool season"!