ComfyUI-UCLADaily

By Jeffrey A. Brick · March 2026

A self-contained custom node pack for ComfyUI that aggregates daily news, events, and press releases from across the UCLA campus into lobby-ready TV displays.

Built for the lobby TV at 6401 Wilshire Blvd (UCLA Housing, Miracle Mile). Outputs a looping 1920x1080 MP4 for OBS → YouTube streaming.

Inspired by the Data Media Machine project. Built following the principles of the ComfyUI Custom Node Survival Guide.

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What It Does

Fetches live data from 10 UCLA sources, renders two types of cards, and stitches them into a single MP4:

• Lobby Summary Cards — one per source, 4 events each, dark theme teletext style
• Deep Dive Cards — one per event with venue address, enriched description, QR code, procedural geometric art, factual institutional context, and dynamic font sizing

Nodes

| Node | Description | |------|-------------| | UCLADailyDataInit | Initializes the UCLA_DATA pipeline structure | | UCLAMedFetch | Health & Behavior news via Newsroom RSS | | UCLAFilmArchiveFetch | Film & TV content filtered from Newsroom RSS | | UCLAFowlerFetch | Fowler Museum events via HTML scrape | | UCLAArtsFetch | Arts & Culture news via Newsroom RSS | | UCLANewsroomFetch | Any of 11 UCLA Newsroom RSS categories | | UCLACSFetch | UCLA Computer Science events | | UCLAHammerFetch | Hammer Museum events via HTML scrape | | UCLASEISFetch | School of Education events | | UCLAEventbriteFetch | UCLA Eventbrite events | | UCLAHousingInfo | Housing info for Wilshire Apartments | | UCLANarrator | LLM-ready narration formatter | | UCLALobbyCard | Renders 1920x1080 lobby summary cards | | UCLADeepDiveCard | Renders 1920x1080 deep dive detail cards | | UCLADeepDiveBatch | Batch renders all deep dives as a tensor | | UCLASlideshowExport | Stitches cards into MP4 with fade transitions | | UCLADailyPulse | Compiles all data into a formatted report |

Pipeline

DataInit → Fetchers (chain any combination) → LobbyCard / DeepDiveCard → SlideshowExport

All fetchers accept and return UCLA_DATA, so they can be chained in any order.

Standalone MP4 Generator

For OBS workflows, skip the ComfyUI GUI entirely:

cd ComfyUI/custom_nodes/ComfyUI-UCLADaily
python generate_obs.py

Outputs ComfyUI/UCLADAILYOUTPUT/UCLADaily_OBS.mp4 — 12 seconds per card, crossfade transitions, ~10 minutes total. Point OBS Media Source at it with loop enabled.

Deep Dive Card Features

• Dynamic font sizing — description text scales from 72pt down to 38pt, picks the largest size that fits
• Venue address database — 20+ UCLA venues mapped to real street addresses
• Description enrichment — fetches og:description from event detail pages
• Procedural geometric art — category-aware patterns (film strips, constellations, ripples, hexagons, etc.)
• QR codes — scannable link to event detail page
• Factual context — university-level institutional info, not marketing fluff

Data Sources

All public, no API keys needed:

• UCLA Newsroom RSS (11 category feeds)
• Hammer Museum (HTML scrape)
• Fowler Museum (HTML scrape)
• UCLA CS Events (HTML scrape)
• UCLA SEIS Events (HTML scrape)
• Eventbrite UCLA (JSON API)
• UCLA Housing (built-in data)

Installation

cd ComfyUI/custom_nodes
git clone https://github.com/jbrick2070/ComfyUI-UCLADaily.git
pip install qrcode pillow requests

Restart ComfyUI. Nodes appear under the UCLA Daily category.

Testing

cd ComfyUI-UCLADaily
python test_fetch.py

Runs a 16-step integration test: data init, all fetchers, lobby cards, deep dive cards, batch rendering.

Survival Guide Compliance

Every node follows the ComfyUI Custom Node Survival Guide:

• Custom type UCLA_DATA prevents accidental cross-wiring
• IS_CHANGED returns time.time() — forces fresh data every queue run
• Only stdlib at module scope — heavy imports deferred inside functions
• NODE_CLASS_MAPPINGS keys are permanent — treated as public API
• Shared http_utils with requests→urllib fallback for zero-dependency operation
• Graceful error handling — fetch failures log to errors[] without crashing
• Unicode cleanup — fixes mojibake from RSS feeds (curly quotes, em dashes, etc.)

License

MIT