Google offers many of its services up to a certain limit for free.
For example, it is also possible to access the Google Maps functionality. This is useful, for example, for cases such as those described in the article MagicMirror - Display Current Traffic Overview.
Here you can have a local traffic overview displayed on your own MagicMirror and thus tomorrow when brushing your teeth see how much is going on on the roads in the area around you.
But to access this service you need an API key. How you get this and what you have to do is described in the following article.
Hints for our lovely english readers: Basically, many of the articles on Nerdiy.de are translations from the original german articles. Therefore, it may happen here and there that some illustrations are not available in english and that some translations are weird/strange/full of mistakes or generally totaly wrong. So if you find some obvious (or also not obvious) mistakes don't hesitate to leave us a hint about that in the comment section.
Also please don't get confused, that instead of a "dot" often a "comma" is used as decimal separator. 🙂
Open the page of the Maps Platform
To start registering your own API key, you must first go to the Google Maps Platform website. You can find it at: https://cloud.google.com/maps-platform/.



Now you have to go to the following website: https://developers.google.com/maps/documentation/javascript/get-api-key







At this point you do not need to get scared. As promised, this service is free. You will not be charged any hidden costs. When entering the payment details, it's just about making sure you're not a robot/bot.







Have fun with the project
I hope everything worked as described. If not or you have any other questions or suggestions, please let me know in the comments. Also, ideas for new projects are always welcome. 🙂
P.S. Many of these projects - especially the hardware projects - cost a lot of time and money. Of course I do this because I enjoy it, but if you appreciate that I share this information with you, I would be happy about a small donation to the coffee box. 🙂