Calling a solidity function without a wallet using ethers.getDefaultProvider

Question

I am trying to call a function from my solidity contract which shows how many nfts have been minted so far, I want the front end user to be able to see the number even if they don't have a wallet in their browser. I thought I could do this using ethers.getDefaultProvider but I just cannot seem to get it to work? With my code I don't get any errors, but neither do I get the number showing up? Can anyone help with where I am going wrong? Here are the relevant parts of my code

 const [totalMinted, setTotalMinted] = useState ("");


const checkNFTsMinted = async () => {
   try {
     const provider = ethers.getDefaultProvider("homestead");
     const connectedContract = new ethers.Contract
     (CONTRACT_ADDRESS, Token.abi, provider);
     //Gets total nfts minted from the smart contract
     let totalNFTsMinted = await
     connectedContract.getMintedAmount();
     //updates the state
     setTotalMinted(totalNFTsMinted.toNumber());
   }
   catch(error){console.log('how many NFTs still avail Error:', error)}
 }

    <div className="App">
    <h1>{totalMinted}</h1> </div>

and how the function looks in my solidity contract

function getMintedAmount() public view returns (uint256) {
        return _tokenIdCounter.current();
    }

I am new to programming so maybe I am missing something really obvious but I dont know what it is. Thanks

EDIT: When I use this code snippet instead it works to show the number minted

const checkNFTsMinted = async () => {
    try {
      const {ethereum} = window;
      const provider = new ethers.providers.Web3Provider (ethereum);
      const signer = provider.getSigner();
      const connectedContract = new ethers.Contract
      (tokenAddress, Token.abi, provider);
      //Gets total nfts minted from the smart contract
      let totalNFTsMinted = await
      connectedContract.getMintedAmount();
      //updates the state
      setTotalMinted(totalNFTsMinted.toNumber());
    }
    catch(error){console.log('how many NFTs still avail Error:', error)}
  }

  useEffect(() => {
     checkNFTsMinted()
  }, []) 

so I believe it is something front-end related that I am doing wrong as the number stops showing when I change that.

Answer 1

Ok so I have eventually figured it out! Was really simple, I had the wrong network, should have been "rinkeby" and not "homestead". Homestead is the mainnet and I am still in test mode. It's still a little laggy to show the numbers, but does the trick. Maybe this'll help someone in the future!