Slideshow's, not just for photos: Display Webcams, weather, earthquakes...

[wkrik]

There is a lot going on in the world, and some of it I need to know when I wake up in the morning before I go to work. So I am finding it useful to display graphical information from the internet on my TV for my viewing pleasure that cycles through a series of images every 10-15 seconds.  Using the below links, put all the images into a folder (local to the OSD or on a NAS) and point your OSD slideshow application at it:

I needed Local Traffic details for Southern California:
http://forums.neurostechnology.com/index.php?topic=9034.0

I need to know what the weather will be like from the "Weather Channel":
Today - http://image.weather.com/web/forecast/us_wxhi1_large_usen_600.jpg
Tonight- http://image.weather.com/web/forecast/us_wxlo1_large_usen_600.jpg
Tomorrow - http://image.weather.com/web/forecast/us_wxhi2_large_usen_600.jpg
West Coast Satellite - http://image.weather.com/images/sat/westsat_600x405.jpg

Living in California with power outages, knowing if we will be hit with an outage is important from "California ISO"
http://www.caiso.com/outlook/ems_large.gif

Living in an area where earthquakes happen almost daily and good to watch from the "USGS":
http://earthquake.usgs.gov/eqcenter/recenteqsus/Maps/US2/33.35.-119.-117.gif

Since I have friends all over the world, I use "EarthCam" to find webcams in near real time:
Venice, IT - http://turismo.regione.veneto.it/webcam/full.jpg
London's Trafalgar Square - http://www.bbc.co.uk/london/webcams/images/trafalgar_square.jpg
Pyramids of Egypt - http://www.pyramidcam.com/netcam.jpg
Huntington Beach, CA - http://www.hbcams.com/hbpsouth.jpg
Disney California Adventure, Anaheim, CA - http://webcam.hojoanaheim.com/oneshotimage.jpg
Golden Gate Bridge, S.F., CA - http://static.cbslocal.com/cbs/kpix/webcams/ggb_nu.jpg
San Francisco City Harbor, CA - http://hd-sf.com/images/livedata/480-live.jpg

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So how to do it. I use my linux box with "wget" and ImageMagick to get the images just right. Then put them all together in a script and have cron execute the script every 5 or 10 minutes....

Here is an example with the Pyramids of Egypt:

1) Get the image:
$ wget -O /tmp/pyramids.jpg pyramids.jpg

2) Most images don't have a label or need to be resized to fit on the TV, so I use ImageMagick's "convert" command:
$ convert /tmp/pyramids.jpg -resize 526x400  -font Helvetica-Bold -fill white -box '#0008' -pointsize 13 -annotate +10+395 "Pyramids" /osd/pyramids.jpg

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There are 100's of webcams out there, but if there are any other useful images (besides webcams), post them, I'm looking to add more on my slideshow.

-wk

[bagster]

Very good work wkrik.

Do you think that putting something online that can do the job of imagemagick can be useful?

I mean, if neuros put a "service" called "Get image for your OSD" where you provide a link.
This way, users can have a homepage on neuros servers, where they can setup their files, and and OSD simply get the there?

[wkrik]

I doubt they would want to put a server up for that and clean up all the images for us. It would be nice! It is easy, just a little time consuming finding all the images. Now that I have a quick and dirty script to do all the work for me, it is just a matter of finding all the images.  If someone wants to donate a server.....

I would prefer them to add "wget" to the distribution, but the wget is about 100megs in size, so i doubt they will.

I would also like them to add a html reader, that would be fantastic!

[bagster]

100megs for wget???
I'm pretty sure it's not more than 1 megs once stripped.
I'll check tonight, I have it compiled for the OSD.
If you want, you can try to compile it by yourself.
It's the example there:
http://wiki.neurostechnology.com/index.php/OSD_Virtual_Machine_Development

[wkrik]

I was looking at the wrong file. Ubuntu has it at 256k. I'll take a crack at compiling it.

[greyback]

LPKG has wget ready. See Matthew Wild's site:
http://www.matthewwild.co.uk/projects/lpkg
-G

[wkrik]

For those interested....  Here is a script that will collect currently 29 webcams from around the world, clean up the images and copy them to a webpage or a directory that your OSD can see. You can easily add your own. Version 2 will use a more simple config file instead of adding function definitions for each webcam. Have fun!

http://www.ugu.com/software/webcams/webcams.sh

My webserver died on me... it will be back on here as soon as I get it back up. Or I can email it to you if you want it.