[benkc]

ADDING IMAGES

A Tutorial

QUESTION</FONT>: "Can someone explain to me how I can add images (eg. weather radar map, webcam, image file, etc) to my Location?"
ANSWER: Yes, here is a tutorial with actual screenshots from an AximX50v PPC running WM2003SE; other devices/Operating Systems/ Platforms may differ a bit.

NOTE: Images are defined in the layout scripts as ;IMAGE objects and include #RADAR-n# as one type of image.

This Tutorial will show how to add/configure an IMAGE (for Image View in WeatherConsole) and put an icon of this image onto the TodayView display:

 1.png (84.7K)
Number of downloads: 26........................  1a.png (106.09K)
Number of downloads: 9
image 1: WeatherConsole (WC) Image View...................image 2: TodayView ImageIcon

RECIPE:
OK. You have already configured and enabled a location (for this example: Tucson, AZ with custom name of "My Home"; this happens to be defined in PW2 as the "Home" default location so it is enclosed in square brackets).

0. We need to get into the PW Config program, so tap and hold anywhere on the Today plugin screen so the MainMenu (image 3) appears.

 1b.png (94.18K)
Number of downloads: 12..........  1c.png (25.7K)
Number of downloads: 4
image 3: MainMenu on TodayView....................image 4: PW Options

Now select (highlight) Options and from the next screen (image 4) select Locations.

1. Select the location to which you wish to add an Image and tap Configure button (image 5) and then the Images tab on the next screen (image 6).

 1d.png (18.57K)
Number of downloads: 8..  1e.png (15.97K)
Number of downloads: 6..  1e2.png (12.49K)
Number of downloads: 5image 5.................................................image 6.................................................image 7

This Configure Location-Images screen (image7) shows no existing images -- we've only just begun.

2. Tap the Add button to navigate to the Configure Image screen (image 8) to add our URL.

 1f2.png (8.94K)
Number of downloads: 10
image 8

Note: "Uniform Resource Locator" is the address of a resource on the Internet. World Wide Web URLs begin with "http://" - see http://www.valpo.edu...ary/jargon.html .

3. Now go to an Internet site that has your image (many excellent URLs for maps have been posted on this Forum in resources thread). I usually try weather.com initially for US radar maps (image 9).

 seattle5.png (250.25K)
Number of downloads: 45
image 9

Here is a Doppler Radar map of the Seattle area. While there are several advanced (and quick) ways to find / enter URLs, lets begin with an easy method:

4. Right Click over the image (image 10)to pop up a menu box and select "Properties" on the bottom

 seattle6.png (101.35K)
Number of downloads: 31
image 10

There's our URL (image 11) --

http://image.weather..._large_usen.jpg

 seattle7.png (12.1K)
Number of downloads: 21
image 11

Another excellent US source is National Weather Service...

 6c.PNG (226.76K)
Number of downloads: 11
image 12

...where one can even find animated images.

 southrockies_loop.gif (439.4K)
Number of downloads: 14
image 13

5. Now let's go back to the PW screen (image 8) and enter our address. It MUST be entered EXACTLY: underscore characters, case, etc. (Note: sometimes the entire URL is not initially seen in the Properties Box and needs to be "scrolled" until the end displays).

6. Tap OK (or Close)
PW must be connected to the Internet to download this image file into your ImageCache folder whose path you can configure in Options->General->Folders (image 14) in your device memory (image 15). Note that we have created a jpg file of the actual image indexed for our location (USWA0395 is the Location ID - LocID) as well as a thumbnail file (USWA0395-thumb0.bmp). The latter shows up on the Summary and Images tabs in WeatherConsole.

 1h.png (15.2K)
Number of downloads: 4...  seattle11.png (36.35K)
Number of downloads: 19
image 14: setting the path......................................image 15: exploring device folders

7. When you return to the Configure Image screen (image 16) after the update (download) of the image, you should see your image.

 1g.png (50.27K)
Number of downloads: 4
image 16

If you get don't see your image, make sure:

1. you have not entered a bad URL (a typo error) - use the Check button (image 7) or
2. the URL is the correct type for PW - not all animated images are acceptable, or
3. the Internet site is available for download (Options->Locations->Configure->Images: Check button) or
4. make sure you are connected to the Internet: MainMenu->Update->Test Internet Access.

Now tap OK, and OK again and again (...and again and again) and admire your work in the WeatherConsole.

QUESTION: "But how do I get this image on the Today screen?"
ANSWER: NO problem:

8. Options->Locations: select (highlight) the Location that has your new image and tap Configure button (image 5).
Tap the Images tab on the next screen (image 6).

 6d.png (13.73K)
Number of downloads: 4
image 17

There's our image's URL (image 17), but everything (Icon, Animate) appears disabled.

9. To create an "icon" of the Image (ImageIcon) to display on Today screen, tap Configure button. There's our image again (image 16), but now...

10. Tap the Icon tab.

 6f.png (53.59K)
Number of downloads: 6
image 18

Let's enable "Display icon of this image on Today Screen" and set the Zoom %. Tap anywhere on the image to select the "center" of the region to display.

The image (ImageIcon) in the lower right corner will display on Today, but at what size and where?

If you have enabled (Options->Today) "Image icons below" the weather info (image 19)...

 6g.png (17K)
Number of downloads: 3
image 19

...it really doesn't matter what the size is as long as it can fit on your screen (layout).

If you want to get fancy (viz. multiple images side by side and/or vertically tiled, or using this image as the background for this specific Location etc):

• disable "Image icons below"
• use a Custom View (MainMenu->Today...->Layouts)
• set the "Icon size" (image 20 - Options->Images)

 6e.png (12.74K)
Number of downloads: 1
image 20

This usually requires a refresh (re-download) of the image (MainMenu->Update->More->Selected Images) to display at a new setting.

Try different szes for some very "strange" effects -- eg "684" wiill allow the image icon to be the background for a scripted 182 pixel height VGA layout.

QUESTION: But you want animated images, too -- G-d, you want everything?
ANSWER: Well,

• displaying animated gifs (a special format used with doppler radar maps, et al) is working and is similar to ...
• "pseudo" animation: achieved by downloading several images at different times (Image 21 - Options->Update: Image Update Interval) from the same (or different) URL and loading each sequentially as individual frames of a "movie".

 6h.png (17.69K)
Number of downloads: 4image 21

Note: PW does not presently have the ability to display animated WeatherIcons.

11. Enable Animations (image 16) by tapping Animate tab (Options->Locations->Configure->Images->Configure).

12. Follow the self-explanatory instruction on the next page. View your results (image 22) on Images View in WC where you will now see "transport" controls similar to those of an VHS recorder.

 1.png (84.7K)
Number of downloads: 2
image 22

Note: The new ImageIcon appears in the ImageCache (image 15) as LocID-iconn.bmp (eg. USWA0395-icon0.bmp), while each frame of the animation will have an extra index number appended to the LocID-n-n1.jpg (eg. 85718-1-3.jpg = 4th frame of 2nd image configured for Location ID 85718). This indices are zero based.

Note: One can display the image in FULL screen mode by tapping the D-Pad enter (action/center) button.

Now have fun with live webcam images, weather alert images, etc.

PS - also see this post

The following attachments applied to PW version 1

Attached File(s)

•  seattle1b.png (115.24K)
  Number of downloads: 38
•  seattle2.png (28.42K)
  Number of downloads: 18
•  seattle3.png (12.98K)
  Number of downloads: 21
•  seattle4.png (22.75K)
  Number of downloads: 20
•  Seattle8.png (26.18K)
  Number of downloads: 16
•  seattle9.png (15.14K)
  Number of downloads: 12
•  seattle12.png (65.9K)
  Number of downloads: 10
•  seattle13.png (30.34K)
  Number of downloads: 7
•  seattle14.png (14.63K)
  Number of downloads: 9
•  seattle15.png (99.34K)
  Number of downloads: 9
•  seattle16.png (69.41K)
  Number of downloads: 11
•  seattle17.png (72.38K)
  Number of downloads: 13
•  seattle10.png (98.56K)
  Number of downloads: 10
•  animation.png (18.84K)
  Number of downloads: 22
•  wc1.PNG (98.84K)
  Number of downloads: 48

This post has been edited by benkc: 29 December 2008 - 12:42 PM
Reason for edit:: for PW 2

[trewblue]

Excellent Ron,


Another one for pinning Mods!!!!!!!

[YoLoLo]

Nice JOB !

Will be usefull for noobies, and must be pinned !
Any moderator around here ???

[tsalonia]

benkc,

in image1, towards the bottom of the display, there is a "control bar," if you will, that lets you zoom in and out and rotate the image. Is there a way to remove that control bar? I have a treo 700 with a small screen and any real estate recovered would be great.

[benkc]

in image1 [attachmentid=8786] , towards the bottom of the display, there is a "control bar," if you will, that lets you zoom in and out and rotate the image.  Is there a way to remove that control bar?  I have a treo 700 with a small screen and any real estate recovered would be great.

You can remove the "control bar" completely by pressing the Enter (center) D-Pad hard button. By changing the size of the thumbnails (Settings->Images), you can change the height of this bar as well - but thumbnails also appear on the Compare Images tab and will be similarly affected. If the image is enabled as "animated" in PW, you'll still have the transport bar and timestamp.

Attached File(s)

•  post_5594_1142448174.png (100.62K)
  Number of downloads: 14

[deeznutz]

Thanks benkc!! It works

Definitely a sticky for the noobs like me

[adrianol]

Excellent once again!

Adrian

(ps - pinned)

[Sema_4]

Hi and thanks for the excellent guide, I have managed to add a bunch of pics, great !

I can't get the animate thing to work tho, I have spent 4 hours on this now and I give up.

Following your directions above, I am trying to get this map to animate :-

http://uk.weather.co...e_animated.html

I get the name of each image and download them one at a time, that all works fine, but I can't get it to animate the sequence of 5 still pics.

I tried setting the 1st pic to animate with the 'maximum number of images to store' set to 5, and all the other pics not set to animate, that didn't work.

I tried setting them all to animate with the number set to 5, that didn't work.

I tried setting them all to animate with the numbers incrementing 1,2,3,4,5 like frame numbers in case that was the trick, but nope, that didn't work.

I tried setting them all to animate each with the number set to 1, but that didn't work either.

Im now all out of ideas for what to try next. Your instuctions are very detailed up to that point then they just kinda stop, sorry if Im being dumb but for the life of me I can't work out what I need to do.

Could you possibly be kind enough to supply step by step instructions of how to animate these 5 still pictures ? They download fine and they are in the cache, if I view the images I can click on each thumbnail and the pic comes up like it should, where do I go from here ?

Thanks

[YoLoLo]

This map can't be animated, because it's a JPG file, and an engine in the Website make it animated, showing a suite of JPG images...

PW can show animated images, as soon as they are gif files, or JPG files downloaded each time you refresh...
Hope this helps

[Sema_4]

Ah, that would explain it then...

I have mis-understood your original guide where you say :-

But you want animated images ,too -- G-d, you want everything?
Well,
- PW does not presently have the ability to display animated weather icons.
- displaying animated gif maps (a special format used eg dopplar radar maps0, is currently NOT working - stay tuned
- "pseudo" animation can be achieved by downloading several images from the same (or different) URL and loading each sequentially as individual frames of a movie.

I thought the 'pseudo' animation was done by PW by downloading several images from the same (or different) URL then it would 'cycle them in the order you pick' on the display giving the effect of animation.

Thanks for clearing that up for me, sorry for the dumb question

[benkc]

Ah, that would explain it then...
I have mis-understood your original guide...
I thought the 'pseudo' animation was done by PW by downloading several images from the same (or different) URL then it would 'cycle them in the order you pick' on the display giving the effect of animation.

Thanks for clearing that up for me, sorry for the dumb question

There really is a way to actually pseudo-animate ANY set of images (whether they match or are completely different) and I'll have to find and link that tutorial later. In the meantime, since you put in so much effort:

Each frame in the Image cache directory has to be correctly indexed. Location_ Code - Image_number - frame_ index where the location_code is from the Settings->Location table (Code). Image_number begins with 0. The first indexed frame is 1 but the the first frame is actually the image itself (eg Location_code-Image_number.jpg)
[attachmentid=10146]

I have always just renamed the frames to match existing animations that work (though I'm not sure if this can be done de novo).

1. So -- If you have real animations (anim.gif that get converted by PW into jpg formatted files), or pseudo animations that PW created by Settings->Locations->Configure Images->Resize/Animate, use these names and overwrite the new frames that you downloaded to the desktop
2. Copy and paste them into the ImageCache

and when you are in the WeatherConsole->Image tab, under the correct Location, you should see the thumbnail of the animations and the transport control bar.
[attachmentid=10143]-->[attachmentid=10144]-->[attachmentid=10145]

These frames would probably get overwritten at some point depending on how many frames you configured and you would have to repeat the whole process again -- so it's probably not too practical until PW actually can do this automatically.

Come back to this post and I'll try to add more screenshots.

Attached File(s)

•  frame1.png (125.08K)
  Number of downloads: 11
•  frame2.png (118.99K)
  Number of downloads: 8
•  frame3.png (119.57K)
  Number of downloads: 6
•  anim2.PNG (80.9K)
  Number of downloads: 7

[benkc]

This map can't be animated, because it's a JPG file, and an engine in the Website make it animated, showing a suite of JPG images...

PW can show animated images, as soon as they are gif files, or JPG files downloaded each time you refresh...
Hope this helps

Actually, if he has downloaded 5 images, he CAN show them as animated frames by naming the first image Location_code-Image_number.jpg for an existing image that is animated already. Then renaming the next 4 frames with the appended -frame_number of 1 thru 4 (viz Location_code-Image_number-1.jpg, Location_code-Image_number-2.jpg, etc) where all the _Location_codes are the same as are the Image_numbers for all 5 frames. Then put these files back in the image cache, overwriting existing animation frames with the same names.

I thought I documented this, but I think it was in another Forum where you posted a great program of morphing faces. I actually made my kids into monkeys and took those frames into PW.
See my post just above.

[Sema_4]

Thank you benkc and yololo , for you prompt replies.

Especially to you benkc, thanks to the additional information you added I have finally managed to get it to work. I still had a little trouble understanding the steps required to get it to work, I don't have the same technical understanding as some of the users here I think, lol, but I got there in the end. Perhaps these steps I took will help another 'non-technical noob' to understand whats required and I hope you don't mind my posting this here.

When I downloaded the seprate pictures I wanted to animate from each of the URL's, they were stored in the cache automatically with the names :-

SPXX0050-0
SPXX0050-1
SPXX0050-2
SPXX0050-3
SPXX0050-4

To get it to animate these 5 still pics, I had to select the 1st picture ONLY in my downloaded sequence [see image 15 in the first post],

then click 'resize/animate' and set the animation 'enabled', with the 'maximum number of images to store' set to 5 [see the last image at point 12 in the first post].

I also set the 'icon' to 'enabled' [see image 16 in the first post] so I could access the animation from the today screen.

The remaining 4 images in the sequence, I left both the 'animate' and 'icon' options as 'disabled'

Next I used the File Explorer to look at the files stored in the cache and then I manually renamed them one by one, from the file names listed above to:

SPXX0050-0-0
SPXX0050-0-1
SPXX0050-0-2
SPXX0050-0-3
SPXX0050-0-4

Now when I access the images for this location the animation works perfectly, just by adding this '-0' in each of the files names for the sequence of still pics.

I would assume that if the first picture of the animation was not the first picture stored for this location, ie there was already a different still pic at the top of the list (location 0), then instead of adding '-0' to the sequence, I would need to add the number of the starting picture of the animation instead, ie '-1' or '-2' depending how many stills you already had before the pics you wanted to animate.

This would result in the file names looking like :-

SPXX0050-1-0
SPXX0050-1-1
SPXX0050-1-2
SPXX0050-1-3
SPXX0050-1-4

benkc : is this something that can be added to the PW software so that it does this automatically if you select 'animate' when you have a series of stills already loaded for a location ?

Also : what will happen now when the pictures do an 'auto-update', will they be saved with their original file names again meaning I have to go in and edit these names each time ? or will PW save them using the new names I have given them, Im confussed, lol.

Thanks very much again for all your wonderful help, this is without a doubt, the best and most powerful weather utility I have ever seen !

[benkc]

Thank you benkc and yololo , for you prompt replies.

Especially to you benkc, thanks to the additional information you added I have finally managed to get it to work. I still had a little trouble understanding the steps required to get it to work, I don't have the same technical understanding as some of the users here I think, lol, but I got there in the end. Perhaps these steps I took will help another 'non-technical noob' to understand whats required and I hope you don't mind my posting this here.

When I downloaded the seprate pictures I wanted to animate from each of the URL's, they were stored in the cache automatically with the names :-

SPXX0050-0
SPXX0050-1
SPXX0050-2
SPXX0050-3
SPXX0050-4

To get it to animate these 5 still pics, I had to select the 1st picture ONLY in my downloaded sequence [see image 15 in the first post],

then click 'resize/animate' and set the animation 'enabled', with the 'maximum number of images to store' set to 5 [see the last image at point 12 in the first post].

I also set the 'icon' to 'enabled' [see image 16 in the first post] so I could access the animation from the today screen.

The remaining 4 images in the sequence, I left both the 'animate' and 'icon' options as 'disabled'

Next I used the File Explorer to look at the files stored in the cache and then I manually renamed them one by one, from the file names listed above to:

SPXX0050-0-0
SPXX0050-0-1
SPXX0050-0-2
SPXX0050-0-3
SPXX0050-0-4

Now when I access the images for this location the animation works perfectly, just by adding this '-0' in each of the files names for the sequence of still pics.

I would assume that if the first picture of the animation was not the first picture stored for this location, ie there was already a different still pic at the top of the list (location 0), then instead of adding '-0' to the sequence, I would need to add the number of the starting picture of the animation instead, ie '-1' or '-2' depending how many stills you already had before the pics you wanted to animate.

This would result in the file names looking like :-

SPXX0050-1-0
SPXX0050-1-1
SPXX0050-1-2
SPXX0050-1-3
SPXX0050-1-4

benkc : is this something that can be added to the PW software so that it does this automatically if you select 'animate' when you have a series of stills already loaded for a location ?

Also : what will happen now when the pictures do an 'auto-update', will they be saved with their original file names again meaning I have to go in and edit these names each time ? or will PW save them using the new names I have given them, Im confussed, lol.

Thanks very much again for all your wonderful help, this is without a doubt, the best and most powerful weather utility I have ever seen !

Your tutorial is so much better than my attempt -- Thanks. As the image is called upon for update, if it has changed (checksum of URL is different), it will overwrite the earliest frame in the sequence but this may not be the proper next frame. There was a small bug anyways here between the non indexed main image SPXX0050-0.jpg and the indexed frames since PW never created a SPXX0050-0-0 (zero indexed frame).

Please let me know what happens as these get updated.

[benkc]

Sema_4, first - if we didn't already -- Welcome to the PocketWeather (PW) Forum.

next - I finally figured out what you were trying to do. The URL that you obtained ( "I am trying to get this map to animate : http://uk.weather.co...e_animated.html " )



from the animated weather satellite image of Europe is NOT the URL that you want.

If you go to the main Europe satellite page and get the URL for the non-animated image (viz http://image.weather...sat_600x405.jpg ) and use this and set it to be an animation (Settings->locations->configure images->Resize/animate), every time this image updates on PW, the next frame will be indexed. If you set number of frames ("maximum number of images to store") as 6, you will have the original image (no index) and 5 appended indexed files (1-5). After the 6 th update it will overwrite the earlier files. Now you can play back all 6 files as an animation.