Downloading webcam image from CMS-server?

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1

Hi,

is there a way to configure the system that the CMS-server is downloading a static jpg (from a webcam) every x minutes? If I set a webpage region in the layout, the client is downloading the picture from the web and not from the CMS-server.

I ask because our displays are in an isolated VLAN without WAN (internet) connectivity. They are able to reach the CMS-server which is located in a different VLAN. This works well with the RSS and the weather plugin but not with the webcam jpg.

Thanks

2

Yes you can use a External Image column type in a dataset. Add a row to that dataset, and in the External Image type column, put the URL you want the CMS to download the image from. Then use a ticker or dataset view to show that downloaded image in your layout.

3

Great, haven’t seen these options in the datasets before.

Found out that we can make this way a nice fade-transition as well for a picture slideshow with the internal library image option. Wonder why image transitions work for ticker/datasets but not for images on windows players?

Thanks for the hint.

4

It’s because when you use a ticker, it’s one HTML region, and HTML supports fading etc between images.

If you use a collection of images those are rendered natively and the controls that support that don’t support fading in/out.

5

Hi Alex,

I like this solution!
But in my case the image isn’t updating, the player keeps showing the same webcam image for hours.

I’m using 1.7.4 and Android Players.
Is this solution only wirking with 1.8?
Or is there a way to add a random number to the image URL in the dataset?

6

You definitely want to be running something newer than 1.7.4 for that.

There’s fixes all through 1.8 so I’d recommend 1.8.11

7

Ok. Alex, thank you for your quick answer!

8

As a work around you might be able to do something with a random number as you suggest.

You could make the image field a formula type, and use the MySQL concatenate function to concatenate the actual URL, and “?” and the NOW() function so it would be a different URL on each run.

9

Great! That works perfectly for me.
Thank you!

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