Re: [Announce] Fettuccine - A webcam aggregator app
 

Hmm. It isn't really Fettuccine's job to generate a URL by itself (at least, given the way I've designed it); the Fettuccine XML file should already contain the full URL for a particular webcam source. The only thing stopping Fettuccine from displaying a particular camera (such as Foscam) is that I don't yet have it supporting streaming video.

Actually, if I'm reading that file right, you could use the "snapshot" support on the Foscam devices; for example, if you're connecting to a FI8910W camera, you'd just need to give Fettuccine the following URL:

That should pull up the most recent image on the device. You'd just need to fill in the LINK.TO.CAMERA, USERNAME, and PASSWORD yourself.

I'm not sure just how much Fettuccine could automate this process for you...

Actually, I could! :) Yeah, I left the widget pretty bare, with just the image alone. That did make it quick and easy to implement, but it shouldn't be too much more effort to actually create a user interface on top of it. Let me take a look...

Re: [Announce] Fettuccine - A webcam aggregator app
 

Alright, version 0.9.2 of Fettuccine is now moving up to extras-devel. This version features limited support for authentication; Fettuccine will now pop up a dialog box with fields for a username and a password for servers that require them. I have done some minimal testing with it, and have been able to log in to a server that was using basic access authentication.

I'm not sure whether Fettuccine can handle self-signed certificates yet; everything else should hopefully be working now, though. :) I'll take a look at certificate issues next...

Re: [Announce] Fettuccine - A webcam aggregator app
 

Version 0.9.3 of Fettuccine is now moving into extras-devel; with this one, I've put together a minimal user interface for operation as a widget. There are overlay controls to navigate forwards and backwards through the list of webcams, as well as a label at the bottom of the widget with the name of the webcam. These controls can be switched on or off via the webcam options dialog box.

Also in this update, the default list of webcams has been improved (and you can reset the app to this default list now from the "Import Webcam List" menu option). And, a bit more work on authentication has been added; you should now have the option to continue loading a webcam image, even when SSL errors occur.

I'll append a screenshot of a widget with the new overlay controls:

Re: [Announce] Fettuccine - A webcam aggregator app
 

I'm getting a lot of use from this app; thanks for creating it!

I wonder if in a future update the app could remember the last filter that was used, & when started, start with that filter active. I suppose a new filter choice of "none" would have to be added so that all cams could be viewed then.

Also, I was wondering what causes the delay when Fettucine starts up. Does it download the images for *all* the cams before displaying the first cam?

Re: [Announce] Fettuccine - A webcam aggregator app
 

Ah, that would be a good idea. :) Let me take a look...

Hmm. No, it should only try to load the webcam that was most recently viewed when it was shut down. If it takes a while for that webcam to load, though, that could be a problem...

Right now, it seems to take my N900 about a second to reach the "Loading Webcam" screen when launching the app. The widget seems to take a little longer, about two seconds. Can you tell me how long it is taking for yours to reach that point, and then how long it takes to finally show the image? (And is the delay only when starting up, or also when switching between webcams?) Thanks!

Re: [Announce] Fettuccine - A webcam aggregator app
 

Loading the app, it takes 2 seconds to get the "Loading Webcam" screen, then 62 seconds before the first image is shown.

It then takes about 6 seconds to show the next cam.

Re: [Announce] Fettuccine - A webcam aggregator app
 

Wow, that is a long wait! I've not seen that long of a load before. Can you tell me the webcam it is trying to load?

Re: [Announce] Fettuccine - A webcam aggregator app
 

Nice update. Thank you!
One little issue.. it seems that every webcam import resets the webcam list removing all the previous entries.

Re: [Announce] Fettuccine - A webcam aggregator app
 

That's not a bug, that's a feature! ;) Ok, well, yeah, only supporting a single list of webcams at a time is pretty restricting. However, it'll take me a bit more effort to come up with a good system for managing multiple collections of webcams. It wouldn't be too hard to maintain such a collection internally in Fettuccine, but I'm not sure how to create a decent user interface over it... I'll work on it. :)

Re: [Announce] Fettuccine - A webcam aggregator app
 

Probably the default behavior i would expect is an "add entry" form ready for a cut&paste or in second chance the xml import wizard to add an entire set of resources (maybe also an export to backup?)...
Concerning the widget behavior while without internet connection, there is still something wrong but i think to recall that it was just partially fixed.
Anyway, this app is another jewel of yours, ready to make shine or N900!

Re: [Announce] Fettuccine - A webcam aggregator app
 

That sounds doable (although I'm nervous about cut & paste on the phone, I've never been able to use it very well myself). I'm kind of more concerned about how I display this collection to the user; I guess it would have to be a list of some sort, with a name (and maybe some user-defined description?) for each collection. Hmm. I'll see what I can come up with...

This would not be a surprise. :) I'm sure there are plenty more bugs yet to be fixed. It wouldn't be as much fun if it was perfect from the very start. :)

Re: [Announce] Fettuccine - A webcam aggregator app
 

http://www.intellicast.com/National/...1&animate=true

By the way, you may know this but the Fettucine "Webcam Info" screen cuts off the display of long URL's - I had to open the URL in MicroB & then read it from there.

Re: [Announce] Fettuccine - A webcam aggregator app
 

Hmm. When I try to load the gif file associated with that page,

http://images.intellicast.com/WxImag..._None_anim.gif

it comes up almost instantly. I also tried feeding the web page's own URL to Fettuccine, but it fails to load (which is what should happen). I'm not sure what's going on here...

Hmm. I've got the "word wrap" option set on those labels, but apparently that's not working with links. :( I'll try changing from a QLabel to a QTextView, maybe that'll work better...

Re: [Announce] Fettuccine - A webcam aggregator app
 

Word wrap only wraps where there is a word boundary, so it doesn't generally work with URLs, unless there is unencoded whitespace.

EDIT: QTextEdit has more fine-grained wrapping options, so that might be the best option. Setting the stylesheet to "background: transparent" should be enough to obtain a QLabel-like appearance.

Re: [Announce] Fettuccine - A webcam aggregator app
 

Yup, just tried it out, and it works much better. I'm not sure I really need to make it look like a QLabel, either; I suppose I really should put a little more effort into both what the info screen should contain as well as how it should look. :) Thanks!

Re: [Announce] Fettuccine - A webcam aggregator app
 

Possible bug?
Seems on startup I get "Textlabel" instead of the text.

I am slowly compiling a list of UK traffic motorway cameras I currently only have Lancashire but I hope to release a finished full categorised UK XML file in the future.

Maybe XML files could be plugin based like multimote?

Re: [Announce] Fettuccine - A webcam aggregator app
 

Yes, definitely a bug. :) I'm not initializing the label correctly on startup. (I should have fixed it already, but I've been spending way too much time playing around with Linguine...)

Sounds like a good idea, let me take a look! :)

Re: [Announce] Fettuccine - A webcam aggregator app
 

Since i'm almost unsatisfied of many meteo services... I have found that the only way to know if there is a REAL storm arriving over my head (or car) is:

http://blitzortung.net/Images/image_b_eu.png
http://blitzortung.net/Images/image_b_fr.png
http://blitzortung.net/Images/image_b_de.png
http://blitzortung.net/Images/image_b_uk.png
http://blitzortung.net/Images/image_b_pl.png
http://blitzortung.net/Images/image_b_sk.png
http://blitzortung.net/Images/image_b_gr.png
http://blitzortung.net/Images/image_b_as.png
http://blitzortung.net/Images/image_b_us.png
http://blitzortung.net/Images/image_b_sa.png
http://blitzortung.net/Images/image_b_oc.png

(updated once a minute)

or a gif:
http://www.wetter-rosstal.de/blitzor...hp?animation=2

Maybe someone else could find this useful.

@Copernicus
for one of the next releases, if you need some idea to add a function... some kind of image crop would be useful.

Re: [Announce] Fettuccine - A webcam aggregator app
 

Ah, interesting idea! I'll take a look... :)

Re: [Announce] Fettuccine - A webcam aggregator app
 

..or even expose to an external command line tweak ;)

wget http://blitzortung.net/Images/image_b_fr.png -O- 2>/dev/null | convert - -fill Black -fuzz 35% -opaque Green output.png

wget http://blitzortung.net/Images/image_b_pl.png -O- 2>/dev/null | convert - -fill Black -fuzz 35% -opaque Green - | convert - -crop 500x500+200+200 output.png

Re: [Announce] Fettuccine - A webcam aggregator app
 

Would be nice if this could read mjpeg format :-)

Re: [Announce] Fettuccine - A webcam aggregator app
 

Well, back in the old, old days, webcams only provided a single image at a time. :) I suppose I could put in some support for video, though, as I've already got animated gifs supported. Let me take a look... :)

Re: [Announce] Fettuccine - A webcam aggregator app
 

Bump.... (I feel so guilty doing this:-)

Re: [Announce] Fettuccine - A webcam aggregator app
 

Let me take another look. :) (I'm starting to get some real work done again...)

EDIT: BTW, can you give me an example of a webcam you'd like to see supported? A lot of the streaming webcams today aren't actually using mjpeg (and are probably using closed formats that I won't be able to support)...

Re: [Announce] Fettuccine - A webcam aggregator app
 

I was wanting to access the mjpeg output of motion (a version is compiled for the n900 / fremantle).

But really, this is not essential....

Re: [Announce] Fettuccine - A webcam aggregator app
 

Just a quick FYI: Motion appears to support the ability to work like a classic snapshot webcam, so you may already be able to use it with Fettuccine. But I'll see if I can add mjpeg support as well. :)

Re: [Announce] Fettuccine - A webcam aggregator app
 

Indeed it does. And a useful reminder (I now remember why I chose not to go this way).

I have motion producing mjpegs at a fairly high frame-rate so that when I wish, I can use VLC and view near real-time video-style feed. So sampling the mjpegs at a chosen interval would be a good n900 option for me.

Re: [Announce] Fettuccine - A webcam aggregator app
 

Ok, version 0.9.4 of Fettuccine is now making its way up to extras-devel. This version provides (initial) support for MJpeg streaming webcams; I've finally picked up some info on how MJpeg works, and have been able to pull images out of the few webcams that I've tested. So far things look good, so I thought I'd go ahead and push up this update, even though I suspect that there may still be varieties of MJpeg webcam that I'm not supporting properly.

Fettuccine does not (yet) have the ability to automagically detect whether a webcam is providing still images or an MJpeg stream; so, I've added a new parameter to the XML format, the "webcamType":

Right now, the only values supported are "Static" (for still images) or "MJpeg" (for MJpeg streaming). This parameter is optional; if you don't include it in the webcam specification, it will default to "Static".

Also by default, Fettuccine will simply grab the current image from the stream and display it. If you'd like to instead collect a short sequence of images and loop them, there are two more new parameters, "maxImages" and "slideshowDelay":

As you might expect, the "maxImages" parameter defines how many images to retrieve, and the "slideshowDelay" parameter defines how long to pause (in seconds) between each image as the slideshow is being displayed. New slideshows will be downloaded at the refresh rate.

Enjoy! And please inform me of bugs. :) Thanks.

Re: [Announce] Fettuccine - A webcam aggregator app
 

This is working for me, with output from motion. Thank you. I will check properly when daylight arrives.

One thing, is there a way to pause the widget - that is to suspend the refreshing until re-enabled?

Re: [Announce] Fettuccine - A webcam aggregator app
 

Ah, good question! I should be able to implement something like that without too much trouble. Let me give it a try.

BTW, I should also say that I've been doing some more testing; I originally assumed that I should avoid just displaying the entire stream full-blast, to avoid consuming all network and CPU bandwidth. But, I've been testing an instance of Fettuccine displaying a mjpeg webcam as fast as the data comes in, and the N900 is holding up fine. (It's getting a little warm after over a half hour of constant use, but so far it doesn't seem dangerously hot.) So, here's another question -- is there any value to not displaying a streaming webcam at full speed? :)

(I've gotta admit, it's also quite nice to watch the stream running on the task manager screen; the video libraries I've been using in my other apps use rather ugly tricks to optimize the speed with which they send data to XWindows, which normally break down when you open up the task manager. Fettuccine, on the other hand, is simply redrawing an image over and over again... :) )

Re: [Announce] Fettuccine - A webcam aggregator app
 

IMO, choice is King! So, by all means let's have unthrottled as an option but the current refresh rate option as well (incl. your loops etc).

Re: [Announce] Fettuccine - A webcam aggregator app
 

I really like this. And at a refresh of every 10 secs it is very economical on battery too.

One thing: I think under some or other yet to be determined circumstance it might cause a prompt for connection. Not sure it is fettucine however. Certainly difficult to reproduce and it may just as well be Yappari (in my case the most likely alternative).

Tested. Exited yappari, disconnected wifi and allowed screen to blank. Upon touching screen, connection dialogue appeared. I think it is fettucine.

App is well behaved if screen stays lit and the connection is unavailable. And it remains well behaved even if the screen blanks after one has rejected the connection dialogue. That is, the dialogue pops-up only at the return from the first screen blank after the connection is closed.

Related - it might be a good idea to overlay some symbol or label when the displayed image is "old/stale" due to the absence of an internet connection, or being paused.

Re: [Announce] Fettuccine - A webcam aggregator app
 

Addition to the above:

the widget misbehaves more severely at device start-up if no connection is available - persistent connection dialogues whilst widget displays message "loading camera" or some such.

Also, I had a non-default width and height entered and that was lost across the reboot.

Re: [Announce] Fettuccine - A webcam aggregator app
 

Hi folks! Version 0.9.5 of Fettuccine is now working its way into the Extras-Devel repository. This iteration doesn't yet fix all the problems in 0.9.4, but I think it's enough of an improvement to go ahead and push it up. :)

First up, display of MJpeg streams at full speed is now supported (and some webcams stream pretty dang fast). The previous two options are still supported as well; but in order to accomplish this, I've once again changed the XML syntax. The three options are now defined as "MJpeg_Full" for full speed, "MJpeg_Sampled" to pull an individual frame out at a specified refresh rate, and "MJpeg_Looped" to pull a sequence of frames out and loop through them. An example of these three options:

The "refreshRate" is omitted for "MJpeg_Full" (as, obviously, the display is refreshed as fast as the data comes in). For the other two webcam types, the various options are still the same as in my previous post.

Unfortunately, this syntax isn't backwards-compatible with last week's XML, so you'll need to rewrite any scripts using the old "MJpeg" webcam type to get them to work. :(

I have also implemented a pause & resume function; if you bring up the on-screen controls, you'll now see a pause icon. You should be able to hit that to pause the data retrieval, and then hit it again to resume retrieving data from the webcam. I'm fairly certain that it works correctly in all situations, but please tell me if you have any problems with it. :) I'll attach some screenshots at the end of this post.

I've tried to make Fettuccine a little better at handling network outages, but this is still going to take more work...

And yeah, the Fettuccine widget is not saving state information across a reboot (or across anything else). My hangup with that right now is that I don't know how to uniquely identify instances of the widget; if you have two or three of them running on your desktop, how do you know which one should have which size (or display which webcam)? I could just give them index numbers in the order they were created, but will they be created in the same order after a reboot? I could identify them by their location on the desktop, but I'm not sure where that data exists (or if it is visible to the app), and that would also require keeping track of when the user moves them... I guess I need to do more research. :)

Re: [Announce] Fettuccine - A webcam aggregator app
 

Hi,

thanks for the improvements. The widget indeed handles connection absence better - it shows "paused" when screen returns from sleep and a touch re-enables.

One weirdness - whilst the widget works for my cam, the application does not. "Loading webcam" shows but the image never displays.

Further, even when connected by wifi, the application shows "fettucine failed to access internet".

As for the widget display size, why not store that in the xml? Is there a point to having multiple widgets, each showing a different webcam from the same xml BUT with different display sizes?

Re: [Announce] Fettuccine - A webcam aggregator app
 

Hmm. That really is weird; the widget and the app are for the most part running the exact same code; only the top-level UI elements are different...

Well, that might explain why the app shows "Loading webcam" (which is, in fact, the default label shown when there is no data; I need to fix that!). But then, I don't know why it failed to access the net in the first place. (Is this just for the one webcam, or for any webcam? If you hit the play icon, does the same error message come up?)

Ah, well, I can't even get that far -- say I have two widgets. Widget #1 is constructed, and says "Hey, I'm a widget! What sizes and webcam should I use? I don't know which widget I am, so I'll take the data for widget #1." Then, widget #2 is constructed, and also says "Hey, I'm a widget! What sizes and webcam should I use? I don't know which widget I am, so I'll take the data for widget #1." :)

Oh well. For now, I've decided to just bypass this mess and not allow multiple widgets. I've got a version of Fettuccine which properly maintains widget state information now; I'll try to get it pushed up soon.

Re: [Announce] Fettuccine - A webcam aggregator app
 

Ok, Fettuccine 0.9.6 is on its way up to extras-devel. The main change in this version is that widget state information is now properly maintained! :) Sadly, this was achieved by disallowing multiple widgets. :( This limitation was set in the .desktop file, so it won't be updated until the Hildon desktop is restarted (or the phone is rebooted).

I've also fixed a little bug where pause/resume state was not being set properly.

Handaxe, I'm still not sure what the network problem might be; I'll keep working on it...

Re: [Announce] Fettuccine - A webcam aggregator app
 

Hi, thanks. For now, let me say that the app DOES work. It did not for me earlier but that may have been a slower wifi link although I did watch the app for quite a while. So sorry for that..

Re: [Announce] Fettuccine - A webcam aggregator app
 

I now have figured out:

the error in "accessing the internet" message in the app still displays even when the connection is up;

the app always starts paused (that might be ok);

the app will not load the image until one re-selects the camera from the drop-down menu (this is true from start-up AND in using the pause/resume function and on return from sleep ie. when pause is showing).

The widget will also produce the error in "accessing the internet" message after returning from a disconnection of the wifi and manual screen blank. The image will then not load until the webcam is re-selected as is in the case of the app.

Re: [Announce] Fettuccine - A webcam aggregator app
 

Ah, well, I'm now having Fettuccine go into paused mode whenever there's any kind of network problem...

Hmm. The error message "Fettuccine failed to access internet" is displayed whenever the QNetworkAccessManager object sends a signal that the network is not available. This message should never occur when the network is actually up; although, I could imagine that it may take a few seconds before Qt recognizes that network availability has changed.

Now, this is confusing. :( I think this would have to mean that something has gotten really messed up (either the webcam URL or something to do with the Qt networking), but that just reinitializing the URL fixes everything...

I have to admit, I've never seen this exact behavior before. If I may, can I ask that you test for this behavior using a different webcam (such as, say, the Old Faithful webcam)? Maybe there's something unique about your webcam. Thanks!