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Alert if webcam image out-of-date

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sarfend
Posts: 1
Joined: Sat 03 Sep 2016 5:59 pm
Weather Station: Fine Offset
Operating System: Windows 10

Alert if webcam image out-of-date

Post by sarfend »

Hi all,

I wonder if anyone has any suggestions on this one.

On my weather site, I have a display of my station data courtesy of Cumulus and the Saratoga PHP scripts. I also used Cumulus to upload a webcam image every 10 minutes.

It's not uncommon for something to go wrong - either the station stops collecting data, the PC locks.reboots or there's an error, which means my online data is out-of-date. I use a number of solutions to keep everything working (Cumulus Toolbox plus a PHP script that checks all's up to date. Everything works well, and I get email alerts if the weather data is out-of-date. The only thing I can't fix, is the webcam.

On occasion, the webcam capture software stops. Cumulus dutifully uploads whatever image it can find, so the website reports there's a recently-uploaded image, and the site displays an image.

Ideally, what I need is for Cumulus to spot that the image has a filestamp of >15 minutes, generate a tag, and I can detect that tag on the site.

My status page is here: http://www.sarfend.co.uk/weather/status.php - and using a site monitor, I can get an email alert if any errors appear on this page - what I can't do, is identify the age of the local jpg prior to Cumulus uploading it.

Anyone think of any clever ways around this?

Thanks,

Pete
User avatar
beteljuice
Posts: 3292
Joined: Tue 09 Dec 2008 1:37 pm
Weather Station: None !
Operating System: W10 - Threadripper 16core, etc
Location: Dudley, West Midlands, UK

Re: Alert if webcam image out-of-date

Post by beteljuice »

Here's something the beteljuice put together many years ago ...

It uses three different images.
  • Checking Camera Status (loading.jpg - 3 seconds)
    Actual webcam image (cam_1.jpg)
    Off-Line image (offline.jpg)
It uses both Javascript in the web page and a php script to do the timestamp check.

Code: Select all

<!-- web page code -->
<SCRIPT LANGUAGE="JavaScript">

<!--
function LoadImage1()

{
        uniq1 = Math.random();
	document.images.webcam1.src = "opt.php?uniq="+uniq1;

}

function StartDelay()
{
        document.webcam1.onload="DoIt1()";
        window.setTimeout("LoadImage1();", 3000); // status image delay
        window.setInterval("LoadImage1();", 30000); // subsequent loop
}

function DoIt1()
{
        window.setTimeout("LoadImage1();", 8000);
}

//-->
</script>

<!-- then where you put the image -->

<img src="loading.jpg" id="webcam1" name="webcam1" onload="StartDelay()" width=320 height=240 border=1 style="border-color:#a4a4ff; border-style:solid;">

... and the php file (opt.php)

Code: Select all

<?php

// Time to wait for showing the offline image in seconds
$offtime=300;

// We don't want cached results
clearstatcache();
// Get the time that the uploaded image is on the server
error_reporting(0);
$calctime=date("U") - filemtime("cam_1.jpg");

// If the uploaded image exists and its new enough
if (file_exists("cam_1.jpg") and $calctime<=$offtime){
   readfile("cam_1.jpg");
} else {
// Else send the predefined off-line image
readfile("offline.jpg");
};
?>
loading.jpg
offline.jpg
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......................Imagine, what you will KNOW tomorrow !
f4phlyer
Posts: 144
Joined: Sun 13 Feb 2011 7:12 pm
Weather Station: Davis Vantage Pro 2
Operating System: RaspBerry Pi Win 10 OSx
Location: Spring, Texas USA
Contact:

Re: Alert if webcam image out-of-date

Post by f4phlyer »

Pete,
Not sure if Beteljuice answered your question but it seems you have more than basic skills. I would think it would be possible to create a script to check the image "metadata" for "create time/date" and compare it to current date, then handle the email the same. There are apps/programs to strip the metadata and put it in a file. Hope this helps
retreat at augusta pines weather
CumulusMX on Raspberry π rPi5
http://augusta-pines-weather.com / CumulusMX 4.0.0 build:4017
WeatherUnderground KTXSPRIN538
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