Windows Live Viewer..27-11-05 Now Complete Frontend for ZM!!

[jameswilson]

ok then another update from me have sorted out the print, opena nd save images from live pause.
Fixed a couple of bugs and added some error checks
added a seq view so that a cycle can be viewed, This has been written so as to load on top of urrent views and also have faster updates. have added to the setting 1st and last seq monitor to make the cycle only switch through cams 4 to 8 for example

currently working on
snapshot view

basically as you can see it keeps the last 16 frames captured and shows them in this formation, obviouly with th oldest top right newest bottom left.
Clicking an image on this window will give the pause view which is resizable, interpolated etc and will allow you to view, save print image. The theory behind this is to give live viewers a chance to view an event if the just missed it.
Note this has its issues.
1 damn memory hungary as such is an option in settings
2 when on the larger views the refresh rate maybe upto 4 seconds per camera so not usre if its much use in these views.
3 not great on remote views (broadband) as bandwith cant usually keep up.

[jameswilson]

Another huge feature added (well i think so)
Map view


Allows
upto 36 cams
place buttons for cameras where req in settings using x,y coordinates, have put the x,y values in the status bar at the bottom to aid setup.
clciking the relevant button will load up a max 2fps windows showing live video form the selected camera, pause view local caxhe etc still function in this view. The quality settings will be remebered from the main app (not sure this is right but am gonna run with it this way for now)

Multi sites will work as you need to enter the path to the jpeg you are using as the map. If you have 4 sites make 1 jpeg with all sites drawn and then place cams as req. As it uses any jpg and zooms it to fit you could add any text, company name etc to this jpeg for a well profesional look.

Anyhow its up for download now.
Have also fixed all previous issues i have found and the final instant replay will only work if the split screen contains 9 or less cameras. I have done this as it consumes ram with a passion.

James

[reza]

I intalled the applicaiton, but no setup screen comes up. Just a login screen. How do I configure the application?

I also had to pre-install the .net framework before i was allowed to install your app.

thnx,
reza

[jameswilson]

if you log in as
admin, admin
a settings button will appear. click this and modify all nneded, bear in mind, whatever username and password used must be a user on the zm box or you will get no images

let me know how ot goes

[jameswilson]

and yes i needs teh .net framework, did you install 2.0 or 2.0 beta?

[jameswilson]

I have found a few bugs, mainly in the cycle display and added an are you sure to save etc boxes. Also added a timout feature so every hour all windows will be clodes (if enabled) to prevent 40 people loading it and forgeting about it and nailing your servers.

James

I will put it up in the same place once ready

[jameswilson]

added play sound event to alert user that timeout is counting down so it can be cancelled
Added an are you sure to the save view button
added indivual camera selection toolbar (click on views label) allows bringing up of cams after closing by accident.

Out of ideas to add now anyone got any?

[wa4bro]

added play sound event to alert user that timeout is counting down so it can be cancelled
Added an are you sure to the save view button
added indivual camera selection toolbar (click on views label) allows bringing up of cams after closing by accident.

Out of ideas to add now anyone got any?

Wonderful App James, I have been following and playing along with the updates. There is one item I miss from your 1st. version in that with it, I could specify a url to grab an image from. I used it to grab a couple of webcam feeds from my weather station and an every 10 second refeshing .jpg of current weather conditions, temps, winds etc.

I like the new interface, but miss being able to grab from a url as well as my zm box.

Dan

[jameswilson]

ok then we can sort that, my initial thoughts are to add a couple of windows than can be called but name them something different maybe status windows or something. I could modify custom view to allow them to be saved, sized etc. other than weathercams whatelse could these views be used for? and how many would you need

[jameswilson]

i have chenged this now then
I have added 4 tick boxes in the settings page
url mode 1-4 for cameras 1 -4
once ticked the monitor number becomes inactive and ignored, cam1 - 4 will then use url info put into the ip 1 -4 as full url's

ie http://192.168.0.1/image1.jpg or zm stream urls etc hope this gets over your problem.
BTW if the images you are retrieving are large you might want to disable instant replay as im not sure how it would cope using massive jpg asnd saving 16 of them to ram as bitmaps, just a thought.

Let me know if it works ok

[wa4bro]

i have chenged this now then
I have added 4 tick boxes in the settings page
url mode 1-4 for cameras 1 -4
once ticked the monitor number becomes inactive and ignored, cam1 - 4 will then use url info put into the ip 1 -4 as full url's

ie http://192.168.0.1/image1.jpg or zm stream urls etc hope this gets over your problem.
BTW if the images you are retrieving are large you might want to disable instant replay as im not sure how it would cope using massive jpg asnd saving 16 of them to ram as bitmaps, just a thought.

Let me know if it works ok

Hey James, Fast and Great Work As Usual!

A few observations:

The grab by URL works ok on some of my cams and then starts and a few seconds later fails on others. Not sure why, but I am trying to figure it out. One machine is running conqueor cam and the other Image Salsa. The Conquer cam webcam software runs great with your viewer, ImageSalsa starts the image and the clock shows the image runs about 6 seconds and then it freezes. A few mins later it looks like a full refesh from the viewer and they start again for about 6 seconds and freezes again. ImageSalsa should give an image on each request, so I am not sure why they are stopping. A flash viewer script I use on them from my weather web site seems to update from it ok.

ZM updates all the images great from that box.

I like the ability to allow an image grab. This would be my over all obesrvation and maybe wish list thus far.

1. Label the IP box as IP/URL on each of the 36 Cams.
(This way you could arrange the cams IP/URL as you wish)

2. Have a Use URL Check Box on each cam IP/URL Box.

3. Have a ON/OFF Check box for each cam box. (keep from displaying non active cams and maybe be dynamic for the VIEW butttons pop up menu)


I wonder how many cams most folks monitor. It would be nice I guess to have the ability to see up to 36 cams, I would imagine that most would have no more than 16 and many 8 or less.

Can the screens be dynamic according to number of cams defined ?
Instead of being limited to grouping in 4, 9 13 etc. and then having the non defined cams displayed. If not maybe 2,4,6,8,10,12,16,36 may be more useuful for most if they can not be dynamic.

I am not fully sure I understood your defaults in refesh rates.
I understand the default, but not sure of the >4 >6 etc wih the defaults set. Would it be possible to set a refesh rate for each cam, with maybe a copied default ?

The only other grand thing I could think of is the ability to record a selected montior to an .avi or .mpg for a watched alarm etc.


I think your viewer is a great app for remotes and as I have all my machines on the lan with plenty of bandwith, it is great to use inside the lan. I am interested to try it from a remote machine as soon as I get a chance to load it on my machine at work.

Thanks again, Hope my observations may help.

Dan
http://RoswellWeather.Net

[jameswilson]

Hey James, Fast and Great Work As Usual!

Thankyou

The grab by URL works ok on some of my cams and then starts and a few seconds later fails on others. Not sure why, but I am trying to figure it out. One machine is running conqueor cam and the other Image Salsa. The Conquer cam webcam software runs great with your viewer, ImageSalsa starts the image and the clock shows the image runs about 6 seconds and then it freezes. A few mins later it looks like a full refesh from the viewer and they start again for about 6 seconds and freezes again. ImageSalsa should give an image on each request, so I am not sure why they are stopping. A flash viewer script I use on them from my weather web site seems to update from it ok.

Not sure why this would be, The new viewer and the old one do differ in the way they retrieve images, on the v2 viewer it requests an image on the frequency set by refresh rate, but wont ask again ubtil the image loads, maybe i need to change this. The old one just requested images at the refresh rate wether the previous image had loaded or notm so you ended up stressing the machine in larger views as it was asking for images it could never display. Im thinkin of changing to code to reques an image only if the previous has loaded or over 10 seconds etc.

Another problem you may have had, the defaults for the refresh rate need changing as the values are in milliseconds.

1. Label the IP box as IP/URL on each of the 36 Cams.

I agree and will work on it the afternoon

Have a Use URL Check Box on each cam IP/URL Box.

as above

Have a ON/OFF Check box for each cam box. (keep from displaying non active cams and maybe be dynamic for the VIEW butttons pop up menu)

Not sure on this one as i dont see why. Maybe i dont understand the statement. From what i can tell you want to be able to disable a camera so it will never appear? That would cause a problem becuase on the default view buttins (4,16 ETC) eaxh monitor window is sized and positioned on the last one, so although this would work if only the end ones were disabled if cam2 of 4 was disabled i think it might break things.

wonder how many cams most folks monitor. It would be nice I guess to have the ability to see up to 36 cams, I would imagine that most would have no more than 16 and many 8 or less.

I would agree that most have maybe upto 16. I originally wrote the app because the web view is very hard on the server and doesnt like to be left open for days on end. The system im talking about has 25 cams on it. So allowing for expansion etc i though 32. 32 way doesnt make for a nice split so i upped it to 36 and when i have time ill up it further (not really for the split screens but for the map view and alarm popup etc when i get that done.

Can the screens be dynamic according to number of cams defined ?
Instead of being limited to grouping in 4, 9 13 etc. and then having the non defined cams displayed. If not maybe 2,4,6,8,10,12,16,36 may be more useuful for most if they can not be dynamic.

im unsure here, do you mean chnage the views dependant upon the number of cams in use? But i do agree i need to make some more default views, let me know on this as i think i need your input on what you want to be able to put it in.

I am not fully sure I understood your defaults in refesh rates.
I understand the default, but not sure of the >4 >6 etc wih the defaults set. Would it be possible to set a refesh rate for each cam, with maybe a copied default ?

Default refresh rates with the > in are for when there are more than 4 monitors in view you can slow down your refresh rate if you are remote. Ie on the 16 way split it cant get images every second so you could slow it down to say 4 seconds if your link would handle it. Unfortunatly i messed up the default values and you need to change them to be 000's as they are in milliseconds.

The only other grand thing I could think of is the ability to record a selected montior to an .avi or .mpg for a watched alarm etc.

I agree and it is planned, i was only going to use this when i got playback sorted so images could be exported (as you can now with zm) then converted into mpeg, avi and hopefully dvd. I will look atthis shortly to see if i can add it to the map viewer live viewer and record the stream. It wouldnt work on the split screens due to the delay and huge resources needed.
On another note i think this app with all the options turned on needs quite a lot of raw power ie 1.5Ghz p4 and 512Mb minumum. It will run on older hardware but needs all the fancy features turned off.

Yes yor obs definetly help first i have had really. I didnt even know if anyone was using it with any success.

Thanks

[jameswilson]

i have implimented all 36 cams as either zm or url.
also made the live viewer (currently only available from map view) record to local disk. Now that i can make it record stills to hard disk i will write an avi/mpeg option to it to make a viseo file from the local stream. Will let you know when its complete then i will make it available for download

[wa4bro]

Thanks for letting me give the feedback. I think it is a super addition!

Most fo the webcam programs deliver an image on each request, so I would think asking for the image and not asking for the next until it loads should work better or actually better give it a timeout say as you say 10 seconds and then ask for it again. This would work better for say semi-static images by url. As in the case of my current weather conditions image that is updated and sent to the server every 60 seconds. It would still eventually refesh it when it changed. Then from cams each request should work as usual.

Lets see if I can explain by image button dynamics better.

Say I am running only 8 cams. I would like to be able to disable all cams above 8 by a click box so that you could only get views for the number of cams you have defined. THis would keep you from say clicking 16 cams and having 8 that is not displaying an image and 8 that are..... I realiize all cams defined must remain in numeric count 1-36 I would not expect to define 8 then come in the 22nd. position and define one.

Does this make sense? I think buttons at the top for maybe the 1st 8 then maybe just to 16,32, 36 etc would be better for those using 16 cams or less. I suspect actually not many run more than 8 although there are plenty 16 port cards in use...

Sounds good on record etc. I have not defined a map or played with that yet. Guess it is next on my list.....

I think it is a Killer app James and I suspect there are many lurkers out there like me that is testing it without speaking up. Some folks like feedback and others get offended by it... I usually take my chances.... easier to disappear than to apperar

Thanks for all the work.... I'll be watching and follwoing along.

Dan
http://RoswellWeather.Net

[jameswilson]

no i definetly want fedback as im a bit new to this writing software lark so i need all the feedback i can get.

I see what you mean now about the image buttons, how does this sound,
Have the various view buttons enable and disable in settings so that the larger views could be disabled if not required and the cycle view is programable anyway. What i need to do is create some more standard views like 5 way etc. What do you think the layout for these views should be. I have already included the common ones available on commercial dvr software so just need to see a loyout and i will make it, ie 3 way etc etc.

Im gonna impliment a forced update option in settings defaulted to 60 seconds. Obviously this could be changed down to .5 second if you wanted. Basically it will just request a new image at the frequency of forced update to prevent the lockups your seeing. I assume you have incresed the refresh rates now of the larger views else it will be trying to refresh at 2 ms!!!.

Thanks for saying its a killer app!! makes my day lol

On the record front i have made it so far that it records whatever is displayed in the live viewing window(which i know needs more work) and grabs a new image every 0.5 seconds. This image is then saved to disk in a similar way to zm
it uses the directory given in settings and then creates a new folder every time the record button is pressed. I have limited the record time to 20000 images at the moment in case it gets turned on and forgotton and fills the drive.
The problem i am having now is how to change the jpg from jpgs into a video. I didnt want to use anything external as i wanted my app to do everything (ie no dependancies.)> I would have thought that creating an avi was quite simple but i cant find any examples (that i understand) at the moment. But obviuosly once i do its a simple matter of creating a vid from the stored jpg. I had thought about just playing back the jpgs but id rather create a video on stop and remove the previous jpg to prevent hard drive fill up.

Thanks again