New Skin Available - Feedback wanted

[arc]

Hey all, I've completed a new ZM skin that I think is somewhat unique in being a more actively responding console for continuous monitoring. I made it because I needed this sort of thing, but I think others might be interested in it. I also would not mind feedback on it.

However, having a brand new account on this forum, it is not allowing me to post the URL of the web page I made about it. I'd be happy to put in the link to the web page if someone is interested and can tell me how to do that give the restrictions I am under.

-tony

[arc]

Sorry, should have added a little bit of an overview to my previous posting so it does not sound like such a mysterious thing:

Key Features of the new skin:

- Auto Video Switching : In the normal mode of operation, it displays a live camera feed and the list of the latest events. When it detects a new camera event, it automatically begins to play the video of that event as well as automatically switching to the live view to the camera where the event originated. This gives a complete hands-off way to see events as they happen ensuring the most important video feeds are being shown at the right time.

- New Event Notifications : When a new camera event is detected, it will also flash the background color of the console and give an audible alert. This provides two ways to draw attention to the event. Event notifications and/or sound can be disabled when the user's attention is already on the console, or events are expected.

- User Awareness : Besides providing an auto-updating interface, the user is also able to interact to view the latest events or specific live camera streams. The console is smart about staying out of the way when the user is interacting with it and resumes auto-updates when it detects the user is done with their task.

- Dynamic Full Screen Sizing : The console will scale to the full size of your browser window to provide the largest possible view of the cameras. It also scales all camera feeds to perfectly fit in the given area. If you change the window size, it will adjust its layout accordingly to keep it filling the window. This works on tablets as well: if you rotate them from portrait to landscape, the console layout will change.

[twice]

very nice ,,, indeed
it needs a close link or the connection stays alive even after the page is closed
i was running network minitor and noticed this "but zm is the same unless you hit the close link"
and monitor controls would be nice i like to turn mine on and off ,,

keep up the good work lookin good
regards
Twice

[arc]

The "closing connection" issue you hit on is important. While doing a lot of reloads while debugging, I used up all the mysql connections and put it in a very unhappy state. Long term stress testing is something I am doing now, but it probably makes no sense until I clean up the connection closing as I am sure to run into trouble otherwise.

Couple other things I am/have added:

1) Differentiating between true alarms and simply seeing a motion event.

2) I've also added the ability to have the live feeds come direct from the camera if you have a IP camera to reduce the server loads. I have not figured out how to make this an easy option to use yet, so it's something you would have to poke values into a PHP file to get working. I figure I'll add some configuration page if it becomes an external demand.

I appreciate the feedback. Always helpful to get more eyeballs on it and to prioritize the things to fix.

-tony

[arc]

p.s., And yes, enable/disable of monitors is very important.

I only half understand the code that does that, so will take a deeper dive to get that feature in there. It is something I use a lot also.

[twice]

please do let me know when you get the "close issue" resolved i would like to test more with this
as of now the connections are slowing most all down


regards
Twice

PS i had this loaded on 1.26.x and all worked fine

[jameswilson]

Am i missing how to use / install this skin? Also screen shots would be nice.

[arc]

Re: How to install/screenshots.

I was not being allowed to post a URL where you can download it and see screen shots, so have to use this obfuscated thing that I hope you can figure out.

Domain name is "cassandra org". Path is "software".

Sorry about that.

[arc]

please do let me know when you get the "close issue" resolved i would like to test more with this
as of now the connections are slowing most all down


regards
Twice

PS i had this loaded on 1.26.x and all worked fine

Will do and thanks for letting me know about 1.26. I've been afraid to upgrade for fear of breaking things.

I am actively working on the next version. I will address the close issue, as well as adding the monitor enable/disable feature.

[arc]

very nice ,,, indeed
it needs a close link or the connection stays alive even after the page is closed
i was running network minitor and noticed this "but zm is the same unless you hit the close link"
and monitor controls would be nice i like to turn mine on and off ,,

keep up the good work lookin good
regards
Twice

Been working on the closing of connections issue and am having problems. The close links ZM provides on their windows do not seem to be doing anything special. There is nothing that is explicity trying to close any connections as far as I can tell. Can you give me a little more details on exactly what you saw? What type of connections were staying alive and to what service were they for?

There is also an issue with trying to close the window from javascript if javascript did not open the window. Thus, if you load the console in a browser tab, it is not possible to provide a javascript "close" link. However, this is not an issue really. If I can find out how to close the connections that are staying open, I can hook this into the window.onbeforeunload event to clean things up no matter how you close the window/tab.

-tony

[arc]

I've finished a round of updates to this new skin which include:

- Redid the monitoring and signalling to separate out event data signals from camera alarm/alert signals.

- Added ability to enable/disable cameras.

- Added better visuals when alarm/alert exists.

- Added ability to get direct feeds from IP cameras.

Again, without being able to post a URL, it can be found at "cassandra::org" under the path "software".

As far as the "close connection" issue, I did add some cleanup code for stopping timers that were doing periodic AJAX requests, so that might help, though I am not sure what type of connections were failing to close as of yet.

-tony

[twice]

nice progress keep up the good work !!

the close issue seems to be gone ,if the monitors are not in modect you get a waiting .......
being able to see the state of the monitor would be great

regards Twice

[arc]

nice progress keep up the good work !!

the close issue seems to be gone ,if the monitors are not in modect you get a waiting .......
being able to see the state of the monitor would be great

regards Twice

Regarding the close issue, it might have been related to those background timers, though I would have hoped the browser would clean those things up. Still, explicitly kiling the timers on exit is probably the proper way to nicely shut things down.

I only have modect monitors set up for myself, so I did not really think through the right way to deal with other types of monitors. Dealing with monitor groups is another thing on my to-do list that I suspect would matter to people with more than a handful of cameras. I'll also put on my list handling non-modect monitors.

As far as seeing the monitor "state", do you mean whether they are in Alert or Alarm states? If so, it already does this in the montage mode, but I did not add it for the single view mode, but that would be easy to do. I've put it on the to-do list.

Again, I appreciate the feedback. Very helpful.

-tony

[twice]

i was refering to the state of the monitor IE: monitor,,modect,modcord,record so on
thanks for the quick responce

regards,
Twice

[arc]

As suggested, though I had trouble putting a URL to the page, here are the screenshots that page contains.