Re-Deploying Quad Cam Screen - cam trickery?

[Armor Gnome]

I tossed this idea out in another thread and wanted input on it.

LMCE has browser favorites for things like weather & yahoo, I have played with the climate plugin to pull local airport weather (based on a wiki article, thank you to that author) and would like to attempt an all-in-one info screen for lmce.  I would like to have as much local information as I can streaming to my screen as possible so that I can leave it playing on a couple Media Directors while I move around the house getting ready in the morning.  Steal a peek while pouring coffee, pause to look at it while I am brushing my teeth.. things like that.

"Camera1" Generic_IP_Cam pointed to an internet streaming frame of local weather
"Camera2" Generic_IP_Cam pointed to a local weatherbug streaming video of skycam
"Camera3" Generic_IP_Cam find some embedded local newscast in a browser window and point to that
"Camera4" Generic_IP_Cam pointed to Yahoo.traffic view of my area

Using Quadview Cam screen have all these streams onscreen and be able to switch between them full-screen (or at least bigger)

I can set it up this way to see if it works, and if anyone else would like similar I could remake camera templates similar to IP_Camera called "Browser Stream" and using HADesigner re-deploy quad-view as something called Local_News_Screen.  Thoughts?


 

[mkbrown69]

I have played with the climate plugin to pull local airport weather (based on a wiki article, thank you to that author)

I'm interested in doing something like that too... Misterhouse has a "weather hash", and various scripts & plugins that will populate the weather hash (temperature, humidity, rain fall, wind speed, etc) to allow for automation to take action based on weather conditions.  Could you put up the link to the wiki article, and maybe describe how you're using it?

Thanks!

/Mike

[Armor Gnome]

Here is the link to the wiki article that started me thinking about these possibilities:

NOAA Weather

I tried following the author's instructions verbatim but wasn't able to get it working on my setup.  So with all thanks to the original author for the idea I have begun thinking of ways I would like to do something similar.  Below are some links for my area and my plans to use them.

Step 1>  Find a plain text forecast.  I need to write a small program to go to url and get local conditions.
Step 2>  Have text-to-speech read that page to me on request (a scene under climate on the orbiter would be awesome)
Step 2(alt)>  If text-to-speech can not read from a url, I will need to dump the URL info to a tmp file and have it read that.  One challenge with this will be having the dump overwrite the same file location and name, so that my command will always read the same location.

I have a handful of ideas I am going to be trying out today.  When I have functional templates I will update.  If anyone else is working on similar I would appreciate any information on things you had success with and avenues that met the "you shall not pass" wall.

My links:

Still Image, local view of the sky
Another local cam I can tap into
Detailed weather page for on-screen display
And the golden find of the morning!
Simple text local forecast

If nothing else, I at least have some quick bookmarks for weather to pull up in the computing menu and a few local cam feeds to hopefully add to climate area of my orbiters instead of security area (as they would if I set them up as standard cameras).

To find local cam feeds I just googled my city and "cam" and to get text weather report I went to weather.gov and selected text view after putting in my zip.  I am between major cities in Michigan so didn't have a lot of cams to choose from, in non-rural areas you should be able to find dozens of streetview cams!

[Armor Gnome]

I ended up writing a simple shell script, I will copy it below but first I will share the utility I am using:

Code: [Select]

sudo apt-get install weather-util

Now you will need a 4 digit code for your local area, such as an airport or a tv/radio station.  In my area that would be "KGRR"  That is communicated to weather-utils by entering:

Code: [Select]

weather --id=KGRR

To get current weather just repeat the above command in a terminal.  Now to put that into a shell command I opened a text editor (kwrite) and put in the following.

#!/bin/bash
clear
weather --id=KGRR >> readweather.txt

*Yeah I warned you it was my first.  All this does is clears the terminal, runs the weather --id=(local code) and writes it to a text file.  I still need to somehow set a path to this text file so it doesn't have to be run from its current directory but I haven't got that far yet into scripting.  Once I get that straightened out I will make the .sh executable and setup for lmce to run.

The last part, getting text-to-speech to read the txt file I am having issues with.  The events writer allows me to read 'quoted statements' and I can't figure out how to have it read from a path.  Perhaps I need to command festival to read the file and capture its audio output to .mp3 behind the scenes.  Then instead of using text-to-speech I would have my event play that mp3 via Xine.   Either way I have the absolute basics and progressing nicely!

[golgoj4]

me likey!

golgoj4