MeteoCam

Introduction

As a special feature CumulusUtils - from 5.6.0 - also supports a webcam in basic form (CamType=Manual) and the Ecowitt HP10 camera (CamType=EcowittHP10).

Manual

The user can specify an image basename for the cam image (on the server where the Cutils site is located) which will be displayed in the ReportView and refreshed every refresh period (of the realtime data). It is the users responsibility to configure the cam and the tools to get the image on the server.

Also timelapse video's are supported. The user can select either the meteo cam image view or the timeelapse video view through radio buttons. The timelapse video can be selected through a drop down selector. It is the users responsibility to configure the timelapse videos and have them available on the server.

In future and on request some additional functionalities may/will be added like multiple cam selection, a live stream (if you have one).

Ecowitt HP10

If the user specifies this type he only has to configure the file utils/meteocamrealtime.txt (generated by CUtils). The module then displays the image from the camera and refreshes it at the frequency the user has configured in the camera. Timelapses are not supported because Ecowitt does not give a URL through the software but generates the mpg4 on request in the app.

Inifile parameters

 [MeteoCam]
 MeteoCamMenu=true                ; When false no MeteoCam menu item will be displayed, the MeteoCam is not available
 MeteoCamDir=.                    ; The actual directory where the meteocam files can be found. If empty the webroot is used
 MeteoCamName=meteocam.jpg        ; the name of meteocam image. Any image type which can be displayed in the browser will do. e.g. meteocam.jpg
 TimelapseExtension=mp4           ; the extension used. Possible values: mp4 (default), webm and ogg
 CamType                          ; either Manual (default) or EcowittHP10

The shown values for Dir and Name are the defaults.

Inner Working

Each realtime refresh time the meteocam image is reloaded. It is advised not to set a too high frequency. One second e.g. is too high. 30 seconds should be OK. The refresh is done while bypassing the cache so a reload always actually takes place physically.

For the timelapse videos, when starting up, all available videos with the configured extension are fetched and displayed in the drop down list. The user can select any and when activating the timelapse through the radio button that video starts playing immediately. The default HTML5 video viewer is used which means only mp4, webm and ogg are allowed.

Limitation

The server has to not be actively blocking the javascript from viewing the directory. In other words, the server hasn't turned indexing off, and the directory doesn't have an index.html or equivalent to rewrite any attempt to index, and the server isn't doing some url-rewriting. In other words, this should work in any server environment that doesn't rewrite or block indexes.