Question on animated Radar image and request for upgrade

Posted on
Tue Oct 10, 2017 11:40 am
norcoscia offline
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Re: Question on animated Radar image and request for upgrade

OK, I just reloaded it and got this - but it did restart after the failed log entry - I'll let you know if it starts to update now. Thx again....

Code: Select all
Oct 10, 2017, 10:37:32 AM
   Error                           process (pid 5030) failed to quit after polite request -- forcing it to quit now

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Norm

Posted on
Tue Oct 10, 2017 12:08 pm
norcoscia offline
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Re: Question on animated Radar image and request for upgrade

Looking in the log I noticed a few things. The reload took a bit over 4 seconds to complete. The next update cycle looks like it took place but took over 31 seconds to finish. I have high logging turned on so not sure if that is causing issues. During the update (about in the middle) it got one error. Near the end of the update cycle it looks like some other process may have timed out and caused errors. Both bits are listed below. I think my API count should be 8 now but it lists 6?

Code: Select all
   Schedule                        Update clock

Oct 10, 2017, 10:53:19 AM
   WUnderground Error              Problem parsing weather device data. Error: (Line 2258  ServerCommunicationError -- timeout waiting for response)
   WUnderground Debug              parseAlerts(self, dev) method called.



Code: Select all
                                  Weather Underground cycle complete.
   WUnderground Debug              triggerFireOfflineDevice method() called.
   Airfoil Pro Error               Error in plugin execution runConcurrentThread:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "plugin.py", line 533, in runConcurrentThread
StandardError: ServerCommunicationError -- timeout waiting for response

   Airfoil Pro Error               plugin runConcurrentThread function returned or failed (will attempt again in 10 seconds)
   arduino                         in Line '390' has error='ServerCommunicationError -- timeout waiting for response'
   NOAA Weather Plus Error         Error in plugin execution runConcurrentThread:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "plugin.py", line 263, in runConcurrentThread
StandardError: ServerCommunicationError -- timeout waiting for response

   NOAA Weather Plus Error         plugin runConcurrentThread function returned or failed (will attempt again in 10 seconds)
   INDIGOplotD Error               Error in plugin execution runConcurrentThread:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "plugin.py", line 8809, in runConcurrentThread
  File "plugin.py", line 5867, in preSelectDevices
StandardError: ServerCommunicationError -- timeout waiting for response

   INDIGOplotD Error               plugin runConcurrentThread function returned or failed (will attempt again in 10 seconds)
   WUnderground Debug              [Plugin execution time: 31.890421 seconds]

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Posted on
Tue Oct 10, 2017 12:12 pm
norcoscia offline
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Re: Question on animated Radar image and request for upgrade

The next update cycle just ran. It looks clean and the .png image was updated - it took ~2 seconds this time - looks like it is updating now....

Code: Select all
                                  Weather Underground cycle complete.
   WUnderground Debug              triggerFireOfflineDevice method() called.
   WUnderground Debug              [Plugin execution time: 02.413828 seconds]

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Norm

Posted on
Tue Oct 10, 2017 12:31 pm
norcoscia offline
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Re: Question on animated Radar image and request for upgrade

I made a mistake - I looked at the satellite image (I have that device too) - it got updated fine but the radar.png has a problem - it is being updated but I can't open it, Preview says it might be corrupted or is unknown (and it is not updating on my control page) which is what made me try to look at it in using the Mac Preview app.

Very weird?

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Posted on
Tue Oct 10, 2017 3:58 pm
DaveL17 offline
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Re: Question on animated Radar image and request for upgrade

Very weird indeed. So there's a couple things here:

Looking at the log messages you posted, it seems that there are other plugins that are (also?) having communication difficulties. I don't believe that the WUnderground plugin would cause that (famous last words!) because it's simply making a call using the standard requests library. (There is a fail safe to revert to using the urllib library if requests fails--which is probably overkill on my part.)

If all goes according to plan, the longest part of the WUnderground plugin refresh cycle is waiting for WU to respond with data we're requesting. My typical refresh for three weather sites and two satellite images is in the 15-20 second range (for the full refresh cycle). Thirty one seconds for your setup is long for sure, but not order of magnitude long. Sounds like some of the refreshes are a bit faster.

Please disable all your plugins and then enable them one by one to see if you can isolate which one is causing the problem (it may in fact be WU, another one, or something else).

Can you give me some vitals on your setup?
Indigo Version:
OS X Version:
WU Plugin Version:

That you seem to be the only one having difficulty leads me to believe that there might be a broader issue. I'm nowhere near certain or trying to eliminate the WU plugin as the culprit--it's too early to tell.

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Posted on
Tue Oct 10, 2017 5:19 pm
mclass offline
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Re: Question on animated Radar image and request for upgrade

DaveL17 wrote:
Apologies if my previous replies were unclear. I'm afraid I don't know of a way to get animated images to display in Indigo Touch.

Thanks. I think I understood that from other posts in this thread, but have also attempted the refreshing URL method in Touch as discussed.
I am confused as is others about the URL - GIF or PNG. If I use GIF, I get "file not found". Using PNG the image does not 'animate'. What am I missing?


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Posted on
Tue Oct 10, 2017 6:43 pm
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Re: Question on animated Radar image and request for upgrade

mclass wrote:
What am I missing?

I'm going to look into the different log messages to see if I can understand what the various combinations result in.

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Posted on
Wed Oct 11, 2017 6:14 am
DaveL17 offline
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Re: Question on animated Radar image and request for upgrade

Here's what I can find with respect to the behavior we're seeing. All images below are downloaded from the WU API as GIF files (the only image options are GIF and SWF).

  • xxx.GIF file downloaded and saved as xxx.PNG (GIF file with the extension changed to PNG, no other adjustments made to the file). Image added to control page as a Static Image. Indigo Control Page Editor shows "image not found or unreadable". Presumably, this is because the filename is PNG but the file is encoded as GIF. No error message printed to Indigo events log. Image displays properly when viewed in OS X Safari.
  • Same image added to control page as Refreshing Image URL. Error printed to the Indigo events log: "control page image URL invalid: file:///Library/Application Support/Perceptive Automation/Indigo 7/IndigoWebServer/images/controls/static/WUradar.png". Image displays properly when viewed in OS X Safari.
  • Same image duplicated and extension changed to GIF. Added to control page as Refreshing Image URL. Error printed to the Indigo events log: ""Error (client) control page image URL invalid: file:///Library/Application Support/Perceptive Automation/Indigo 7/IndigoWebServer/images/controls/static/WUradar.gif". Image displays properly when viewed in OS X Safari.
  • Downloaded a new file from WU where the source is GIF and the file is saved as GIF: the file displays properly in Indigo Control Page Editor. No error message is displayed to the Indigo events log. Image displays properly when viewed in OS X Safari.
So it appears that Indigo is not particularly pleased that I've changed the extension of the file. That is completely understandable and I wouldn't expect that to change in any way. But moreover, OS X is also in the mix because if I download as GIF --> save as PNG --> rename back to GIF, the file is still not displaying properly.

Bottom line is that I will change the way I treat these files going forward; such that I will save the GIF file as a GIF file and require the user to input the image location as a refreshing image URL. It will no longer be available as a static image control.

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Posted on
Wed Oct 11, 2017 7:54 am
norcoscia offline
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Re: Question on animated Radar image and request for upgrade

I just got a chance to look at 630AM today - sometime between the period of my last report and now it has self corrected and the .png radar image is showing up on my control page (and I'm able to view it locally on the MAC running indigo). So my last problem was (or seemed to be) related to an issue with the file downloaded (or saved) being corrupted.

I'm going to let it run today to see if anything strange happens (or if I have any more problems) before I start turning off any extensions. Right now, it seems to be working fine with no errors in the log and the API count looks to be correct for this amount of time in the day. I'll keep you posted.

I think using the refreshing URL is a better idea - but if you decide to update the docs it would be good to let folks know about opening the image with Safari to save the path - for those URL challenged (like myself) figuring out how to grab the URL path was the hardest part.

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Posted on
Wed Oct 11, 2017 11:26 am
mclass offline
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Re: Question on animated Radar image and request for upgrade

Dave,
Thanks for your efforts in sorting this out! Will watch with interest :D
mclass

Posted on
Wed Oct 11, 2017 1:15 pm
norcoscia offline
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Re: Question on animated Radar image and request for upgrade

Just checking in to say I'm not able to keep this updating w/o messing with it - I can't detect a pattern - it just seems to work for a while and then the image stops updating. If I go in to the touch editor and make any changes it will (most of the time) update and work for a bit (sometimes). But it is not reliable. I had assumed if I selected the animation feature the plug-in would not change the .gif to a .png so I tried that but realized you are (for now) always changing the saved file to a .png

Giving up on the radar image for now until you make the update available that will let me try using it with .GIF files. Thanks for helping, everything else is working great and wanted to let you know this plug-in is one of the things that really motivated me to spend the time to make a nice control page.

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Posted on
Wed Oct 11, 2017 3:42 pm
DaveL17 offline
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Re: Question on animated Radar image and request for upgrade

@norcoscia and @mclass: thanks for the updates.

The image (for now) will always be coerced with a PNG extension as that was the only way to get it to appear in the static image list. Making the change to GIF will be very easy to do on my end, but it will break all installations that use the static image option. I'm sorry in advance for that.

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Posted on
Wed Oct 11, 2017 5:11 pm
norcoscia offline
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Re: Question on animated Radar image and request for upgrade

Dave, I think if you don't what to perturb all the existing users (or most of them) you could just make the image a .gif for anyone that is not using animation. Since a .gif animation will not work with touch anyway. That would allow everyone viewing in a browser to leave things as is since it is working that way now and they are likely viewing with animation. So, if you select the animation check box everything stays the same. If the box is not checked don't change the .gif you pull from the WU server to a .png

I think I got that right - :D

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Posted on
Wed Oct 11, 2017 6:48 pm
DaveL17 offline
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Re: Question on animated Radar image and request for upgrade

Thanks for the consideration, but I think it's the right call to go GIF only.

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Posted on
Thu Oct 12, 2017 5:30 am
DaveL17 offline
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Re: Question on animated Radar image and request for upgrade

I have posted an update to the plugin that addresses the PNG coercion issue.

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