Images uploaded to FTP site, now how to view them?

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tonyw
Posts: 5
Joined: Thu Aug 23, 2012 8:59 am

Images uploaded to FTP site, now how to view them?

Post by tonyw »

Am testing out YawCam and it's working well. I'm using motion detection and on motion, uploading images by FTP to webspace. But how to view the pictures?

My desired effect is:
- On motion upload image to web server
- Keep latest 30 images on the webserver, delete older ones
- View images in a web page,
e.g., www.mywebserver.com/webcam/index.htlm

Currently I have to FTP to the webspace and open the images up one by one.

I've used other webcam surveillance software that creates the HTML and loads it to the webspace, and keeps a user definable number of images on the webspace.

thanks
betwixt
Posts: 9
Joined: Sat Mar 27, 2010 10:24 pm

Post by betwixt »

Create your own web page and within it, add an image using the same name you are using for the upload. Yawcam will update the image each time it uploads to the site.

If you want the viewer to see the updated image without having to reload or refresh the page, add:
<META HTTP-EQUIV="refresh" CONTENT="XX; URL=http://your web page here">

where XX is the number of seconds between the page automatically refreshing and "your web page here" is a link to the page itself.

Brian.
tonyw
Posts: 5
Joined: Thu Aug 23, 2012 8:59 am

Post by tonyw »

Hi Brian,
Thanks for the tip. I've done that with a single uploaded image. I'm interested in creating a webpage with say 30 of the most recent images. It usually takes a sequence of images to tell the story whereas one image is just one instant. I can load many images with Yawcam by adding a timestamp to the filename. Bu I don't know enough about programming to be able to know ahead of time what the filename will be to have it appear in a webpage.

Another program I've used (Tincam) automatically creates the wepage html file, uploads the html, and posts a user selectable number of images to the Web server. If I have it set to show 30 images on the webpage, then only the most recent 30 images are retained. The software must be doing some filename renaming and file deletion. This is beyond me to program. My problem is with recent software upgrades on that PC (at my wife's business), that PC and/or program are no longer posting the images (but it posts the HTML just fine), so I'm looking for an alternative. Yawcam is working but my wife can no longer go to a webbrowser and check on the premises. She has to download and open each image to see what is going on. And the images accumulate quickly on the Web server and it takes some maintenance to delete old image files.

I've been searching high and low and most motion detection WebCam software will post the images but not give you an easy way to view the images without opening them up one by one, or limiting the number of images to one with a static file name and displaying it in a webpage.
memoric
Posts: 184
Joined: Wed Feb 23, 2011 1:37 pm

Post by memoric »

You can use variables in the folder's names too, so at least the images would
be arranged & easier to delete. For viewing them you are going to need PHP,
as a simple HTML page won't be able to show them since the filenames are
"unknown (random)". Do you know if your server supports PHP?
tonyw
Posts: 5
Joined: Thu Aug 23, 2012 8:59 am

Post by tonyw »

[quote="memoric" Do you know if your server supports PHP?[/quote]

Hi memoric
Yes, my webhosting subscription provides support for PHP. That gave me an idea, my webhosting service includes the Softalicious collection of scripts in the control panel. I found one script "phpAlbum" which creates photo galleries. It's meant for people to upload images but I thought I'd point it to an existing album already on the FTP site posted by Yawcam and behold, phpAlbum scanned the directory of images posted by Yawcam and displayed the images on a webpage in my browser! I set phpAlbum to sort by date descending so the newest images are displayed at the top of the page and the older ones at the bottom. To be clear, I'm seeing the pictures of what the webcam captured, not just a directory listing of the picture files.

So that's half the battle. Next I need to limit the number of images posted.

Thanks for the spark (your mention of PHP). That's a good start.

-Tony
memoric
Posts: 184
Joined: Wed Feb 23, 2011 1:37 pm

Post by memoric »

Ah nice! Tbh I didn't even think of that (since I like writing my own stuff) but
I'm glad I "helped"! :P
As for the limited number of images, I guess that's up to Malun to "fix". It'd
be a very useful feature to have...
tonyw
Posts: 5
Joined: Thu Aug 23, 2012 8:59 am

Post by tonyw »

Hi, I see a related link here http://www.yawcam.com/forum/viewtopic.p ... highlight= with some other possible solutions including uploading images to Google Picasa albums and the feature request to limit uploads to only the last [n] motion detected images.
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