ActionTiles Support & Ideas Forum
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Live Traffic travel time Tile! Image from query text using Shields.io
I thought I'd post this to help others. I figured out a way to display the travel time for my wife's commute to work. See the pink tile in the screenshot below...
I used a Google Maps Distance Matrix API call and displayed the result in a Shields.IO badge. (Check out http://shields.io) Then I added the whole darn deal to the My Media section in Action Tiles.
Here's the link I used, broken into pieces...
Base URL: https://img.shields.io/badge/dynamic/json.svg
Badge Options (no label, pink color, time query, badge style): ?label= &colorA=ff69b4&colorB=ff69b4&prefix=&suffix=&query=$..duration_in_traffic.text&style=flat-square
Google Maps API call: &uri=https%3A%2F%2Fmaps.googleapis.com%2Fmaps%2Fapi%2Fdistancematrix%2Fjson%3Funits%3Dimperial%26departure_time%3Dnow%26origins%3D[origin address]%26destinations%3D[your destination address]%26key%3D[your API key]
You'll have to generate and use a Google API key and the URI has to be encoded with all those silly % escape codes. The Dynamic Generator at the bottom of the Shields.io page will help you out with the pieces. It was a bit of trial and error. Here's what it looks like all put together in the My Media image URL field...
https://img.shields.io/badge/dynamic/json.svg?label= &colorA=ff69b4&colorB=ff69b4&prefix=&suffix=&query=$..duration_in_traffic.text&style=flat-square&uri=https%3A%2F%2Fmaps.googleapis.com%2Fmaps%2Fapi%2Fdistancematrix%2Fjson%3Funits%3Dimperial%26departure_time%3Dnow%26origins%3D[your origin address]%26destinations%3D[your destination address]%26key%3D[your API key]
As everything seems to be, it's a little bit of a hack (text not centered), and the image and text proportion is stretched/crunched from the original (just like weather maps, camera images, etc.) but it seems to be working pretty well. One of the cool things is that it's actually an SVG, so no quality is lost if you make the tile bigger or look at it in a full-screen view.
Hope this helps!
Anyone able to get Nest camera working?
I have the nest-manager device types installed for my cameras from:
https://github.com/tonesto7/nest-manager
This lets me see an image of my cameras in the SmartThings app, but when I look in ActionTiles, it shows only two capabilities: Switch and Image Capture. I tried importing Image Capture but the tile doesn't seem to do anything.
I've also tried using the image URL approach, but this only works for a short time until my browser logs out of Nest and the URL no longer works.
The Nest thermostat integration works really well though!
Anyone have any success with the cameras?
tinyCam Pro Android App web server: Stream RTSP and Wyze Cam to ActionTiles!
After attempting to stream using Blue Iris (CPU on the server went through the roof), and not having any success using some of the other methods found here on the forum, I decided to give tinyCam a try.
There was another post that made a passing reference to the tinyCam webserver, so I installed the app on my Nexus 9, setup webserver and am now able to stream one of my outside security cams to a media tile.
Here's the media setup panel...
The problem I'm having is that I can't seem to address any of the other three cameras. There is supposedly a parameter to select a camera, but it's not working for me. Here's the request parameters from the Tinycam webserver API...
Perhaps there are others using tinyCam Pro Webserver that might share their experiences...
Demo / Tutorial Videos:
Our friend at TaylorTech (vlog) has added 2 YouTube tutorial/demo videos for this Topic:
Part 1:
Part 2:
Blue Iris MJPEG Video stream stops or locks up
https://support.actiontiles.com/communities/12/topics/1438-video-stream-stops
Basically its the same thing thats is occuring in the topic above
OS - android
Browser - Firefox 52
Camera Feed - Blue iris Mjpg feed
The feed works great for 5-8 hrs then it freezes on the panel, a refresh fixes it and it works again for another 5+
Share your favorite Weather Media Tiles?
This national weather radar is so far my most useful Media Tile. I configured it for 3x2 tile size. Someday I intend to have a front door camera Media Tile.
- If the image in a Post has been placed with a full URL link to the original; just right-click and choose "Copy image address."
- There might be enough clues in the address to find the source website so you can find variations, such as local weather.
- When posting, if you used the "<>" (HTML edit feature) to surround the URL of the image source with <pre> and </pre>, then the URL will be show in text instead of the image ... or try the "Code" Formatting option (under the paragraph symbol ¶).
Life360 Live Map
I wonder if it's possible to have a tile set to show the exact map location of a family member through life360. And, if not with life360, would there be any other service possible? I'm looking for something that'll update once every five minutes or so, or faster.
I have doubts that there is any practical way for us to implement this. Remember: ActionTiles only interfaces with the information provided to it by SmartThings, and all that SmartThings offers is "present" and "non-present" - not any sort of map coordinates that can be used to generate an embedded map.
If the popularity of this rises, we can put it on the list for further research. Life 360 users are a small subset of SmartThings customers. It would be great if SmartThings itself served more complex objects such as maps - and made them available in a format (like Base64 encoded PNG) that could be easily embedded into any web page or App. Samsung has $ millions in resources - here's hoping that some of that trickles down into real innovations for the SmartThings platform!
RPi Camera Feed via Web Interface?
I use RPi Cam Web Interface on a Raspberry Pi for a security camera and I'm trying to get that working in AT. Details here:
https://elinux.org/RPi-Cam-Web-Interface
in my browser, "basic" feed will be something like:
http://192.168.123.456:1234/cam/min.php
But I can't get this to work in AT. Any help would be gratefully received.
I created a Sunrise/Sunset Tile!
I'm sharing this for others to use!
Use this Media Still Image URL:
Use the base URL https://sunsettile.app/sunset for sunset and https://sunsettile.app/sunrise for sunrise
Required parameters:
lat (latitude)
long (longitude)
bgcolor (background color - hex color without #)
fgcolor (foreground color - hex color without #)
Optional parameter:
timeformat=24 (For 24 hour time)
Please set the refresh time to at least every 12 hours (43200 seconds) to be nice to my server.
Hikvision cameras for action tiles
This took me a while to figure out so I thought I would share. I have a number of Hikvision cameras around the house, I had a hard time getting them to display on Action tiles. All the literature said to do this:
http://username:password@ip/Streaming/channels/2/picture
The above did not work for me! Pasting the above worked great in a Chrome browser but not in IE or Edge. It didn't work at all in action tiles. I did not get any image either in My Media or on the panel.
I finally found something that worked... I had to encode the username and password into base64 and append to the end like this:
http://192.168.1.xx/streaming/channels/102/picture?auth=VGhpcyBpcyBqdXN0IGEgdGVzdA==
I added the part "?auth=" and then pasted in the encoded "username:password"
This worked great for pictures. I used this site for encoding: https://www.base64encode.org/
It works for video too but while I can see the video on the "My Media" test, I can't get it to display on the actual panel.
Any ideas? Overall, I'm very happy with this product and bought two licenses (one for each of my hubs).
Erik
Grabbing TrafficCam links or just focusing in on browser?
I'm having a really hard time finding the streaming link to some of the traffic cams from my city's website:
http://edmontontrafficcam.com/
I've tried inspect element, url sniffers...etc.
Is there a way to create a tile that will focus in on a specific area of a website? Or is it just through a url only.
Thanks in advance.
DAKboard alternatives? Weather Underground API discontinued for Personal Weather Stations
WU has ended PWS APIs. So Dakboard can't pull my weather station data. That was a NICE feature. Is there a workaround or another screensaver like Dakboard?
Option for still image Media to open streaming video upon zoom
I'm pretty sure this has been discussed, but I couldn't find anything recent about it. So...
Has there ever been any more discussion about having the option to click a still image media tile and have it open the mjpg video feed when it enlarges?
I assume the reasoning is obvious, but for me, it would be ideal if I could have the thing that's on all the time just be an occasionally refreshed still image, and then go 'live' when I click on it.
Webcams not refreshing when opened
Hi,
I have two different panels with webcam feeds (mjpeg). When viewing panel and clicking one of the webcam feeds I get bigger window of that certain webcam. When I close that windows it doesn't show feed anymore because it freezes and shows only still photo of that moment when bigger window was closed. Whole panel has to be refreshed to wake webcam stream again. Opening one of the streams doesn't freeze other webcam feeds. It only freezes one that was opened. If I open other still working feeds they all act same way. Any ideas how to fix this?
It doesn't matter if I'm using laptop or tablet. It happens in every device.
Hi Jani,
Media Tiles are very tricky for us, since we are trying to find technical solution that would work for most browsers and camera models. Unfortunately, there are more combinations of software and hardware than we can reliably support.
Some cameras only allow one stream to be opened at one time, so when the image is enlarged, the camera might be having trouble closing one video stream and opening another one right away.
We have come across some new information and have a new idea to implement. This would hopefully address your issue, however we cannot provide an ETA for a solution at this time.
We invite you to reach out to ActionTiles community or SmartThings User Group on Facebook for peer support. We have great and helpful communities.
Thanks
Alex
Ring Pro (doorbell camera)
Im looking into getting a Ring Pro doorbell but would I be able to add the live feed into action tiles?
Thanks!
Denny
Unfortunately, to the best of my knowledge, the Ring Pro uses a closed video feed locked to their cloud, and thus it cannot be accessed by ActionTiles.
Here's a reddit that discusses the issue:
But more up to date; SmartThings Community Topic:
We recommend that customers encourage their camera providers to provide video feeds in standard LAN (local area network) accessible formats.
Weather Tile widget generation from theweather.com
I found a new resource that could come in handy for AT. It's a weather widget that can generate an image, rather than just html. Its fully customization, and may work for other tile sizes. I just started screwing around with it. check it out:
The source can be found here - https://www.theweather.com/widget/
Nest Cam cameras
Has there been any progress made on using NEST cameras that are not Public in Actiontiles? My Actiontiles setup is so close to perfect but not having my camera feeds makes it fall just short. I am hoping there has been some progress in the last year.
We have done minimal research on this because video is not our area of expertise or focus. ActionTiles is firstly a "view & touch" browser-compatible dashboard control app for SmartThings. Media Tiles are a convenient bonus feature subject to the limitations of a web-app / browser viewer.
There are a few articles on the net which refer to either official APIs for Nest products and/or unofficial hacks.
We invite any tech savvy readers to develop "proofs-of-concept" which stream a Nest Cam in a plain browser window, iFrame, <img> or <video> embeds, and if the concept is sound, we would be inspired to explore it further.
A few example starting points:
- Official "no streaming API is available" per Nest: https://nestdevelopers.io/t/streaming-from-indoor-outdoor-cams/1074 - "Unfortunately there’s no way to directly stream the live camera feed within a non-Nest application using the Nest API. You have to redirect the user to one of the two browser options as you described (public_share_url or web_url)."
- https://dennisdel.com/blog/nest/ - This refers to a hack which grabs the stream for the purpose of self-cloud storage. However, it includes the use of "ffmpeg" which has real-time transcoding abilities, and could perhaps be used to serve an MJPEG to ActionTiles. The user would require a server (rPi, Linux, Windows?) on their network to do the transcoding.
- https://medium.com/@smhillin/connecting-to-nest-camera-api-and-getting-live-url-d69e58d093d
- https://www.binarypower.com/2017/02/record-google-nest-cam-from-blue-iris.html
Most likely feasible: 1 fps snapshots served via tinyCam Monitor Pro:
The clever developer of the Android App - tinyCam Monitor Pro is the only application which supports logging into and streaming Wyze Cams; even though tinyCam has open sourced the unofficial API they discovered & used:
Well, tinyCam Monitor also supports Nest Cam but, consistent with the API limitations described above), only at a maximum of 1 frame-per-second. In other words, it probably grabs JPEG snapshots and assembles them into a stream. Since tinyCam Monitor Pro can transcode to MJPEG by spinning up internal web server, this stream should embed into ActionTiles just like Wyze Cam - including basic user/password protection.
- Here is the list of tinyCam supported cameras: https://tinycammonitor.com/support.html
If similar to Wyze, then tinyCam must use your Nest credentials to login to your camera(s). This has certain risks, since you can't be 100% certain tinyCam doesn't leak your credentials or use them to access other functions of your Nest Account (thermostat, security, etc.). Whether this is more or less secure overall than just using a public live view of each Nest Cam, is up to you to decide.
The various examples above may be somewhat more direct in accessing JPG snapshots from a Nest Cam - but they are non-trivial. tinyCam is most feasible because we already know that it "gets the job done" (imperfectly) for Wyze Cam and local RTSP cameras, so I'm rather confident if they claim Nest works, it will work.
You can run the tinyCam Monitor Pro Android App on the same tablet as ActionTiles (though that does not increase efficiency and can hurt tablet performance), or on another Android tablet, Android emulator, or Android TV Box. I am currently testing this $36 low-end S904W based Android TV box with tinyCam (for 2 Wyze Cams), and so far the results aren't bad. I'll write up my results in more detail if the configuration turns out to be stable.
So... Why not give tinyCam Monitor Pro a try?
...Terry.
Use a Tile with Fully Kiosk to open an external web page and navigate back to AT when done?
I want to be able to see and interact with my shared "Family" Google calendar. There may be a better way, but this is what I'm doing:
In ActionTiles I have created an ActionTiles shortcut that links directly to the URL of my shared Google Calendar.
In my Home Panel, I have a tile that simply opens that Shortcut. I have the ActionTile option set to "Open shortcut in the same window". Assuming I'm logged into Google, it opens the calendar.
But now I'm sort of stuck with how to navigate back to my Home ActionTiles panel from the Google Calendar. Is there a combination of settings in Fully Kiosk (with plus) that I can use to make this behave desirably? To navigate from Google, but without needing Fully Kiosk navigation bars present when using ActionTiles
Or maybe there is a more elegant approach or integration for working with my google calendar. In my searches I haven't found one.
Disregard my post. For those that come after me, I found the solution here:
While the solution has changed very slightly because of an update to Fully Kiosk, it is basically the same.
- In Fully Kiosk, I went to Settings>Web Content Settings and turned on "Open URL Schemes in Other Apps".
- Then I went back one menu in Fully Kiosk settings and went into "Universal Launcher".
- Select "Select Items to Show". I couldn't get it to work by using "Add URL" as described in the support doc above. However, I used "Add Application", and from there it lists applications installed on my tablet. I chose the Google Calendar app and it automatically entered "com.google.android.calendar/com.android.calendar.AllInOneActivity" for me.
- Then I went to ActionTiles. I created a shortcut and used the URL "intent:#Intent;launchFlags=0x10000000;component=com.google.android.calendar/com.android.calendar.AllInOneActivity;end".
- Then I added an ActionTile to my Panel using that shortcut. Make sure to go into the Tile Settings for that ActionTile and click the radio button "Open shortcut in the same window".
Now I have an action tile that will launch Google Calendar in a Fully Kiosk window, and it will have the navigation bar at the bottom to let me return to ActionTiles when I'm done with the calendar. The behaviour is as exactly as I wanted.
Nest Hello suddenly started auto-playing within it's media tile
I hope I'm not the only one but my Nest Hello doorbell camera today started auto-playing video within its media tile without having to click on it and press play like I previously had to. I assume someone waved their magic wand and made this work. Kudos to you!
RTSP protocol for video feeds
Hello. I have some foscam cameras that I would like to add as media tiles. Unfortunately these two particular camera models do not support http streaming but DO support streaming with RTSP.
Do you/will you support?
Unfortunately, we have no optimistic leads at this time for direct RTSP support.
Blue Iris: Cycle through cameras?
Within my LAN I have been able to successfully access my Blue Iris Streams from the Service using the method here. Replacing the "Short_Camera_Name" in this string with "Index"will display the full set of cameras in one screen. Is it possible to bring up the view which cycles through the cameras with some other name in place of "Short_Camera_Name"??? If so I have not been able to determine what that name is.......
Actually found my answer after doing some searches. This can be accessed and works well. Where I had replaced the "Short_Camera_Name" in the string with "Index" to see all of the Cameras, replacing the "Short_Camera_Name" in the string with "@Index" will have this media tile cycle through all available cameras. I found pulling in multiple cameras into a panel at one time caused the Blue Iris Server CPU usage to go way up. Doing this allowed me to have the one tile cycle through the cameras more or less accomplishing what I wanted with one Tile and Stream.
Customer support service by UserEcho
