Scenario:

Kiosk Brower

Screensaver with Dakboard

Action Tiles with Media image (refresh every 5 seconds)

The Media image does not refresh anymore after leaving screen.

This was working...

If I try in Chrome works fine. Anyone with same issue?

I'm sharing this for others to use!

Use this Media Still Image URL:

https://sunsettile.app/sunset?lat=38.7535121&long=-120.5807933&bgcolor=3b3749&fgcolor=ffffff&size=3x2

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.

I’m trying to find a good way to get the weather forecast for my location in Canada.  There doesn’t seem to be a SmartThings device that exposes the high/low forecast for the day without custom code.  (The Accuweather tiles don’t seem to work at all).  Would it be best to pursue a media item from a URL?  

Or am I just missing something obvious?

Since the rtsp support seems to be on hold for now I had to return the second camera I ordered on Amazon. But I managed to make one of my old camera work.

PLEASE list the exact brand for your camera here if you can confirm it works for you. This will help others with the new purchases.

Please list the http mask (URL format) you used.

Amazon purchase link also very much appreciated.

Feel free to add sreenshots to your camera tile too.

I'm using the SimpleEventLogger smartapp, currently dumping temperature data data into GoogleSheets (as I've been too lazy to set up a local DBMS until now). It dumps raw sensor data into a sheet and it looks like this

Note: When setting up Simple Eventlogger, under Other options there's "Include additional columns for short date and hour?" Be sure to turn that option ON as we'll need it. (that's column G in the screenshot above) To preserve space set "Delete Extra Columns?" ON as well and set archive type to Out of space. Once your sheet runs full, SimpleEventlogger will rename the sheet and start a new fresh sheet every blue moon, depending on your number of sensors and logging frequency.

Second step is to set up the =QUERY function in google sheets to pull out the last 24 hours.

Mine looks like this. It's a fugly hack but it works.. kinda:

=QUERY(RawData!B:G,"select B,C,D,F,G where C = 'temperature' and F >= date '"&TEXT(DATEVALUE(today()-1),"yyyy-mm-dd")&"'",1)

Third step is to split all the sensor data out into columns for each sensor and create an average datapoint for each sensor per hour. That's where column F above is important, as that's the hour. We need to average as some sensors might be spitting out temperatures every few minutes, so even if I configure your SmartApp only to scan every 30 minutes, it'll pick up all those past sensor readings (haven't quite figured out how to get around thaT)

Anyway, my pivotal thing looks like this:

=Query(B:F, "select F, avg(D) group by F pivot B format avg(D) '###,#0.0'")

As we are grouping by the hour number and the hour number will always be between 00 and 23, this query will always  generate 24 rows, one for each hour, with the average temperature for each sensor in columns J-S. Graphing this is relatively easy and you should be able to figure that out on your own (it's the fun part) However, let me explain G and H below. 

Column H is just a static list of numbers which indicate the hour. I use this to build the X-axis on the graph.

I wanted the graph to show an hour marker for the current hour as the graph does a cyclic update left to right, i.e. it's helpful to see where current time of day is on the graph. Next to the pivotal tables, I inserted the following formula in all cells G1-G24:  =if($H2=hour(now()),$A$8,$A$10)

The formula contains a static reference (the $ stuff) to a couple of cells where I store the marker extents.

A8 contains the integer value 35 (the value to graph for the current hour)

A10 contains the integer value 0 (the value to graph for any other hour)

Graphing column G will then produce a little "spike" in the graph for the current hour, as shown by the yellow arrow below:

Note: for some reason mine is an hour ahead and even though I've set the timezone for the sheet, it's still borked...)

Once you got the graph running, all you need to do is publish it. Be sure to use the Image option under the Embed menu, as nothing else will work with AT. Copy the full URL from https:// to include format=image, but get rid of the iframe around the url.

Create a new media URL in AT and paste it in. Set the update interval to your preference, I'm running mine at 1800 seconds (half hour) update intervals.

That's pretty much all I've done, yet full disclosure it's not completely working as it's supposed to. Sometimes the graphs re-arrange themselves without prior consent from me. Some sensors just seem to drop off the graph even though there's still data for them. No idea why this happens yet, So there's still a few kinks to be worked out, yet I hope this is useful to some of you.

/Max

I posted this for another user but though I would create a topic on how I was able to access my Samsung SNH-v6410PN camera feed in action tiles using VLC.  There are a lot of variations when setting this up so this is not comprehensive to cover every camera type but hopefully it gets you most of the way there.s

To do this through VLC with my Samsung camera I took the following steps.  Before proceeding identify the url for you cameras RTSP stream - Great database to find this: 

• http://www.ispyconnect.com/sources.aspx

1. Make sure you can access your cameras RTSP stream from a browser.   In the case of my samsung camera I accessed the RTSP stream with this path, rtsp://user:password@192.168.1.72/profile5/media.smp (Make sure to replace with the RTSP format for your camera (it will vary).   Note:  If camera is user/password protected you may not be able to pass the user:password in the URL when trying to access the feed.   This depends on the browser you are using.  Chrome and fully do not allow them to passed so simply enter the URL as shown below and then you should be prompted for the user name and password.  Firefox should work ok with the user:pass being passed within the URL as shown above.

2. Install VLC (im using version 2.2.8) and access VLC command line. To do this from windows open up Windows CMD prompt as administrator and navigate to you VLC directory path below.  Note:  Some VLC versions are buggy with trans-coding so thats why I reference the version of VLC I am using to do this successfully.

C:\>cd Program Files (x86)

C:\Program Files (x86)>cd VideoLAN

C:\Program Files (x86)\VideoLAN>cd VLC

C:\Program Files (x86)\VideoLAN\VLC>

3. Once there enter the command string shown below and REPLACE the part highlighted in bold with your cameras RTSP stream link.  Note: you only need to enter the user:password part of the string if you have assigned the camera a user name and password logon.  Also replace the IP address with your IP address.    After you press enter if you dont receive any errors go to step 4.

vlc.exe -R rtsp://user:password@192.168.1.72/profile5/media.smp --sout

"#transcode{vcodec=mjpg,vb=2500,scale=1.0,fps=10,acodec=none}:standard{access=http{mime=multipart/x-mixed-replace; boundary=7b3cc56e5f51db803f790dad720ed50a},mux=mpjpeg,dst=:8888/videostream.cgi}

4.  Change the IP address below to the IP of the PC running VLC that is doing the transcoding.  Try to access the stream from a web browser or action tiles (only will work on your local network).    If camera is user/password protected you may not be able to pass the user:password in the URL when trying to access the feed, this depends on the browser you are using.  Chrome and fully do not allow them to passed so simply enter the URL as shown below and then you should be prompted for the user name and password. http://192.168.1.119:8888/videostream.cgi

5.  If all is successful grab yourself a Beer and celebrate :)

Hope this helps

Prior to v6.10.0, Media Tiles would zoom to somewhat fill the window (the screen), but now may only zoom a smaller extent and leave substantial margins / blank padding - depending on the screen or window size.

This behavior has been confirmed and is bug/side-effect of performance optimizations made to Media Tiles as a part of Release v6.10.0.  We are researching to determine the root cause and possible solutions.

So I followed Rob's guide to get my commute time in action tiles and it works perfectly. However, as many others pointed out this can cost a bit of money due to Google charging per 1,000 requests. 

Here is my issue: When I wake up in the morning I want my commute time to be updated when I am about to go to work. So if I set this up on my "commute tile" and my wife's and let it run all day at a 1 minute refresh rate, this could become very expensive, very quickly. (about $5 every 8 hours at a 1 minute refresh rate). 

My solution: What if we could limit the time of the requests on media tiles or set a time to request? For example, I wake up for work at 7 and leave at 7:30 on the weekdays. So I would update my drive time at 7:20 and 7:30.

Im looking into getting a Ring Pro doorbell but would I be able to add the live feed into action tiles?

Thanks!

Denny

I wanted to create a thread with the Shields.io interface for folks to share their thoughts and ideas. I really enjoy this method of creating image tiles as it is very dynamic and versatile.

First and foremost, we need to understand what shields.io is. https://www.shields.io/ is a website hosting a free and open source web app capable of making "badges" utilizing API integration for dynamic text display. I've so far only seen one awesome idea with shields.io using ActionTiles, but it turns out it works perfectly for our Media Tiles! The only downside is the amount of text being displayed. I would not recommend any more than four 4-letter words, as any more than that generates an image with text too small to read and with great length it looks horrible. 

• Traffic Time In A Tile

I will update this thread as new ideas are added. Please do not discuss in this thread those ideas, instead, please create a new thread, discuss the idea there, and I will add it's link here. Thanks!!

Is there a way to build a severe weather tile that uses the smart weather station data from my ST hub?

Hi

Got my Skybell connected (thanks). It now shows the camera icon and when I push it it says "capturing image". This is great but all I see is the default camera icon. It never showst the image from the camera. 

I thought actiontiles showed me the captured image on the dash? I don't have an image just an icon. I know skybell won't send actiion tiles a live feed video. 

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...

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!

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?

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?

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.

So i have successfully added one of my amcrest cams - but the quality is really bad... Any suggestions? 

I currently have some Ring cameras integrated into my SmartThings network. I really like how they trigger video recording and notifications based on motion sensing, and being able to review videos from over a month ago is really great, but I’m frustrated that they don’t display on ActionTiles on my Fire 8 tablet.

I want to add some more cameras and view the feeds in ActionTiles, but need the motion sensing recording and alert functionality of the Ring cameras. Can anyone recommend what I should use to get this working with Action Tiles please. If need be I can install separate motion sensors and have SmartThings trigger the camera to record based off of the motion sensors, but it’d obviously be nicer to have motion sensing built into the cameras. 

Cheers

Simon