Print

[mike315]

Added some webcams to the svn, have many more to go yet...but I had to get something uploaded. Most notably Smithsonian Zoo, California and Maryland traffic cams...

The panda cam at the Smithsonian was particularly funny this evening...you can hear the panda snoring while asleep lol...

[akaigotchi]

Hi,

I just checked the icons and noticed that they still have a white border and are not transparent yet. Any solution to that?

akaigotchi

[mike315]

after the icons and streams become a lil more complete...we should start offering dated 'build' downloads on the google code site. just zip up the collection and place it in the downloads section...this way people don't have to struggle with svn.



Tim that african wildlife stream just had a wildebeest taking a dump lol.

[timdog82001]

I dont know if youve considered this, but it would be really cool to include webcams from ski slopes.  There are several of them around here id love to be able to check easily all from one location when I want to see the weather conditions at the various places.  However, something that just ocurred to me....I think most of them use a single image that is refreshed every 5 minutes.  I imagine this probably isnt possible with just .strm files.  Seems like for someone who knew python it would be a super simple script to write though.  Just a thought...

Heres an exampe...
http://www.stevenspass.com/webcam/

There are traffic cams at some of those places too, but its harder to tell what the snow or conditions are like when all you can see is the road.

[mike315]

QUOTE(timdog82001 @ Feb 4 2007, 07:02 PM)

I dont know if youve considered this, but it would be really cool to include webcams from ski slopes.  There are several of them around here id love to be able to check easily all from one location when I want to see the weather conditions at the various places.  However, something that just ocurred to me....I think most of them use a single image that is refreshed every 5 minutes.  I imagine this probably isnt possible with just .strm files.  Seems like for someone who knew python it would be a super simple script to write though.  Just a thought...

Heres an exampe...
http://www.stevenspass.com/webcam/

There are traffic cams at some of those places too, but its harder to tell what the snow or conditions are like when all you can see is the road.

I plan on getting webcam streams from everywhere...BUT most are just images, like the one you posted only updates every 5 minutes. which of course isn't quite video...python script like you suggested maybe...maybe an extendable one that could handle any url's you added to it....

Would be nice if the .strm format was more than just a url place holder and something more along the lines of a playlist that could have some more features...like re-poling urls, or being able to handle more than one url(like rollover stream addresses), etc etc oh well

other sites use mjpeg streaming, which sorta just pushes a jpg every second or so...and unfortunately it doesnt seem like xbmc can handle those...so im stuck using http, mms, and rtsp streams.

if there was a way for xbmc/mplayer to handle mjpeg streaming camera's better, then there'd be thousands of more webcams to add to the collection.

[akaigotchi]

QUOTE(timdog82001 @ Feb 4 2007, 11:25 AM)

They don't on mine....You probably need to clear the thumbnail cache on the xbox.  It's in XBMC ->UserData -> Thumbnails.  It doesn't automatically check every time, it just checks the first time you access a folder and then caches it, so whenever you want to check your changes, you have to delete that folder.

By the way, I just changed all the icons again, made them a bit prettier, and added icons for all the other folders.  Let me know what you think, if you think any of them should be changed or anything.

Hey Tim,

I like the new 3D-look of those icons very much. But IMHO I'd take down the highlight on the right hand side a bit. I think it is a bit toooooooo shiny. Just dim it a bit and everything is okay

I also love the new design for the webcam icon (camera icon with the flag on the display). If you could do the same icon for the folder /Webcams/ instead of the one you are using right now (TV with Canon camera in it) that would be great. I am thinking of that camera having a globe in its display... What do you think about it?

Yesterday when I visited my family I had some time to think about some cool features for the collection. One thing I also thought about was to have a weekly snapshot of the SVN as a download file. Since the file size right now is 3 MB and since we cannot delete or change anything we've uploaded to code.google.com I will not put it there as we only have 100 MB disk quota (Believe it or not, you can't even overwrite it!). So I think for the instance those files will be found somewhere else. If I found a decent location for that I will let you know here and in the blog. I am thinking of updating the download pack every tuesday (just like Microsoft does ). So tomorrow there will be the first snapshot of the SVN ready to download for everyone who has problems receiving the files via SVN.

Cheers akaigotchi

[timdog82001]

ok, sounds good...it might be a couple days before I have time again to do anything, I shouldn't have even spent the time I did on these, there's no way I'll be ready for class tomorrow as is.  Also, did you check the subfolder icons for the stuff like the Traffic cams and cities and zoos and such too?  I wasn't so sure about the Smithsonian zoo icon, but I couldn't really think of anything good to put there, and I could find any good royalty free animals or anything like that to use for it, since I definitely don't have the photoshop skill to make a whole animal from scratch like I did with the Traffic Cam city icons.  Oh, by the way, the city traffic cam icons I made are what road signs look like here in the US lol...its supposed to a road sign at night, with the lights and stuff...I imagine there's a good chance you realized this, or maybe you're even originally from the US, i have no idea, but just in case you weren't aware....It's not just some random green square anyway haha.  I was thinking I'd do something similar to that for all the different US states, and when it comes to other countries I would make something similar that fits the style of road signs from that particular country too.

[akaigotchi]

QUOTE(timdog82001 @ Feb 5 2007, 09:02 AM)

ok, sounds good...it might be a couple days before I have time again to do anything, I shouldn't have even spent the time I did on these, there's no way I'll be ready for class tomorrow as is.  Also, did you check the subfolder icons for the stuff like the Traffic cams and cities and zoos and such too?  I wasn't so sure about the Smithsonian zoo icon, but I couldn't really think of anything good to put there, and I could find any good royalty free animals or anything like that to use for it, since I definitely don't have the photoshop skill to make a whole animal from scratch like I did with the Traffic Cam city icons.  Oh, by the way, the city traffic cam icons I made are what road signs look like here in the US lol...its supposed to a road sign at night, with the lights and stuff...I imagine there's a good chance you realized this, or maybe you're even originally from the US, i have no idea, but just in case you weren't aware....It's not just some random green square anyway haha.  I was thinking I'd do something similar to that for all the different US states, and when it comes to other countries I would make something similar that fits the style of road signs from that particular country too.

Hi timdog,
 
I just compiled the first .rar archive to put on the download page. Actually the whole archive is 3 Mb in size, most of which is being consumed by icons. Could you plz optimize your .png/.jpg compression settings? As we only do have 100 Mb disk quota on code.google.com the available disk space would quickly be eaten up, if we upload a snapshot each week.This is why we need to save as much disk space as possible.
 
I like the work you've done for the Webcam icons Even though I really like the idea with the traffic signs (of course I know them , I'm not from the US but from Germany, but I've been to the US a couple of times, and guess what, I know them from Hollywood movies ) I think we shouldn't have too many different icons. Maybe we should integrate the traffic sign in the camera display of the webcam icon. As far as the Zoo is concerned I'd look for a logo of theirs. If there is none I can provide you with a stock animal (I'd even buy one if I found nothing suitable).

akaigotchi

[akaigotchi]

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Hey everybody,

as the project matures there are a few new things I'd like to introduce to you:

1. First of all the "Webcams" section is now open. We've managed to find a larger number of streaming LIVE webcams and put them in the collection. Right now you'll find some US traffic cams from various regions and some LIVE cams from various zoos across the US (I loved the panda cam in the Smithsonian Zoo most, as you could even hear the panda snore while it sleeps ... LOL). Within the next few days new webcams will be added to this section, so stay tuned for changes.

2. We've added around 60 new channels to the collection in the last few days, more to come this week (I see if I can add another 60 by the end of this week  )

3. We are happy to have timdog and Chi3f as our "Art department"  As Chi3f did the first revision of the folder icons, timdog took some time and reworked them to make them more 3D. IMHO great work guys!!!! We will do some minor changes to the icon layout in the nearby future, so watch out for updates.

4. Chi3f is not only the guy who did the first revision of the icons, but he liked the idea of having a stream collection so much he coded a handy build.bat that strips all .svn folders from the collection and makes it a ready-to-upload-to-your-shiny-XBOX package. Thank you Chi3f for the great work!

5. We will be releasing a weekly snapshot of what's in the collection as a downloadable .zip on the project page on code.google.com. New snapshot releases can be found there every tuesday from now on. These snapshots are mainly intended for those of you, who are not very experienced with a SVN client and have trouble downloading the files from the SVN. Still I recommend the usage of a SVN client and to check back on a regular basis, as there will be relevant updates and changes all the time. I am still working on documentation (HowTo SVN, HowTo FTP to your XBOX,...) and I think I will be done with this by the end of the week, if everything runs well.

Okay, so here are the updates for now

Have a nice time with the collection.

akaigotchi

This post has been edited by akaigotchi: Feb 6 2007, 04:06 PM

[mike315]

QUOTE(akaigotchi @ Feb 6 2007, 10:12 AM)

1. First of all the "Webcams" section is now open. We've managed to find a larger number of streaming LIVE webcams and put them in the collection. Right now you'll find some US traffic cams from various regions and some LIVE cams from various zoos across the US (I loved the panda cam in the Smithsonian Zoo most, as you could even hear the panda snore while it sleeps ... LOL). Within the next few days new webcams will be added to this section, so stay tuned for changes.

Webcams got a sizable update. Australian Queensland surf cams, Monterey Bay Aquarium cams, Cal Poly Pomona, etc, etc, etc...

Via the Monteray Bay Aquarium Penguin cam, I learned that penguins can projectile poop. 4 to 6 feet in fact. I did not see this firsthand, but the lady doing the naration while feeding the penguins told me.

...

Projectile poop.

Anyways...next update will include more surf cams, and probably more randomness... (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

[timdog82001]

Are you guys trying to avoid the winamp streams, since they can be difficult to get into due to their populatiry?  There are some really high quality streams on there, some of them are flaky, just run by people in their basements or smoething, but others are high quality and reliable, having been around for a couple years...but many of these are so popular its hard to get into them because they're often filled to capacity.  But yeah...they do have some good stuff.  Earlier today I watched Ocean's Eleven on one such channel, very high quality video too, probably 500kbps

[mike315]

I don't think they are being avoiding, but we'd have to ask akaigotchi on that one. Im updating the webcams and its proving to be a time consuming job as it is.

Im all for any nsv streams we can find. Most are in the vp6 codec, and xbmc does them fine. I'd like to see more of them...

On a different note...someone needs to create a script to peruse http://winamp.com/videos/

I think its a much better resource than the launch site is/was...not that I didnt love the launch.com script...

[akaigotchi]

QUOTE(timdog82001 @ Feb 7 2007, 02:23 AM)

Are you guys trying to avoid the winamp streams, since they can be difficult to get into due to their populatiry?  There are some really high quality streams on there, some of them are flaky, just run by people in their basements or smoething, but others are high quality and reliable, having been around for a couple years...but many of these are so popular its hard to get into them because they're often filled to capacity.  But yeah...they do have some good stuff.  Earlier today I watched Ocean's Eleven on one such channel, very high quality video too, probably 500kbps

Hi Tim,

No actually I am not avoiding those. But as far as my personal roadmap for the project is concerned they are just not in focus right now. My main goal for now is to gather as many streams that are sorted by country as possible. As the shoutcast streams you mentioned do not really belong to any country we'd be opening another category. I think in around two weeks time this will be the case. To be honest I find it hard to categorize those streams. Do you have any catchy category name for these that springs to your mind? Right now I am thinking of placing them in "Misc" and then in subfolders like "Movies", "TV shows", etc.

Just to mention something else. The poll I placed on the blog (Question is whether or not to include auction/shopping channels in the collection) will be closed on Friday evening GMT-1. So guys go and place your vote, this is your chance to participate in the collection and to match it to your needs. Right now it looks like most people would not like to have those channels included. Is this really the case? Go and place your vote!

There will be an update on things, when I am more awake

akaigotchi

[timdog82001]

I just happened to run across this site today
http://www.webcam-index.com/

Maybe you've already found that site, I dunno, but it seems to be sort of a repository of webcams all categorized by country, state and city.  Many of them are the single image updated every few minutes type, but many are actual video feeds.  I'm sure you have enough webcams to keep your hands full already, but if you somehow did run out of things to do (haha) there's always this to take a look at.  They even have a few webcams in Antarctica, though I'd be suprised if any of those were video feeds.

This post has been edited by timdog82001: Feb 8 2007, 02:53 AM

[mike315]

Nice find. Yep hands are full, but still working on it. Didn't do a ton lastnite, but did add 19 surfcams