I've been playing with MCE for a while now and have written a couple of HTML Apps for personal use.

I thought I'd share this one called MCMTaffic.  I don't have an installer for it yet and the interface needs a bit of work to pretty things up, but I thought I'd post it to get some feedback.

The app allows you to view traffic cameras from your area.  Well it will eventually with your help.  At the moment it is setup for the Seattle area (pulls from http://www.wsdot.wa.gov) since that is where I live and has the following images/camera snapshots that show traffic suggestion and flows:
1. SR-520 Cams (4 of them)
2. I-90 Cams (4 of them)
3. Bridge Traffic Flow
4. Carillon Point Cam 1 (good for checking wakeboarding conditions :-))
5. Carillon Point Cam 2
6. North Taffic Flow
7. South Taffic Flow

To install:
1. Unzip to a folder (mine is in c:\MCMTraffic)
2. Go to the above folder and create a shortcut to the .MCL file (right click -> Create Shortcut)
3. Copy the shortcut (it will be in the folder you created above) to c:\documents and settings\allusers\start menu\programs\accessories\media center\media center programs
4. go to more programs in MCE and give it a go

If you're not a Seattle'ite then you can modify the traffic.js file in your install directory - it's pretty self explanatory (I hope) of what you need to edit to show your own cities traffic camera snapshots - its basically a js array - you can set it up to display between 1 and 4 images on the screen.  Once you edit the traffic.js file post it to this thread so others can use it if they live in the same city as you. You should be able to find your local traffic cams at your states Department of Transportation website - once you find them, just right click and hit properties to grab the url to the image.  You can use any image really - flow maps, camera stills, ferry cameras, border cameras - possibilities are endless!  Clicking on your state at this url should be a good starting point to finding local traffic cams - http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/trafficinfo/index.htm

Stay tuned for:
- prettier interface
- implementation of suggestions?

Anyone have links for:
- building an msi installer for this (I only found one for installing an Add-In)
- how-to use image buttons that look better (like My Movies) - not sure what I'm allowed to steal and what I need to create myself

Regards,
Matt

UPDATE: June 6th, 2006:
Latest version is at http://rapidshare.de/files/22483409/MCMTraffic.zip.html as I don't seem to have attachment access on these forums.
New features include:
- the ability to specifiy the height and width of each image (or use original image size)
- the ability to individually refresh each image (or not)
Enjoy!

Nice work Matt! I installed it without issue, and since I live in Seattle, it was no work at all ;-) This will be very helpful in the mornings!

Hi,

I will look at it and see if I can make an installer for you.

 

Sape Miedema

 

Thanks miedema - if you do some bullet point instructions on how you did it would be nice.  I'm a .NET dev and like to learn new stuff.

/mcm

Hi,

I use the "Inno Setup Compiler" which is free and very easy to use.

For setting up the programs in MCE I use a small VB5 program and my DLL is also in VB5.

But you can also do this with VB.Net or C++.

If you give me your email, I will send you my installation script as an example.

I will also send you the code to setup programs in MCE.

 

This is a very cool plug-in.

I'm testing it to see if I could us it as a home security system. I'm using a progam called active webcam that grabs images from several webcams and can save them to a hard drive or ftp to a server. At the moment I'm saving them to my hard drive, I've changed the image path in the traffic file to the folder where the images are stored and it works very well. I've got the images on the page but one thing I would like to be able to do is refresh the images. Is this possible? or would it overload MCE

By the way I would worry too much about an installer it was very easy to do.

Installed with no problem, Great ap. Thanks for putting this together, one less thing that i need a pc for in the morning.

This app is cool...   just need a refresh option on it...  Camera feeds are useless without refreshing, otherwise just a pic...   Does anyone know how to create an automatic refresh or at least a manual one..?

Never mind my last post, just wrote a small one line script that works very well at refreshing...   variable refresh rate as well

 

For us non-bit flippers could you share the one line script you used to refresh.

Thanks

hi all, is this app still available and if so can someone send me a url?

cheers

dan

I still have the original zip file if you would like a copy of it....

Also, I would like to know what that reload script was, as I have webcams that reload every 3 seconds and would like to use that function.

Another thing.  I've noticed that some of my webcams are in a larger resolution size than others.  The result is that the images displayed are all different sizes.  Some are little and some are huge.  Is there a way to edit the html to incorporate a set size?  I don't know a lot about javascript, but I do know html.  If there is a way to set a max height and max width, that would be awesome!

Matt very kindly already sent it to me.

I have set it up for Bristol (UK) and it's a nice add-in (if anoyone wants the modded .js file or is holding a collection of them), great work.

As these cameras get more and more prevalent this app will keep getting better too!

Cheers,
dan

Any word from Matt about getting some kind of automatic image refresher?  Also, I'm really annoyed when my images come up bigger and smaller because the server they're hosted on are different.  Does anybody know how to specify the sizes?  I know there has to be a way when then image is rendered through the script... just have it say max-highth=xxx, max-width=xxx.  I just don't know anything about java to write my own script into it to do it.

Several different ways you can do this:

1st way:
     For a 30 second delay
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
<script>
function reloadMe()
{
window.location.reload()
}
</script>
<script>
timerID = window.setTimeout ("reloadMe()", 30000)
</script>
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
In this example, change the 30000 to whatever your desired refresh rate is (eg. 1000 is equal to 1 second, 10000 is equal to ten seconds, etc., you get the idea).


2nd way:
    For a 30 second delay
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
<meta http-equiv="refresh" content="30">
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
In this example, change the 30 to whatever your desired refresh rate is (eg. 1 is equal to 1 second, 10 is equal to ten seconds, etc., again you get the idea).


3rd way:
    For a 30 second delay
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
<BODY onLoad=window.setTimeout("location.href='******.htm'",30000)>
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
In this example, change the 30000 to whatever your desired refresh rate is (eg. 1000 is equal to 1 second, 10000 is equal to ten seconds, etc., you get the idea).



I apologise for the delayed response, I hadn't, until now, realised that you had asked for this.

If I can be of any further assistance, please don't hesistate to ask.

D Wright