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How to crop image uploaded to Weather Underground Webcam?

Posted: Wed Dec 03, 2014 8:58 pm
by Ladd
I am attempting to upload a snapshot from my webcam using Meteobridge (Weather Network Tab, Weather Underground Camera). My "Add a Cam" request to Weather Underground for FTP upload was quickly accepted and the first image was uploaded and displayed. Ten minutes later there had been no updates. Checking my Webcam page showed that the webcam status had been changed to "No".

No explanation as to why the webcam was no longer accepted. No idea why, if the cam didn't meet the requirements, did the first image go through just fine.

Weather Underground requests images be less than 150k. My camera, a Ubiquity NVC Bullet, on a cloudy day is outputting images that are about 145k to 154k. So I need to crop the image slightly to reduce the file size. I see that the Meteobridge Wiki has a page for "Weather Cam Image Handling", complete with examples and code, but I can't find where I can enter that code on the Meteobridge "Weather Network" page where I select the Weather Underground Camera option.

On a related note, I would prefer to crop the image only for the Weather Underground Cam image upload; not the actual camera output which can be viewed elsewhere.

If I am required to crop the image for all views just to have the image size fit the WU requirement, I would be disappointed but the reduction in effective image area will be small so I guess I could live with it. Perhaps a box could be added to the "Weather Network tab/Weather Underground Camera selection so as to perform the cropping specifically for WU, leaving the main cam feed alone. Pretty much how the "Meteobridge Weather Camera" had a "cam button and a "camplus" button.

Any advice or guidance on how I can reduce the image size up the photo uploaded to WU to below 150k would me most appreciated.

Ladd

Re: How to crop image uploaded to Weather Underground Webcam

Posted: Wed Dec 03, 2014 9:05 pm
by admin
You can crop images uploaded to Meteobridge cam service. You can then use the URL provided to readout
the image from there and give that to WU by telling them to grab the image from the URL instead of waiting for FTP uploads.

You might have a look at the predefined image annotation examples how to crop the image.
All this is done by imagemagick, so googeling that will give you all the tons of options available.

Re: How to crop image uploaded to Weather Underground Webcam

Posted: Wed Dec 03, 2014 9:13 pm
by Ladd
I had originally tried that. My first attempt to upload snapshots to my Weather Underground page was using the "URL" method and I gave them the URL to the Weatherbridge "Camplus.jgp" image. That image is smaller and only about 82k. It was rejected with no explanation as to why. I rechecked the submital data and resubmitted. It was rejected again, again with no explanation as to why. I checked the image size and it was below the 150k limit. I confirmed that the meteobridge cam URL was publicly accessible. So I have no idea why the submittal was rejected and WU isn't talking.

We did this dance four times and I finally switched over to FTP submittal and it was accepted immediately.

For five minutes. Then the webbcam page switched to "NO" and no further images have been accepted.

So WU webcam acceptance has been denied doing it either way.

Re: How to crop image uploaded to Weather Underground Webcam

Posted: Wed Dec 03, 2014 9:20 pm
by admin
I guess it is something with WU that blocks your images. Did you contact them and asked for explanation what is wrong with your submissions?

Re: How to crop image uploaded to Weather Underground Webcam

Posted: Wed Dec 03, 2014 9:27 pm
by Ladd
admin wrote:I guess it is something with WU that blocks your images. Did you contact them and asked for explanation what is wrong with your submissions?
I would love to, but have yet to find any way to do so and 30 minutes of poking around. I guess I'll try again.