Is it possible to add live weather radar in Blue Iris

[bbarenz]

I would like to add live radar to a camera view in BI as an addition to the live weather data from BI Tools. I came across www.zoomforecast.com which is a website that allows you to embedded live radar into a website (alternatively view in a webpage) and I was looking for a way to add a webpage to a BI camera view. I tried adding the website and path to the camera IP video configuration but it didn't work.

Is it possible to add a live webpage to BI or is there another way to add Live Radar?

 

[Kawboy12R]

You can record a live computer screen in BI as a camera using RTSP streaming via VLC. It'd be separate from the cam with your weather view with BI Tools overlay though. Here's a Spanish walkthrough-

Como realizar streaming por RTSP de un escritorio de Windows usando VLC - Securamente - El blog de Securame

 

[timothy_nd28]

Sorry to hijack, but I have heard of weather overlays for awhile now. What is the purpose for doing this, is it for Blue Iris? If a storm comes rolling in, does blue iris modify it's motion trigger settings?

 

[Dingus]

This would be useful for remote property monitoring or for public beach/landscape streams. People get really nerdy with weather sometimes.

 

[Frank Ecker]

People get really nerdy with weather sometimes.

This for me!

 

[bbarenz]

I made a simple program to take repeated screenshots of an embedded web browser control and save it to a PNG file. This is a rough workaround I made tonight after work so it has not been rigorously tested and it could probably use more polishing. I appreciate any feedback.

For Blue Iris it uses the image overlay option with the screenshot stretched across the camera window. The settings below seem to work but if you find something else works better please let me know.
The project repository can be found here: GitHub - bbarenz/web2img: Simple program to take screen shots of an embedded webbrower control and save the image to the disk
If you just want the executable download it here: https://github.com/bbarenz/web2img/blob/master/web2img/bin/Debug/web2img.exe

Setup web2img:
Run web2img and select a website URL and file location to save the image file. The program utilizes windows web browser control in Visual Studio which mirrors all Internet Explorer settings on your machine. If something isn't working correctly here update your Internet Explorer settings and try again. Once the webpage loads you can resize the form and adjust the location of the image you wish to display on your Blue Iris overlay. The size of the image file will be the same as the size of the web browser so you may need to do some back and forth with Blue Iris to make sure it is displayed correctly.

Adjust the image update interval in miliseconds to how often you want the image file to be updated.
Adjust the web browser update interval in minutes to how often you want the web browser to refresh. If you don't want it to refresh at all uncheck the Enable box.
Both the image and web browser can be updated manually by clicking the "Snap" option in the menu strip.

Click Minimize or File>Hide to hide the application. You can find it in the system tray, click the context menu strip and click "Show"


Setup Blue Iris:

1. Add a new camera.
2. On the Video tab set the Device Type to "Screen Capture" > Blackness.
3. On the bottom of the Video tab Enable Text and Graphic Overlays and click Edit
4. Click Add Image and load the image file from web2img at the location you specified previously
5. Adjust the size of the image to fit the window, this may take some back and forth to get setup
6. On the Watchdog tab uncheck "Detect loss of signal"
7. Click OK and it should work
8. You will need to refresh your browsers to view the new camera properly

Screenshots:

 

[bbarenz]

working well so far. First storm came and I get to see it in action.

 

[bp2008]

Neat. With your app you don't have to keep a browser precisely positioned for BI to do a desktop capture.

You may consider adding fields to specify image cropping to make it even cleaner.

 

[bbarenz]

Neat. With your app you don't have to keep a browser precisely positioned for BI to do a desktop capture.

You may consider adding fields to specify image cropping to make it even cleaner.

Thanks! I'll look into drawing a selection shape or something. The current method to grab the screenshot uses the webbrowser control as the bounds so it's easy to specify the bounds of the screenshot but I'll have to experiment with a user friendly control for the user to select the area.

 

[wayner]

Interesting. What is the motivation for this? Is it to be able to record the weather radar as a video file? Or do you want to be able to see the weather radar on a multi-camera page in addition to all of your "real" cameras? Or is there some other reason?

 

[bbarenz]

Interesting. What is the motivation for this? Is it to be able to record the weather radar as a video file? Or do you want to be able to see the weather radar on a multi-camera page in addition to all of your "real" cameras? Or is there some other reason?

Mostly just to view it without the restrictions of a screen capture. The goal is to have everything on one monitor with live radar at a glance VS switching between separate applications. I realized during the storm last night it would be nice to have a faster refresh rate and the feature I'm improperly exploiting in BI doesn't seem to like it when the image is updated more than once every 5 seconds or so. I changed the file format to jpg which seemed to help a little but I think the next modification will be to create a jpeg stream and add it as an IP camera in BI. This way it can show live animations and update more fluidly.

 

[aurora912]

This little program is awesome! Always wanted a Wx Radar view next to my live camera feeds. Great work. Look forward to future updates! Thanks from Australia

 

[Cor]

Cool!
I will try to set this up with this weather radar.
© ZAMG

Thanks,
Cor

 

[Cor]

Just installed and tried this app. A question though ; When the computer reboots , and I restart the app , the screen remains blanc. I have to click "navigate" again for an image to load in your app.

Any option that after a reboot and using task scheduler for example that the pictures are updated again , and also to automatically hide again?

Thanks,
Cor

 

[bbarenz]

Not at the moment. I've noticed there is a memory leak and it will crash after a while. Also I don't think the image overlay is meant to be used this way within Blue Iris. I'm thinking of updating the program to create a TCP socket on the local host and stream jpgs. Then in Blue Iris you would add a generic mjpg stream as the camera. This would also allow you to stream things much faster which would be nice for playing videos. Unfortunately I only think about it when there is a storm coming

 

[Cor]

I know, with a huge "overlay" it will cost a huge amount of cpu power. But if it is still acceptable.... it would be ok for me.

But for the memory leak, you suggest I shouldn't use it :-( ?


Thanks,
Cor

 

[aurora912]

Damn, shame about the memory leak. I hadn't deployed this BI server yet so didn't notice. Can see now each time it snaps a screenshot the ram usage goes up by a few mb with no sign of stopping.

Look forward to seeing what you come up with though. Surprised there is nothing else like it.

EDIT: Also it's an easy way to add a wx radar to an openhab2 tablet screen!

 

[Cor]

Yep , I was really looking forward to this.

If there is an update on this I would appreciate it when you share it.
Many thanks,
Cor