[solved] Displaying updating web image on desktop?

[doctordruidphd]

There are a handful of web data charts that I would like to display on the desktop. They are gif images, and update once a minute. So I need for them to update, either when they do on the web, or according to a time interval I specify.

I have tried several plasmoids -- piece-of-the-web, web-snipppet, web-slice -- and none of them actually work, at least not for this. Anyone know of something that does work?

[Rog132]

Re: Displaying updating web image on desktop?

Are the images having a permanent path/name ?


If yes, then you could write a short script to download the images and use the "Picture Frame" plasma widget to show them.

An example how to download files from the net > Perl HowTo: download a file from the internet

=>

1) A script example: file-from-net.pl:

#!/usr/bin/perl -w

# [url]http://www.perlhowto.com/download_a_file_from_the_internet[/url]

use LWP::Simple;

#Infinite loop
while (1) {
  # fetching images
  getstore("[url]http://www.symivisitor.com/satellite-photo.jpg"[/url], "/media/sda6/Temp/Pic01.jpg");
  getstore("[url]http://i208.photobucket.com/albums/bb293/elliottrules/DJI60820.jpg?t=1242010706"[/url], "/media/sda6/Temp/Pic02.jpg");
  # intervall
  sleep 60;
}

2) Adding it to the autostart list > FAQ: Autostart / Autorun, Periodic run

3) Telling the "Picture Frame" where to look and setting the auto-update intervall

[img width=400 height=261]http://img864.imageshack.us/img864/1074/imagefromnet.jpg[/img]

...They are gif images...

Maybe with the ImageMagic (man convert):

NAME
convert - convert between image formats as well as resize an image, blur, crop, despeckle,
dither, draw on, flip, join, re-sample, and much more.

SYNOPSIS
convert [input-options] input-file [output-options] output-file

OVERVIEW
The convert program is a member of the ImageMagick(1) suite of tools. Use it to convert
between image formats ...

[doctordruidphd]

Re: Displaying updating web image on desktop?

Yes, these images have permanent names. Might be able to accomplish the same thing with a bash script and wget, and picture-fame. Quite a few possibilities here. Thanks for the info and ideas. I'll report back later when I can try them.

[doctordruidphd]

Re: Displaying updating web image on desktop?

If yes, then you could write a short script

Actually, it was much easier than that.

All I had to do was display the image in firefox, drag/drop it into Picture Frame, and set the refresh time.

Thanks for calling my attention to the picture frame widget. Just what I needed.

[woodsmoke]

Re: [solved] Displaying updating web image on desktop?

So it does a "flash" image like NASDAQ printout for say Pandora's IPO?


woodsmoke

[doctordruidphd]

Re: [solved] Displaying updating web image on desktop?

I don't know if it will do that. The images I am interested in have fixed names, meaning, names that do not change when the images are updated. So all the plasmoid needs to do is periodically reload the image. If it's an image that is generated on the fly by some script, this might not work. The "scripted image" plasmoid might, though I must say I have never been able to get it to work.