Downloading & Animating Images

This FAQ deals with how to download and then animate an image within Weather Display.
The instructions for setting up the download side will also work if you wish to download a file from the web.

DOWNLOAD

a. From the main Weather Display window, click on “Control Panel”.

b. Now click on the FTP & Connections button:

c. Select the HTTP Download screen and this screen will appear (1).

2 Locate the URL of the image you want to use and copy & paste it into this area.
3 Click the “Add to List” button so that the URL appears in the box to the right.
4 Now choose a ‘Local Name’ for the downloaded file make sure the file extention is the same as the one on the downloaded file:- .gif, .jpg etc, and then click on the “Add to List” button (5) so that it appears in the righthand box. Note: You should only have one local name in this box!
6 Now choose the download times and switch the Downloads button to the “Downloads On” position.

d. Click on the “Save” button to save your setting and then click the “Test” button to make an initial download of the image.
The image will be stored in your wdisplay\downloads folder so you can check to make sure that one of the images is in there.

ANIMATION

a. Back on the main Weather Display screen, click the “View” button.

b. On the View page, click the “Downloaded Images” button:

c. This will bring up the animation screen which looks like this one, only there will not be an image on it yet:

d. In the top right hand side are some buttons and tick boxes.

  1. First click on “Open File” and choose the downloaded image you want to use for the animation. This image will appear on the left.

  2. Now select the number of image that you want to use in your animation from the box above where is says “Images for file sequence

  3. Select the “Animation Delay” number: This controls the frame rate or how fast the next image in the animation is displayed. I found 30 was good for what I needed but you can adjust this to suit your own needs.

  4. Now put a tick in the Remember this file and Animate Auto boxes.

  5. Towards the bottom of the window you will see this:

Make sure the box is ticked if you intend to upload the animation to your website.
6. Now go back to the buttons at the top and click on the “Animate” button and that should start the animation and it will create and upload a file called “animationhttpfile.gif”.

You may notice that the animation will start with the one image and some cloud icons in the top lift corner of the image, this is only because you have not downloaded enough images yet and these will go away as more images are downloaded.

CREATING A SECOND ANIMATION

To create a second animation requires setting up both animations together, if you don’t then the second animation will override the first and you end up with two files with the same animation.

The method I used is as follow:

  • Deselected all the ticks and started afresh.
  • Selected “Open 2nd file” and clicked the file I wanted to animate
  • Selected “Open File” and clicked the first file I wanted to use
  • Picked the same frame rate and number of frames (using the same for both animations)
  • Tick the boxes for “Remember this file”, “Animate File” and “Animate 2nd”
  • Clicked on the “Animate” and “Animate 2nd” buttons
  • Remembering to have the “Upload selected animated gif file to my website” ticked at the bottom of the window

Thanks very much Budgie for this great FAQ addition :slight_smile: