[RELEASED]: Migrated to mtg.ActionTiles.com: "jggdev" Weather, News, and Calendar Media Tile services

Yah… It’s true that we prefer not to have a lot of non-ActionTiles traffic, but we’ll see if it becomes a problem before we consider other options such as releasing the code (or requiring a passcode or other restrictions).

Please contact Support@ActionTiles.com ; we usually grant extensions / renewals upon request, especially if you mention what we can help you with or really, any excuse will do :slight_smile:

MM k No worries. I suppose I will continue using my alternative. Thanks for the response.

Please contact Support@ActionTiles.com ; we usually grant extensions / renewals upon request, especially if you mention what we can help you with or really, any excuse will do :slight_smile:
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Perhaps I will request an extension / renewal one day. Currently too many projects on plate. Thank you for the offer.

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@tgauchat This is a question more for the developer. I noticed that the weather tile has a native resolution of 429 x 282. Is there or could there be an option to specify an output resolution so that there’s no scaling issue when displayed in ActionTiles? Media tiles default to 3x2 tiles. Using the default tile size of 105px and 4px tile spacing, the resulting space taken up by the media tile is less than 429 x 282 and rescaling the image to fit this space leads to a loss of resolution.

One question for Terry - If using the default tile size and spacing of 105px/4px, what are the dimensions of a 3x2 media tile? I thought it might be equal to (105 x 3 + 4 x 2) by (105 x 2 + 4) = 323 by 214 but doing a screenshot of a 100% view of a panel in Chrome and analyzing the pixels gives me a media tile of 333 by 221 pixels. If I set the tile spacing to 0px, I get 339 x 226, which seems to indicate a base tile size of 113px vs the 105px selected. Just trying to figure out how the tile size and tile spacing relate to the overall dimensions of a single tile of A tile width by B tile height.

I think only @625alex is knowledgeable of our trade secret Tile size calculations… :sunglasses:

Did you experiment with the JGG URL layout option for tile sizing? I don’t know if it changes the image size or not, but worth trying to see if you can get what you want.

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Hi, I’m the original developer of these. Kevin is right that you can use the layout parameter to get different sized images that should better fit the tiles. There is still some scaling that may occur due to the “secret tile size calculations” but it should be minimal…

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Wow. Slick! This works perfectly for me. My only nit is that I have it in 3x1 dynamic mode and after it scrolls through, the entire last screen is devoted to telling me that “Data provided by OpenWeatherMap.org”. :smile: I suppose that’s necessary?
Thank you for this.

Yeah, we have to give credit to the data provider and in that layout this was the best approach we could find…so far

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@jggdev @kevin
I’m not explicitly using the layout option for tile sizing, but it defaults to 3x2, which is also the default size for a media tile, and that is what I am using in my panel.
With the defaults used for the weather URL, the media tile size, the panel tile size, and the panel tile spacing, I get a mismatch between the unscaled image and the media tile size.

What is sort of missing for me is an input for what panel tile size and spacing I’m using so that I can get an image that doesn’t need any rescaling applied. All this is just to make the text as crisp as possible.

Here is what I get testing a 3x1 layout, and then how it looks as a 3x1 media tile on a panel with the default 105px tile size and 4px tile spacing:

wx1

wx2

Is there a way to control the size of the text at top, as it overflows into the next tile and is cut off? Township is what it should say.

Can you remove some of the white (empty) space between the forecast and the “data: openweathermap.org”? That blank space distorts the look of the weather in a 3X1 tile.

Did yoiu specify the layout in your call to the service? ie https://mtg.beta.actiontiles.com/weather.php?backgroundColor=FFFFFF&bodyColor=00FF00&titleColor=000000&loc=90210&layout=3x1

Yes, this is the URL I am using: https://mtg.beta.actiontiles.com/weather.php?loc=75013&titlecolor=363636&static=true&backgroundcolor=363636&layout=3x1

Just added the &layout=3x1…perfect thanks. I didn’t know about the “&layout” parameter. Do you have a list of other usable commands?

Ah, John’s reply was for you, not me.
Here’s the list of all the options:
http://jggdev.com/2017/05/24/weather-image-for-actiontiles/

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Thank you.

Thanks to everyone for your validation of this migration of @jggdev’s tools to ActionTiles’s Cloud in Beta mode!!! :hugs:

But even bigger, super, thanks to John (@jggdev) for his creative and innovative development of this, sharing it with ActionTiles’s customers over the past several months, and now licensing it to Thingterfaces LP, the makers of ActionTiles. :beers: :clap:


We caught and fixed a couple bugs and noted your comments for possible future tweaks, and perhaps eventual new features.

While we might do a “bulk migration” of all the existing http://jggdev.com/* Media Objects in our database, you are now welcome and encouraged to self-migrate.


Please note that stability is not guaranteed. This is a “bonus feature” of ActionTiles. All usage is subject to ActionTiles’s Terms of Service as well as any terms associated with the original scripts and/or JGG’s website. ActionTiles takes no responsibility for the content provided. Please do not use copyright protected sources.

To migrate:

  1. Replace this portion of your Media Tile URLs:
    http://jggdev.com/atiles/” with “https://mtg.actiontiles.com/

To use:

  1. Instructions for the 3 different generators (weather, news, and calendar) and their optional parameters, currently still reside at: http://jggdev.com ; but will be moved soon to an ActionTiles KB Article on http://support.actiontiles.com.

  2. Please set the Still Image Media Tile “Refresh Rate” to greater than 900 seconds; preferably 3600 seconds or more (1 hour).

Example:


Please do not use the Beta URL anymore - unless invited. We may disable the beta server at anytime.

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Terry, is there a way to slow down the changing of he days? I know it might sound picky, but my eyes are not what they used to be.

If you add static=true it will stay on the first page, you’ll just get the 3 day forecast

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No not an option, I want the original, just slower scrolling.