Digital Media and whatever else flows through my head…
FrameAlbum
A few random updates…
Feb 6th
- I’ve located another issue with the Picasa grabbers that delays feed updates. I’ve seen a few instances where the process hangs during it’s regular updates. To prevent various nasty side-effects I’ve built in protections to prevent the process from running more than one copy of itself at a time. When it hangs it triggers these checks and prevents it from running again. I’m continuing to investigate.
- In other Picasa related news, we have a new contributor to the project! He is actively working on several Picasa improvements including a resolution to the ‘unknown user’ or ‘no public photos found’ error that some of you are experiencing. He is also working on… wait for it… private albums!
- I’m STILL trying to get my hands on a D-Link frame. I have, so far, been unsuccessful at winning them on eBay but I do bid on all that come up. I need one of these frames to troubleshoot the ‘big red X’ issue that most (all?) of you that have D-link frames have. Soooo….. if any of you have a spare D-Link frame they would lend to effort I’ll be eternally grateful and will be sure to immortalize you in the code comments. 
Thanks for your patience, and support!
T.
Picasa updates fixed (or, Pay Attention To The Basic Stuff)
Jan 15th
Finally! I tracked down the issue that prevented the Picasa grabber from running on a schedule. It was something silly and basic that took my far too long to figure out.
The non-propeller heads in the audience can tune-out now, what follows is a load of geek-speak.
The problem was this; when I ran the Picasa grabber from the command line it worked just fine. However, when it ran via CRON it appeared to not run at all. It didn’t fail with an error message, no messages in the logs, nor did it generate any console message of any kind, it just didn’t do anything. It was very frustrating.
The basic problem was that the PATH statement in CRONTAB did not match the PATH statement of my interactive shell. However, the way in which it failed was not detected by any of my monitors. Since the durn thing didn’t even start none of the error checking/reporting code I have in the app. had any opportunity to catch/report the failure. Nor did my log scrapers find anything anomalous as there were nothing reported.
I tend to work under the basic Unix tenant of less is more, and specifically that if a process does not detect an error it need not report a ‘normal termination’; simply the absence of an error message is in itself an indication of successful completion. In this scenario this ideal failed completely.
There are two morals to this story, both very basic; “Always check your PATHs” and “Don’t assume (that no response is the same as a positive response).”
FrameAlbum site is back
Jan 12th
Your call is very important to us…
Nov 26th
I’ve been a busy little code monkey…
I’ve installed a ‘trouble ticket’ system to manage support issues for FrameAlbum. Some (Ok, most) of you who have emailed me in the past (at framealbum@gmail.com) may have received a reply stating that a ‘…human will reply shortly.’. I’m in the process of sorting through those, and replying to folks to whom I’ve been woefully remiss.
I’ve also installed a ‘bug tracker’. I’ll use this to record bugs that are discovered by you, intrepid users, and to manage the ‘feature roadmap’ for future versions of FrameAlbum.
Both of these items are ‘behind the curtain’ but are important for the maintenance of my sanity as well as the experience of folks using the service.
Source code ready for ‘early review’
Lastly, but of greater significance to many folks here, I’ve finally managed to cobble together a GIT repository of the FrameAlbum source code. I’m using the new bitbucket.org service from Atlassian (makers of Jira, Confluence and many other tools for developers). I’m going to open this up only to a few people at first so that I can insure that I’ve left nothing ‘secret’ in the GIT version of the code. If you are interested in having a look at the sausage machine that is FrameAlbum, hop on over to bitbucket.org and register yerself. Ping me when you’re registered.
Ciao for now!
The FrameAlbum DNS server is…
Nov 4th
The most difficult issue with creating a FrameChannel replacement service is how to get all those frames that are ‘hard wired’ to the FrameChannel service over to access FrameAlbum instead. It is practically impossible to change the internal programming of photo frames to use a different service. The manufactures refuse to update the software and there is no way for the consumer to do it on their own. The easiest method is to utilize the ‘custom Photo RSS’ feed feature built into many frames (Kodak) but not all frames have this feature.
For those frames without a ‘custom Photo RSS’ feed feature (I’m talking about you Toshiba) the only option is to fool the frame into thinking it is talking to FrameChannel when, in fact, it is talking to FrameAlbum. There are various methods of accomplishing this but the most straightforward is to utilize a modified DNS server.
A DNS server is akin to the contact list on your smartphone; when you type in ‘Dave Smith’ it ‘translates’ that to Dave’s phone number (1-234-567-7890). A DNS server does a similar thing on the Internet. When you type ‘www.streamingmeemee.com’ into your browser a DNS server translates that into a specific network address that your computer contacts to retrieve the webpage. Your photo frame uses the same mechanism to determine which server to contact when it is trying to retrieve your photos.
I have put together a specially modified DNS server that when asked for ‘framechannel.com’ returns the server information for FrameAlbum. When your frame is configured to use the FrameAlbum DNS server, rather than the server provided by your ISP, it will think it is talking to FrameChannel when in fact it is talking to FrameAlbum’s servers. The somewhat tricky bit can be configuring your frame to use the FrameAlbum DNS server. I’ll warn you now that it involves a bit of geekery.
All frames that I have seen require you to choose a ‘static IP network configuration’ to set a specific DNS server. The method varies widely between frames so I will not go into detail on how to access or set this option. If this is all gibberish to you I strongly urge you to reach out to your friendly neighborhood tech-head and ask them to give you a hand.
Here is the key bit of information you’ll need:
FrameAlbum DNS server IP address: 64.2.142.181 FrameAlbum DNS server hostname: dns.framealbum.com
If your frame requires two DNS server values simply use the same address for both entries.
Once you have set your frame to use the FrameAlbum DNS server you should receive an image on your frame providing you with an activation code that you can use to link your frame to your FrameAlbum account. Simply log into the FrameAlbum website and choose the ‘activate a frame’ link.
Please post any questions in the comments section below.
Thanks for your patience!
Open source licenses and code sharing
Oct 14th
I’ve been swamped with a big development project of late. It has hampered my ability to spend any time extending FrameAlbum but it does have the small benefit of covering my Starbuck’s addiction.
The first item to be tackled is publishing some code! I have to first settle on an open-source license; I’m open to any comments/suggestions folks may have on this topic. My initial thoughts are to find a license that allows folks to use & modify it freely for their own use. If they choose to use it in a commercial service they should be compelled to contribute something back to the project/community.
I’ve already starting putting the code into a GIT repository. For you non-code-slingers out there GIT is a program for managing the source code (the stuff that programs are made of) of a program or website. I am not a code-slinger by day so my git-fu is not strong however it does have a strong following among the code- slingers I know and trust. If you are interested in contributing to FrameAlbum or just having a look at how the sausage is made then grab a copy of GIT and run it around the block a bit.
The next big feature to be added to the service is integration of Facebook photos. Lots of people have asked for them and I’m interested in diving into Facebook’s new developer’s platform.
Beyond that, I plan to expand the informational channel types (news, weather forecasts, news, etc.), expand Picasa support to include non-public albums and add ‘tag’ filtering to all photo feeds.
Stay Calm and Carry On.
T.
