yashsingh1/xdaforums huggingface dataset:
[Android Apps and Games] jab1a:
This seems a brilliant yet simple idea and seems to be well done. I will give this a try but its not realy for me as i dont have a data plan and only really use my wifi at home to connect so the updates on the pic would not be frequent enough.....maybe one day I will treat myself.

Thanks for your hard work
[Android Apps and Games] viogrep:
Def. bookmarked for later use. Very good idea.
[Android Apps and Games] _miha_:
New version 0.84 with optimizations and better gallery support

Loading is faster now (and you can enable a progress bar if you are curious/need to know).

I also added an option to dig into picture galleries (load the large version of the image which looks much better as a wallpaper on highres phones).

For the next update I am working on cycling the gallery pictures instead of using the most recent "best" one so there will be even more Live for more 'static' webpages.

New apk attached to first post!
[Android Apps and Games] radxcoresteven:
Awesome. Thanks!
[Android Apps and Games] _miha_:
Version 0.9

Has a lot of changes (hopefully good ones) with the loading and gallery stuff and a LOT of options to set everything fine.

For example WIFI exclusive updating has been added! Also the quick selections have presets now to explain useful settings for your sites ...

Still a lot to do. Next will be password protected webcam/server access.
[Android Apps and Games] _miha_:
0.9.1 fixes some things

no more default WIFI-only enabled (red screen if mobile at first start)

fixes of parameters for some quick selection items

no more crashes with wrong/incomplete URLs entered by hand
[Android Apps and Games] _miha_:
0.91 ... watch xdadevelopers (or other website) live on your homescreen background

See last screenshot attached to first post :) It's a hack (web snapshot) I may regret/have to replace by something else later and not fast. But should be ok for a lot of use cases.

And a lot of more serious updates like a sorted settings menu, access to standard password protected servers/cams, better gallery updating with long refresh times.

Edit: v0.91.1 can now be opened after install/in market for all those people not knowing what a wallpaper is!
[Android Apps and Games] hazard99:
Taking a look at this on my sgs!!
[Android Apps and Games] alovell83:
Dev, you should have more confidence in patience, it's a great idea ;-). I typically wait until things hit the RSS, so I'm sure you'll see a little spike since it just came up in the past 20 minutes.

Good luck! I do have a question, have you judged the battery life impact? I did see the custom refresh rate option, but still I am curious to see what impact it had on both your idle and active battery life stats if you update as often as a regular widget since it'll probably download more data.

Suggestions: Be able to set up a schedule

Preferably with different settings for different days. For instance, M-F have it set to use pic of the day with an update every 24 hours, then on weekends have it set up to show a web/weathercam every 15 mins.

Also, being able to set it, instead of every X seconds, being able to set it to update maybe 3x on M-F would help out in a few cases. Example, to see a traffic or weather cam just before going to/from work.

Good luck, I look forward to seeing what you do with it, I'll let you know my findings.
[Android Apps and Games] 96edwy:
all i can say is AMAZING

and also FOOTBALL scores as my live wallpaper FTW

come on you POOL!
[Android Apps and Games] blazingwolf:
Very nice. Works pretty well.

It would be real nice if you could get the picture to use the whole screen. Not sure if you are constrained by the site of course but I want to use this on my Archos 101 and it has a 1024X600 resolution so I get a lot of black bars.

Thank you for making this available.
[Android Apps and Games] Utorrent76:
Good idea.

How is on battery life though?
[Android Apps and Games] glhturbo:
Very interested to see where this goes. Great idea IMHO. Subscribed.
[Android Apps and Games] peterpangaea:
Nice work.

Nice work. While trying this out, I ran across an issue. I accidentally the refresh time. If you enter nothing for the refresh time, it will force close (v0.91.2).
[Android Apps and Games] ibrigand:
Great idea

Think of busy parents whose kids are in a daycare with kiddie cameras...live feed of your baby !
[Android Apps and Games] vampir4997:
Awesome app. Ive bben wanting something like this for a while. Maybe could add some battery saving settings. thank you !!!!!!!
[Android Apps and Games] aeoveu:
(first time poster, long time lurker here :D )

Dude, how do I "thank" you using the forum?

(apparently, all that lurking hasn't really helped me in learning the basics of the forum)
[Android Apps and Games] _miha_:
Version 0.92 Thank you all for your great feedback!

To support android versions without LIVE wallpaper support now the App is also an App - this will develop into a "web frame" to watch webcam/galleries/websites for example while in a nightstand (uses mostly the same features as the wallpaper).

Also I was able to fix some FCs from reports sent to me and posted here! Thank you again!

Some answers to specific comments before:

Scheduling:

I want that too. But I have to think about the Settingsscreens getting much too filled up before doing that. I want to be able to store custom settings like the quick selections and set active times for them.

Battery consumption/saving:

I have the wallpaper running now since a little more than two weeks and it showed up in the battery statistics two days with 2%. But I cannot give a guarantee that it will not be more because it depends on a lot of circumstances.

how long/often is the homescreen visible

complexity of the target website in combination with the dig setting

connection speed

refresh times

image sizes

A (my) live wallpaper is NOT updated while not visible except to finish the current refresh operation! This is contrary to widgets which are always active as far as I know.

To save battery you should if possible specify a DIRECT link to the refreshing image (http://www.xyz.com/camera.jpg) or at least a link to the nearest possible frame containing the image(s) you want. This minimizes data transfer and reduces CPU usage to not much more than a simple static wallpaper. Also try the "first only" setting as it reduces the number of images loaded from websites like galleries - but it may miss the important pictures. Usage of higher refresh times helps also - especially if you stay in the homescreen for longer times.

Screen Sizes/Fullscreen:

I will look into that.

Babycam:

I have two little children/babies so I also got this Idea. They are part of the cause for slow progress with my Android development (also my real job takes some time of course) ...

Thanks:

Press THANKS on the right below a post :)
[Android Apps and Games] williegenius:
Cool, yo.

I couldn't get it to work with ipwebcam running on the phone, but it was silly to try.
[Android Apps and Games] alovell83:
You can't thank someone until your post count reaches a certain number, perhaps 10?

scheduling

Glad you want it, I'll be patient.

I'm probably missing something, not being a dev and not knowing if there is a limit, general clutter, responsiveness, or other reason. I would've thought a sub-menu that resembles an alarm functionality not cause too much clutter, but I'll trust your judgement.

Updating

Regarding the wallpaper not updating while not visible. Are you saying that if your phone screen isn't on when the refresh counter is finished that it wont download a new wallpaper? Will it right when you wake your device? To use the above example, I would imagine a bunch of people would want the most recent picture of their baby sleeping if they weren't within earshot of a cry. Any clarification on this would be nice.

thanks

I think the thanks button is missing for him since he's a first-time poster.
[Android Apps and Games] braaaiins:
Webcams: www[dot]geocam[dot]tv

Would have posted a link but... To prevent spam to the forums, ALL new users are not permitted to post outside links in their messages. After approximately eight posts, you will be able to post outside links. Thanks for understanding!

:(
[Android Apps and Games] smeddy:
Amazing app idea, fantastic! Will report any issues I find but a big thankyou :)
[Android Apps and Games] pompeyboyz:
Have tried to add the live bbc football vidiprinter link as the live wallpaper but it fails.

Is there something I am missing about what websites can be used?
[Android Apps and Games] _miha_:
no update, some quick answers ...

IP Webcam from Market

Is not working because it uses MJPG image format which Android does not support native yet (and so doesn't my app). Sorry!

BUT! This is a great idea which nearly kept me awake tonight. So I build another APP as a companion to the WebLiveWallpaper. It is called MobileWebCam.

market://details?id?=com.dngames.mobilewebcam

https://market.android.com/details?id=com.dngames.mobilewebcam

This requires even more knowledge about what you are doing than the WebLiveWallpaper and you need your own server with php. Then you get your personal mobile simple webcam (working with wifi AND mobile!!!) which you can watch with your second android as wallpaper/app (or every other browser).

This may proove useful for the Babycam also :)

... more answers ...

Refreshes of picture

As soon as the wallpaper/homescreen gets visible again a refresh is started (IF the refresh duration is reached). The refresh may take a little time (select "show progress" in settings to be able to see the refresh).

live bbc football vidiprinter link

As far as i can see this does not contain an image. So your only option is to set it to webview in the settings. That should work. I want to add a widget for websites like that later because image quality of text in background is not so good.

Edit: removed webcam.apk (will create new thread when ready)
[Android Apps and Games] verditsgerman:
I am a little bit confused. I want to load a random image from a website. I tried a flickr pool and it loads one picture, but it's just the thumbnail, even with dig deeper turned on, which results in very pixelated wallpapers. Will this only work if I point it at one image which is constantly changing?
[Android Apps and Games] _miha_:
v0.93 added simple MJPG support for video-webcams

This just reloads picture for picture but at least something is visible! Real mjpg would be too draining for a background I think so maybe this is good enough.

Also the WebFrame App refreshes now like it should ...

browse.deviantart.com/photography

This is just a "File Not Found" for me. But otherwise you understood correct. Digging should find larger pictures from a thumbnail gallery. I will test deviantart later - maybe there is some javascript I don't understand.
[Android Apps and Games] cityeyes:
I'm having this problem with all of the feeds that come included with the program. Out of the five sites I've selected, every one of them has set a small icon as my wallpaper instead of the image.

That said, as soon as I can get this working, this is a massively interesting and promising app that I can see myself using in the future. Nice job, OP!
[Android Apps and Games] _miha_:
Something :confused: is broken with the digging at the last version(s) ... is in repair.

For now you can switch off the last option to avoid OutOfMemory - Optimize images.
[Android Apps and Games] verditsgerman:
This is awesome, Miha. Thank you!

Is it possible to one day have an option to avoid images of a certain size? I sometimes get a RSS logo or a twitter logo that are both tiny images on a website showing up as my background.
[Android Apps and Games] _miha_:
v0.93.1 !oh my!

Sorry for the mess that happened when splitting the app from the wallpaper. I am still not sure about the optimize image setting.

There should be no need for a switch to avoid small images because this is what the app is about. Except when you set the lowres-option for mobile network (which is disabled now by default for the quick selections).

Getting too tired - but there is still something broken with loading too often at the same time.
[Android Apps and Games] cityeyes:
Don't push yourself too hard, we're patient, haha. Thanks for tackling that other problem so quickly!
[Android Apps and Games] _miha_:
v0.93.2 Finally working like it was days ago!

Gallery loading was screwed up by a very simple wrong assumption. Should be fine now (is in my Tests).

I now also tried to begin using much less memory (no more OutOfMemorys in my tests!) and speed up loading after switching settings. Though galleries are still loading slow ... but downloading an image gallery IS slow! Maybe I can later save the images to disc and cycle them and only really refresh daily or whatever).

But after this bad last versions and many 1star-ratings gained by this I will try not to add too many more features for now :) Password protection seems to be not working correct and Custom Settings need to be saveable next.

Anyone tried an MJPG cam (I only had one for testing) - or maybe some crazy experiments with vlc 'streaming' TV or whatever to your background?
[Android Apps and Games] verditsgerman:
Thanks so much! It's working great now. Still can't dig deeper on deviantart, but everything else is working.
[Android Apps and Games] _miha_:
I already fixed some bugs (like saving the picture every reload which I didn't intent to do!), improved some things and moved the preview picture to sdcard (to avoid eating up space on devices with limited internal memory). But a new version is not ready until I can get deviantART ok :) That site is really showing the limits of my simple way of digging a gallery site and I don't like the idea of adding more and more settings for every other website. It is running through now but takes forever and sometimes crashes (still memory issues I think).

I get these comments in the market of the APP (I think this means when started from launcher and not as a live wallpaper) force closing. But no crash reports are sent which give me a hint there - not being able to see the hardware/android version in the reports also doesn't help. If someone reading this has an old 1.5, 1.6 or whatever device and can check if it crashes when started from launcher (icon) I would be happy to fix that! I tried 1.5 and 1.6 in emulator and that is ok.
[Android Apps and Games] _miha_:
Version 0.94 loads deviantart

Loading speed will and can still be improved but for now more complex sites/webgalleries like deviantart should run through (they do on my old htc Magic). If not, please give me the link of the page.

You can now save your own site-settings and quickselect them later.

No more internal memory than for the App itself is required - everything is written to external (SD) now. You can now also dump every shown image there in case you need to store what you see :) This is not used as a cache (at the moment).
[Android Apps and Games] _miha_:
0.94.2 improves the picture frame app ...

... and added some more example cameras. I switched to running the phone as a picture frame at work now (it's connected to power most of the time) so I added fullscreen modes and wakelock.
[Android Apps and Games] _miha_:
version 0.94.3 improves gallery speed a lot

Less memory consumption (out of memory) and also reduces data traffic on heavy sites like deviantart. But may degrade image quality a little bit (setting optimize is really optimizing now). Also contains some bug/crash fixes and improvements for the app.
[Android Apps and Games] DPLOY:
Excellent proggy! Using deviantArt abstract browse and is working well for me (WiFi only).

Only issue I am experiencing is when going to settings it flashes back out to the preview on its own...no biggy.

Cant wait to get the widget that will allow yo to refresh a new pic on demand!
[Android Apps and Games] g8rpal:
Great app!

Really like it... couple of suggestions:

cycle through available webcams, ability to import webcams from text file. ability to use different webcam list based on hour of the day. web place to share webcam lists and maybe a compiled list of all distinct webcams.

I've been using picture of the day on my pc for years and wrote a wrapper program to change the list of webcams on the hour. That way I (hardly) ever get a black (night time) webcam.

Let me know if you're interested I'd be happy to send the vb6 source code and my lists of webcams (by the hour.)

search for xequte dot com, click programs, then other programs and you can find picture of the day for windows. (i can't post links... doh!)

Thanks for the program!
[Android Apps and Games] Greenfieldan:
You german developers are cranking out these awesome ideas :cool:
[Android Apps and Games] g8rpal:
Got it! Random webcams anyway... had to create a random.html page on my site. Now if someone can help me figure out how to pick the array based on the time of day! see attached zip. upload to your own website and reference link. It will randomly display a webcam picture. then you just use that link it weblivewallpaper to get random webcams.

Soooo cool!
[Android Apps and Games] _miha_:
Hi there thank you for your comments and ideas, just some quick comments ...

Can you explain the flashing back a little more? Maybe PM/email? I don't understand what's happening. Or do you mean the closing of the settings when quickselecting something - that one is intended.

I am not sure with the widget just for reloading (next picture) do you really need that? You can already switch on "Refresh on touch" in the system settings so that a refresh is triggered when touching the background. I already have a widget (not enabled in the app yet) showing the picture (updating much less often) like a picture frame but that's not working good so far.

Great! Soooo cool to see someone taking your work even further! Thank you!

This is a great quick fix for my still missing scheduling (planned since the beginning ;) Only drawback is that it adds one more page and at least two loaded pictures to the refresh so the reload of a fast webcam is slower than it has to be. Time based selection with Javascript may not be possible because of my "not really happening"-interpretation of Javascript when loading the page.

This is also the explanation why your script is not working - there is no Javascript running (except when you select the "Webview" option which I don't recommend) - I just try to extract possible images and shuffle them randomly (so yes your random-page works but not because of the script :).

I think a very good solution is easily possible with a php page. There you can select and output just one picture from your array -> based on time and whatever settings you like. The code in php would look very similar to your script - and you could even provide online editing abilities by moving the array to a second text file/database.

If you want me to I can put your random-html/php whatever it will become into my quicklinks ...

Scheduling is planned (I already have the time selection in my other app), import ability from textfile is already there in a non public way at the moment for my quicklinks (but I am not decided wether to put them on sdcard or read from a webpage - both?). Reading the quicklinks from a webpage someone else is maintaining (you?) would give me more time for programming but I would also loose control about the links :)

I also have to try to add not too many features or I will release a only half working version again like some days ago ... and I still have to sleep sometimes (and don't forget my family and my real job)!

Thank you again!

Michael
[Android Apps and Games] g8rpal:
I'm a little confused... the random.html is working. only problem is that I need to get rid of the links that don't go directly to a jpg. I've also figured out a way to get it to use different links based on the hour of the day. I'll upload that once I get it complete. Drawback to that is that the schedule would be based on the US eastern timezone so others would need to adjust the hours so they always see webcams w/ sunlight.

the link to the live page is themilligans . us / random . html (please nobody hack me....)
[Android Apps and Games] _miha_:
>I'm a little confused... the random.html is working

Yes, your html contains a list of links and the app selects one linking to a picture that is fine as a wallpaper (random).

I will be very confused if your time based selection script is working with my app :) Of course it will work in the browser/webview (as long as javascript is enabled)!

>only problem is that I need to get rid of the links that don't go directly to a jpg

Or you can try to enable the "dig"-setting in my advanced settings screen. Then those webcams linked in a html-page should also be found.

But your list is great. As you also have the timesettings I can make an import for that! Easiest would be to simply for each cam store the url,activation start, activation end time (and perfect would be to add the refresh time) to set that automatically also.
[Android Apps and Games] _miha_:
version 0.95 adds a (useless?) widget

The widget currently is not refreshing standalone - it just takes pictures from wallpaper or app. Useful only to start settings faster or reload picture ...

Update also repairs some smaller things/crashes (one image only sites indirect linked, parsing crashes, ...). Preparations for custom import and scheduling made but still not done.
[Android Apps and Games] DPLOY:
Just installed but not seeing widget...using ADWLauncher EX 1.21
[Android Apps and Games] _miha_:
version 0.95.1

Adds an option for picture of the day type sites to refresh only once per day.

Also I changed the widget background - and hope it is visible now for everyone.

From this version on "My Sites" are saved into a mysites.xml on your sdcard in Android/data/com.dngames.websitelivewallpaper/files where advanced users can add their own sites with a text editor.

Very advanced users may also place a defaults.xml file (attached to this post) there to replace the preset quick urls. The <site>-tags there need a category="webcam", "gallery" or "website" attribute to be put in the right lists.

If someone wants to give me better defaults or just add some cool links please post your edited file ...

g8rpal I did not include your links yet and am still working on the time scheduling which can already be entered in the xml but is not used at the moment!
[Android Apps and Games] g8rpal:
I totally see what you mean about the javascript not working. when not in website snapshot mode the javascript never gets the current hour of the day and defaults to the default switch. (h t t p themilligans . us / random . html )

I made a test to make sure. the random html still works when not not in website snapshot mode but it always goes to the default switch.

I also noticed that the hour gets referenced at -2 when in website snapshot mode. so it must be using the current date time of whatever server verizon is using (?)

did a lot of research today on how to determine the sunrise sunset times based on an ip address until I realized that many websites may be hosted far away from where the webcam is. unless I could somehow determine the image brightness, it may be near impossible to make something that always shows a bright webcam (other than through user intervention.)

anyway, glad to see you're making progress and I feel really good about trying to help.

Feel free to use my links and web address in the quick links. (I'm just a little worried for the webcam operators if their bandwidth caps get blown away by the sudden upsurge in downloads; but, I guess that is a fact of life these days.)

attached is the mypotdchanger program I created to work w/ Picture of the day by xequte.com software. theres a text file on how to use if anyones interested. It's for the pc but I've been using it for years and love it. will post source (vb6) shortly.

thanks a million and I totally love your app.