JPhotoFrame is a simple Java application for displaying a collection of photos in a full-screen slideshow. It is meant to be used when creating a DIY photo frame.

• Lightweight and easily configurable
• Several options for source image re-scaling and background fill
• Current date/time display with custom date/time formats
• Weather forecast using OpenWeatherMap
• Pausable operation i.e. during photo frame offline hours
• Image rotation correction utility
• Configurable widget layout for date, time, weather, etc

With weather forecast -

Without weather -

Use Maven to build.

mvn clean package

Configuration is simple. Add a file called config.properties into the same directory as the jar file. Below is a sample configuration file (note that you will need a valid OWM API key to get weather data).

screenNumber=0
imageDirectory=/photos
cacheDirectory=/photos/cache
imageTimeout=300000
dateFormat=MMM d yyyy
timeFormat=H:mm
weatherCity=Brisbane,AU
owmApiKey=xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

You can specify a custom configuration file to load by using a command line argument, simply give the location of the custom config file to the run.sh script or when running the java command. See how to run below.

These are the available configuration options. All apart frmo the directory settings are optional and have default values that will be used if nothing is provided for them.

Widgets are laid out as per the JSON layout file (default is layout.json). The file contains a single JSON object with a 'widgets' property, which is an array of widgets. Any number of widgets can be added to the 'widgets' array.

Example -

{
  "widgets": []
}

Available widgets:

• anchor - anchors other widgets to a certain part of the screen
• text - displays text either from variables bound to the data model or as free form strings
• weather - displays forecast data bound to a specific part of the weather data model

To see a detailed explanation on how to use the layout engine, see this article - https://www.igorkromin.net/index.php/2017/12/04/jphotoframe-new-layout-engine-explained-with-examples/

Properties:

• anchor : two-integer array specifying which side to anchor along an axis (x,y). 0 is the min-side, 1 is the max-side e.g. [0,0] will anchor to the top left side of the screen, [1,1] will anchor to the bottom right
• children : list of child widgets

Example -

{
    "type": "anchor",
    "anchor": [1, 0],
    "children: []
}

Properties:

• data : model data source to display
• format : text format string as per the Java Formatter javadoc
• font : name of the font to use to render the text
• size : font size
• colour : colour of the text
• outlineColour : colour of the outline drawn around the text
• outlineWidth : width of the outline, values larger than 1 will typically exceed draw bounds
• useInternalWeatherFont : whether to use the internal weather font to rendering this widget
• transform : transformation to apply to this text, see below for more details

Allowed values for the data attribute:

• $time : binds to the model time value
• $date : binds to the model date value
• $weather.geo : binds to the weather model geographic area - contains two values (country and city)

In addition any freeform text string is allowed to be specified in the data attribute.

Example 1 -

{
    "type": "text",
    "transform": {
        "origin": [1, 0],
        "offset": [-10, 10],
        "showBounds": "false"
    },
    "text" : {
        "data": "$time",
        "size": 120,
        "outlineWidth": 12
    }
}

Example 2 -

{
    "type": "text",
    "text": {
        "data": "$weather.geo",
        "format": "%2$s, %1$s",
        "size": 26,
        "outlineWidth": 8
    }
}

Properties:

• gap : size of the gap between forecast items
• gapPosition : whether the gap is calculated from the 'leading' or 'trailing' end of the bounding box
• orientation : either 'vertical' or 'horizontal' layout
• reverse : whether forecast items should be shown in reverse i.e fri - mon instead of mon - fri
• text : text node properties
• transform : transformation to apply

Allowed values for the data attribute on the text property:

• $temperature - binds to the weather data forecast temperature value
• $condition - binds to the weather data forecast condition value
• $condition2 - binds to the weather data forecast detailed condition value
• $glyph - binds to the weather data forecast condition code value, should be used along with the useInternalWeatherFont value set to true
• $day - binds to the weather data forecast condition day of week value
• $date - binds to the weather data forecast condition date object, can be formatted as a standard java Date object

Example -

{
    "type": "weather",
    "transform": {
        "origin": [0, 1],
        "offset": [75, -20],
        "showBounds": "false"
    },
    "text" : {
        "data": "$glyph",
        "size": 50,
        "outlineWidth": 8,
        "useInternalWeatherFont": "true"
    },
    "weather" : {
        "gap": 140,
        "gapPosition": "leading",
        "orientation": "horizontal"
    }
}

A number of widgets suport the transform property which allows the widget to be translated or rotated on screen.

Properties:

• origin : two-integer array specifying the transformation origin (x,y), similar to Anchor 'anchor'
• offset : two-integer array specifying the offset in pixels relative to the origin (x, y)
• rotate : degrees rotation around the origin point
• showBounds : whether to show the drawing boundary box or not

Example -

"transform": {
    "origin": [0, 0],
    "offset": [10, -45],
    "rotate": 270,
    "showBounds": "false"
}

To run, launch the jar file like so:

java -Xms32m -Xmx32m -jar jphotoframe.jar

Alternatively copy the jphotoframe.jar file to the same directory as the run.sh (after building using ant) and execute the run.sh script instead.

Make sure that there is a lib directory with the json-20170516.jar, owm-japis-2.5.0.5.jar and mediautil-1.0-withfixes.jar files inside it. The directory structure should look like this:

+-- lib/
|   +-- json-20170516.jar
|   +-- owm-japis-2.5.0.5.jar
|   +-- mediautil-1.0-withfixes.jar
+-- jphotoframe.jar

The jar files from the lib directory are included in the jphotoframe.jar file manifest and should be picked up automatically.

You can add the -verbose command line parameter to increase logging level.

Weather is retrieved from OpenWeatherMap using this library: https://github.com/akapribot/OWM-JAPIs

All weather conditions are displayed using Weather Icons (http://erikflowers.github.io/weather-icons/).

The time and photo updates can be paused by creating a file called pause.txt in the photos directory. If this file is found, the photo frame will become idle until that file is removed again. This is useful to suspend photo updates during photo frame offline hours i.e. during the night.

There is a script provided along with the source code called onoff.sh that can be used to control when the screen is turned on and off using xset. This script also controls whether the pausible operation is enabled or not.

To use make sure the onoff_times.txt file sets relevant times for when your screen should be on or off. The format of the file is the hour (24 hour format) followed by a tab, then either the word 'on' or 'off'.

The default file is as follows:

00	off
01	off
02	off
03	off
04	off
05	off
06	on
07	on
08	on
09	on
10	on
11	on
12	on
13	on
14	on
15	on
16	on
17	on
18	on
19	on
20	on
21	on
22	off
23	off

Update the onoff.sh script to set the correct directories and display number.

Set your crontab to below (update paths as required):

0 * * * * bash /home/pi/jphotoframe/onoff.sh

Sometimes JPEG files have rotation information saved into them. JPhotoFrame uses the standard Java JPEG loader and doesn't try to auto-orient images after loading. This can result in incorrectly rotated images.

A utility is provided to pre-process all of your photos and re-orinent them. This is done with the help of the mediautil library (http://mediachest.sourceforge.net/mediautil/).

To use this utility, run the fixrotation.sh script or pass the -fixrotation parameter when running JPhotoFrame manually. This utility expect a command line argument specifying the photo directory name.

• Bug #1 OutOfMemoryError when loading image stops images from cycling
• OWM weather information not shown due to 2.1 API removal
• System.out usage moved to the Log class paving a way to better logging
• True separation of the model/view/controller objects
• Thread sleep times are aligned to timeout schedules instead of sleeping the same time every time i.e. if time update is 1000ms and it took 200ms to draw the screen, the thread will sleep only 800ms
• Layout engine is easier to use and customise

JPhotoFrame - a simple Java application for displaying a collection of photos in a full-screen slideshow. Copyright (C) 2015-2016 Igor Kromin

This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; version 2 of the License.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA 02110-1301 USA.

You can find this and my other open source projects here - http://github.com/ikromin