Feature Request: Cycle Through Media Items

Is there a way to rotate a set of media within a predefined tile area? For example my two camera tiles below, I’d like rotate other medias within that area, maybe a predefined set?

I’ve tried to create different dashboards keeping the top and the sides static but the page reload animation doesn’t look good.

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If I understand correctly, you want a single Media tile to be able to cycle through a set of Media resources at some defined interval?

If so, it’s not something that we currently support. We’ve been thinking through how we might leverage SharpTools Variables in Media Tiles, so that might be one approach. I’m also open to the idea of adding the ability to cycle through a set a media resources, but I’d need to think through the implementation - for example, maybe allowing the ability to ‘tag’ (or otherwise group) media resources and then you could cycle through items with a particular tag.

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Hi @josh, yes, same media tile but the content changes based on a time interval or mode or trigger? Just an idea to float around.

Like I mentioned in the op, I tried to set up three different dashboards with the same tiles all around except for the two media tiles. That worked but the animation of the tiles loading doesn’t make the transition look smooth.

I’d be willing to test what you come up with, thanks!

On a similar project, I was able to rotate my background images for the dashboard using a script on a rpi that renames a set of images to background.jpg every hour then I set my background media to refresh also on a set interval to pick up the new background image.

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That would be one of the neat things about the variable approach is the change could be triggered based on any of the existing triggers in the system.

There’s certainly the trade-off of ease-of-use though. Being able to more easily configure the Media Tile to cycle through a set of media sounds like a really neat idea. I’ll leave the thread open for further feedback from the community. Community feedback is a key part of how we prioritize what we work on - the more interest there is from the community, the more like it is to get prioritized (and the opposite is also true).

An approach like that could work here too. Even for images that you don’t directly store (eg. a URL online), you could setup a script that would redirect to your desired image. Then set the tile to periodically refresh and it would pick up the ‘new’ URL each time.

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Hmm, you’re right. I can do the same thing as I did with the background… not sure why I got hung up it being a media tile and thinking it’s ‘untouchable’ lol.

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Just an update that I’ve moved this topic to our Feature Requests category. Make sure to scroll up to the top of the thread and cast your vote to show your interest.

Is it possible to add a whole folder of photos and have them rotate after a period of seconds?

Welcome to the community and thanks for posting, Ian!

Is this request related to the SharpTools.io dashboards? (I noticed it was in the SharpTools for Android category, so I was going to recategorize it)

If so, are you looking for the ability to rotate between user uploaded images as your background? Or looking to rotate between images in a Media Tile?

Hi

Sorry my bad it does look the wrong category.

Yes rotate media in a tile please

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Thanks for the confirmation, Ian! We’ve noted the request.

Out of curiosity, do you currently host your photos online somewhere?

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Yes Google drive and or OneDrive

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If you use FullyKiosk you could set up screen savers that would allow you see your photos and what not I’m not sure if this would help you at all.

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Big +1 for this. My wife has been asking if I can have the device act as a photo frame for years, but on iPad there’s no real way for a screensaver function. I realized that maybe I could do something by hosting a simple server that changed which media is returned when refreshing the same URL, but obviously a full media manager in SharpTools would be even better. No small project though :smiley:

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This topic seems to have dies but I am reviving it - not so much for media but to enable me to cycle through related device data - for example rainfall data from my weather station (cycle current mm/h rate > daily rain > weekly rain > monthly rain > yearly Rain >…)

Is that information displayed in a Media resource? If it’s “Thing” data, then that would be outside of the scope of this particular request as this request is focused on cycling through Media items.

Thanks, I understand: it’s Things data, not media… I’m surprised nobody else has posted something on this before. I tried to set it up as a new feature request but have been unable to progress past the ‘draft’ stage - apparently the community website doesn’t like the title. I’ve tried to rephrase it but always blocked…