Image Monitor for Android

Description

This home screen widget monitors downloads periodically two images (you can specify the URLs) and displays them on your home screen. One use is to keep an eye on the MRTG stats of your web site.

Screenshots:

Features and Requirements:

• Android 1.6 +
• Access to a web server that you can configure to generate and the images.
• Refresh intervals of 15 minutes, 30 minutes, 1 hour or 2 hours.
• Refresh also upon request (just click on one of the images, check the “Force Refresh” checkbox then hit “Back” on your phone)
• Automatic refresh upon Network (WiFi/3G/GSM) reconnect.
• Backup / Restore settings.
• 4×1 and 3×3 sizes (4×1 for bigger screens, 3×3 for smaller ones like X10 Mini, HTC Wildfire, etc)
• Multiple widgets supported (you can add 1 more, etc) for more images to be monitored.

Limitations:

• For images to appear crisp, you need to compute the image sizes manually and configure them on the server. This is due to an Android limitation on widgets, which cannot access the Views to request the final render size.
• There is no way to disable automatic network refresh. This is by design, since I usually like to check the home screen when I exit areas with no signal. It might be an issue when traveling with the metro / trains if there are constant reconnects. I might add a preference in the future to avoid this.
• There is no form based authentication when downloading the images – so the images have to be available on the server but NOT protected by a password. I don’t care if somebody finds the URL I use to serve MRTG stats (that’s what I use the widget for).

Download:

• Image Monitor Widget.apk – version 1.1(116)

Permissions:

• Storage (modify/delete SD card contents) – needed to be able to save logs (into /sdcard/Android/data folder) and also to allow settings backup.
• Network (full internet access / network state) – so that images can be downloaded and to get access to the network state change trigger.

Installation:

I am maintaining this grid that shows what size images should have so that they render crisp on the phones.

I will add more resolutions as I test them, but if you test, please let me know. It is not difficult to find out, you have to take a screenshot of your phone running the widget, then see how big (in pixels) one of the images is shown in the screenshot.

The application will resize the images to fit the widget area, but they will loose some clarity due to the compression (resizing) process.

MRTG Server side configuration is identical with a similar application I’ve coded for Windows Mobile, you can read more here but please remember the image sizes needed for Android.

License:

Copyright Iulian Virtejanu, 2011.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED “AS IS”, WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.

You are free to use the application for your personal use. You are still free to use it for commercial purposes, but please contact me if you need security updates or other settings being added.

Please do not redistribute the application, and if you like to mention it, please link back to this page (I’d like to keep track of the number of downloads).