Picasa web albums

Hi belltown, I've been looking for a way to restore Picasa access to my NowTV box (based on a roku unit). Your updated channel looks perfect for this.

Unfortunately the only way to add any channels other than the few approved ones is via developer mode (as demonstrated here for plex)

I tried to use the zip file from your github to side load to the unit but get the error 'Install Failure: No manifest. Invalid package'

I have no experience coding for a Roku, so wondered if there is anything obvious I am doing wrong, or are the files on Github not set up to sideload?

Apologies if none of this makes sense!

"colincliff" wrote:
Hi belltown, I've been looking for a way to restore Picasa access to my NowTV box (based on a roku unit). Your updated channel looks perfect for this.

Unfortunately the only way to add any channels other than the few approved ones is via developer mode (as demonstrated here for plex)

I tried to use the zip file from your github to side load to the unit but get the error 'Install Failure: No manifest. Invalid package'

I have no experience coding for a Roku, so wondered if there is anything obvious I am doing wrong, or are the files on Github not set up to sideload?

Apologies if none of this makes sense!

You can't side-load Picasa2 from the zipped GitHub repo because the project uploaded to GitHub does not contain the OAuth2 key, which is developer-specific. You'll need to get your own key.

Click the 'Download ZIP' button on the GitHub page. This will download the file, Roku-Picasa2-master.zip. Extract the contents of that file then you'll have a folder called Roku-Picasa2-master. You might see another Roku-Picasa2-master folder inside that one. Whichever folder contains images, source, manifest, etc. will be the folder you'll use for your own Picasa project. That will be the folder you'll need to zip up yourself and side-load [Make sure before side-loading that the .zip file you are about to side-load contains source, image, manifest, etc]. However, the channel won't work until you set up your own OAuth2 key. See the file source\private-git.brs for instructions on how to do that. Once you've updated the private-git.brs file with your own OAuth2 key, go ahead and create your zip file and side-load it.

Wow, thank you so much for this update! I've really been wanting a way to display a proper slideshow screensaver on the TV screen.

Is there a way to make the images full screen? I looked at the code on github and I think it has something to do with this line:
canvasItem=[
{url: canvasItems[counter],
TargetRect:{x:Rnd(ds.w-420), y:Rnd(ds.h-300)}},
{url: canvasItems[nextimg],
TargetRect:{x:-1000, y:-1000}} 'Off the screen to preload
]

but my coding experience is really limited to HTML, CSS, and a little javascript. I noticed in the main slideshow it works full screen, but there are no canvas items, but in the slideshow screensaver it makes all the images really small. Hoping there's a way to make it all display full screen.

Again, thank you for updating this!

"a2597" wrote:
Wow, thank you so much for this update! I've really been wanting a way to display a proper slideshow screensaver on the TV screen.

Is there a way to make the images full screen? I looked at the code on github and I think it has something to do with this line:
canvasItem=[
{url: canvasItems[counter],
TargetRect:{x:Rnd(ds.w-420), y:Rnd(ds.h-300)}},
{url: canvasItems[nextimg],
TargetRect:{x:-1000, y:-1000}} 'Off the screen to preload
]

but my coding experience is really limited to HTML, CSS, and a little javascript. I noticed in the main slideshow it works full screen, but there are no canvas items, but in the slideshow screensaver it makes all the images really small. Hoping there's a way to make it all display full screen.

Again, thank you for updating this!

That screensaver code is mainly the code from the original Picasa author written a long time ago. My guess is the images were made small to look a decent size on an SD TV, and the code was never changed to make them larger on HD screens. Plus, it's a screensaver, so I can see why it wouldn't be written to take up the whole screen. The code you listed for the image canvas gives the (x, y) coordinate of the image origin. The image size is determined when the server request is made, e.g:

rsp=m.picasa.ExecServerAPI("?kind=photo&max-results=300&v=2.0&fields=entry(media:group(media:content))&imgmax=400")

It could be changed to display larger images on larger screens, or even display full-screen images. However, I don't have time to work on it in the immediate future, but I'll add it to my list of future possibilities.

Ah! I totally missed that when looking through the code. I'll see about modifying that when I get home this evening.

Thank you!

So, hot on the heels of this, and getting this working. And finally, after years, getting a full screen slideshow screensaver...
Google announces that it is killing Picasa in favor of Google Photos.

Good news: the API should continue working. But some factors in it may change.
https://developers.google.com/picasa-web/

The Picasa screensaver in the Channel store should keep working - if I upload a picture to my Google Photos account it shows in the app...

- Joel

Do you have any plans to continue developing this?

I've updated the screensaver portion to display full screen, and added a date/time text space to it, so as a screensaver it works wonderfully.
Right now I'm trying to see about smoothing the transition between images, as it's rather jerky (looks like it fades out in 4-5 increments, rather than a smooth transition). Basically trying to make it look a little more updated.
I can share the code I've changed, but I'm fairly confident it will only work on 1080p screens, not certain how to make it fit all screens. I'll have to work on that a bit more. Also took ages to figure out how to get a clock that updated properly.

If I can figure out how to get things into options, I might be able to set up things like "enable clock" and "Set full screen", for screen saver options, but I'm brand new to this language, so I'm really just feeling my way in the dark here.

"a2597" wrote:
Do you have any plans to continue developing this?

I've updated the screensaver portion to display full screen, and added a date/time text space to it, so as a screensaver it works wonderfully.
Right now I'm trying to see about smoothing the transition between images, as it's rather jerky (looks like it fades out in 4-5 increments, rather than a smooth transition). Basically trying to make it look a little more updated.
I can share the code I've changed, but I'm fairly confident it will only work on 1080p screens, not certain how to make it fit all screens. I'll have to work on that a bit more. Also took ages to figure out how to get a clock that updated properly.

If I can figure out how to get things into options, I might be able to set up things like "enable clock" and "Set full screen", for screen saver options, but I'm brand new to this language, so I'm really just feeling my way in the dark here.

Is the main Picasa API code working for you? I was playing around with mine the other day and finding that most calls to the API were getting an error 403 or 400 response, even though it appeared that the authentication tokens were valid. I assumed that Google was removing access to most of their API functions. If your code is still mainly working then I'll look into it some more and see what was going on. I have a feeling though that this is one of those typical Google situations where they're changing/removing functionality with no concern for backwards compatibility.

Thus far I haven't had any issues with the API calls, it's been loading my photos and albums with no issues at all.
I've been adding the channel via the dev server, so that may make a difference? Or maybe it's just that I've created the google key more recently?

I'm wondering if changing from roImageCanvas to roScreen might be a good idea as well, as it would allow smoother transitions and improve proformance. But again, I'm new to all this, so I'm just playing around with it.