Meural II Local Controller

Meural II has very basic controls (too simple)

Note

  • we only use our own images organized into our own playlists
  • we have 3 frames all in Portrait organised as a Triptych

also:

  • it ignores order of items in a playlist (a bug), so although we have a specific playlists on each frame with specificlaly ordered images (a la Triptych) they play out of sequence
  • Can’t look at a list of available images and select one

It has a local REST API that is sufficient options for the level of control I would like:

Local Web Server

Netgear refers to a ‘remote controller’ in their Meural support documentation:
https://kb.netgear.com/000060746/Can-I-control-the-Canvas-without-a-mobile-app-or-gesture-control-and-if-so-how
This ‘remote controller’ is a local web server on the Canvas device available at: http://LOCALIP/remote/
It runs on a javascript available at: http://LOCALIP/static/remote.js

The available calls in this javascript are:
/remote/identify/
/remote/get_galleries_json/
/remote/get_gallery_status_json/
/remote/get_frame_items_by_gallery_json/
/remote/get_wifi_connections_json/
/remote/get_backlight/
/remote/control_check/sleep/
/remote/control_check/video/
/remote/control_check/als/
/remote/control_check/system/
/remote/control_command/boot_status/image/
/remote/control_command/set_key/
/remote/control_command/set_backlight/
/remote/control_command/suspend
/remote/control_command/resume
/remote/control_command/set_orientation/
/remote/control_command/change_gallery/
/remote/control_command/change_item/
/remote/control_command/rtc/
/remote/control_command/language/
/remote/control_command/country/
/remote/control_command/als_calibrate/off/
/remote/control_command_post/connect_to_new_wifi/
/remote/control_command_post/connect_to_exist_wifi/
/remote/control_command_post/connect_to_hidden_wifi/
/remote/control_command_post/delete_wifi_connection/
/remote/postcard/

So what do we want of this application:

  • Assumptions:
    • All of our own images loaded up to each frame are available locally (so we can thumbnail and display then in the local application)
  • Requirements wishlist
    • Can poll each frame to check it is available and it’s IP for further communication
    • Can switch galleries
    • Can select an individual image and display it (Note to self: probably requires a gallery to be active that contains that image?)
    • Can setup to automatically slideshow images across all three frames (for our triptych galleries)
    • Is a locally hosted web application so we can use any device that has a browser to access the application
    • Ranking of images by different user
    • Mirror whats currently on the frames