Basic question about Images and Image Paths

Ignition
1

Hi guys, this is going to be a very simple beginner question.

I know that the Images that I can browse for and use with the Image object are stored on the Gateway, and that there’s a ‘Builtin’ folder, and that I can use the Image Management Tool to administer my own folders of images there.

But where are these actually stored on the Gateway ?

I’m trying to have Ignition display a PNG file that I’m sending to an FTP folder on my Gateway machine. I can’t seem to find the actual directory where the Image Management Tool stores image files, nor can I make an Image object work by putting in the path and filename of my actual image (/home/ftp/IMAGE/NG0002_02.png).

My Gateway is running on Ubuntu 10.04, with Ignition platform revision 7.6.2.

Ultimately I’ll be figuring out how to convert my machine vision system’s native format (*.BMP) into PNG or JPG files and store them in BLOB objects in the database, but baby steps first.

Thanks !

2

The images are stored in Ignitions internal database.

3

Which can be accessed at this URL on your computer: localhost:8088/main/system/images/

For example:

http://localhost:8088/main/system/images/Builtin/icons/48/add2.png

Nick

4

Okay, so they’re not sitting as files in an ordinary directory somewhere in the Gateway’s operating system’s filesystem, but rather as records in the Gateway’s internal database.

The HTTP URL to browse them is especially helpful and reinforces that they’re served up by the Gateway.

If I have image files that are sitting in an ordinary directory on the Gateway’s file system, how can I specify a path to them ? Can I do that at all ?

The images I want to work with are coming from a machine vision camera. I’ll have hundreds of them in a directory, and I’m confident I can determine the correct filename. I don’t need them to update automatically; I’m OK with the user clicking a button to load them.

But they won’t be just background images or labels or illustrations; they’re real process data, as surely as a setpoint or a numeric display is.

5

I’m not sure what http server ignition uses, but you can probably figure out where it stores assets and dump your images in there.

If it were me, I would just run a lightweight http server http://www.linuxplanet.com/linuxplanet/reviews/7239/1 and publish the folder with it. Ignition doesn’t use port 80 by default so you could run your webserver there and wouldn’t even have to specify a port in your url’s (we run a wiki over port 80 on our ignition server). I think the “document viewer” component will display content from a given URL, but I haven’t tried it.

You might look at imagemagick if you haven’t already for converting those files http://www.imagemagick.org/script/command-line-processing.php

Hope that helps…

6

Imagemagick is a great suggestion; I’ll give it a try !

The Document Viewer supports basic HTML and TXT, but I don’t think you can point it at a HTML page with a reference to a BMP.

I’ll keep working on the issue !

7

Found any Solution ?

8

Ignition's WebDev module is the supported, full-featured solution.

If you can store your images in a database, my Blob Server module is light-to-medium duty free alternative.