What to do after the closure of Midnight Mars Browser? |
What to do after the closure of Midnight Mars Browser? |
Nov 30 2019, 04:59 PM
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#1
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Member Group: Members Posts: 112 Joined: 20-August 12 From: Spain Member No.: 6597 |
I've been a heavy user of Midnight Mars Browser for several years and I'm incredibly grateful for the work that Michael has done.
Now I ask myself, should we create again an alternative way to look and search for images coming from Mars? In the last several months I developed a way to ingest InSight images in order to have a small database and a telegram bot that tells me when a new image is uploaded to the InSight web site and I can try to do the same with the MSL imagery. But, I have several questions: What is the better way to show the data in the web page? Which is the best way to order the images? I'd love to hear some suggestions for that. Greetings. |
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Oct 14 2020, 04:55 PM
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#2
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Member Group: Members Posts: 913 Joined: 15-June 09 From: Lisbon, Portugal Member No.: 4824 |
Hi everyone!
Here is a prototype for a Curiosity raw images viewer. It is not intended for smart phones. Not so quick but still somewhat dirty: the code does not have much robustness. It consists of a single HTML file and does use CSS and JavaScript (how else?) I'm releasing it in order to get some feedback: Am I going in the right direction? Does it have your favourite features? What is wrong and what else would you like to have it do? Just post here or PM me. The crucial thing about it is the JSON file(s). If NASA changes those then everything will need reviewing. About installing it: Because I do not have a web site in which to host the file I am attaching it here. Simply download it to your favourite location. Click (or double click) on it to open it on your default browser. However, this creates a problem as the page is local for the browsers and makes cross-domain requests (the famous CORS problem). The solution is to install a browser add-on. I am using Firefox so I installed CORS Everywhere . There is one for Chrome as well Allow CORS. This is quite an easy process. About using it: Open the file. It will automatically be positioned on the most recent sol and display all its images, in small format. The images are displayed by sol. Any sol can be selected by typing its number on the appropriate entry field (top right) or using the scroller. Press the "GO !" button to load the images.The images can be filtered by instrument. A row of buttons, one for each instrument, is dynamically built when the images are loaded. Press a button to see the corresponding images. Clicking on an image opens it in large format on an independent (resizeable) window which also shows the available information for image. Any number of images can be opened (depending on your computer's resources). Note: the code is fast but some sols have hundreds, even thousands of images. This takes time, and I do have a fast connection! Future:
Fernando MSLImageViewer.html ( 15.59K ) Number of downloads: 551 |
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Oct 14 2020, 08:27 PM
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#3
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Founder Group: Chairman Posts: 14432 Joined: 8-February 04 Member No.: 1 |
Hi everyone! Here is a prototype for a Curiosity raw images viewer. It is not intended for smart phones. That's awesome! So - I'd actually be cautious about using the thumbnails.... all thumbnails are full-frame, but all dust devil movies or upper tier images or other sub-framed pictures are not full frame, so the thumbnail might be missleading? I've got a couple of ideas / requests 1) Have a thumbnail on/off button ( to stop them showing in the list at all to avoid duplication) 2) Have a text list at the bottom of any page with a listing of links direct to the images so people can do a bulk download of data for any given sol. 3) What some people are beginning to figure out is how useful the Sequence name is.... ( in a file like NRB_655824982EDR_S0822188NCAM00595M_.JPG the SeqID is the NCAM00595 part ) - being able to filter by SeqID for a given Sol would also be really good as that would let someone ( combined with 2, above) download, say, all the images in a single dust devil movie or MastCam mosaic on a given sol. One bug to report - it's not a constant sol number - but sols before about 2785-2775 or so, it will return an image count, but not return any actual images. If you don't mind me asking - how long did this take you? |
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Oct 14 2020, 09:16 PM
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#4
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Senior Member Group: Members Posts: 4247 Joined: 17-January 05 Member No.: 152 |
So - I'd actually be cautious about using the thumbnails.... all thumbnails are full-frame, but all dust devil movies or upper tier images or other sub-framed pictures are not full frame, so the thumbnail might be missleading? It may depend on what you mean by a thumbnail. The downlinked thumbnails are indeed full frame - eg, for the navcam frame https://mars.nasa.gov/msl-raw-images/proj/m...NCAM00595M_.JPG the image https://mars.nasa.gov/msl-raw-images/proj/m...NCAM00595M_.JPG is a full-frame thumb. On the other hand, I believe all images hosted at mars.nasa.gov/msl-raw-images are paired with thumbs generated on the ground - for that navcam the thumb is https://mars.nasa.gov/msl-raw-images/proj/m...00595M_-thm.jpg. It's these latter thumbs that should be used to speed loading of sites like this. |
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Nov 11 2020, 06:02 PM
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#5
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Member Group: Members Posts: 913 Joined: 15-June 09 From: Lisbon, Portugal Member No.: 4824 |
On the other hand, I believe all images hosted at mars.nasa.gov/msl-raw-images are paired with thumbs generated on the ground - for that navcam the thumb is https://mars.nasa.gov/msl-raw-images/proj/m...00595M_-thm.jpg. It's these latter thumbs that should be used to speed loading of sites like this. I found that not all images in the json manifests have a -thm counter part (sol 0 gives thousands of errors, for instance). Because there is no way to find whether a file exists on the server without trying to download it, one is then left with the need to recover from the 403 error (when the -thm file does not exist) by loading the full size file... which may also not exist, which needs another recovery routine. This is more overhead. This is, in essence, why I opted for downloading images in relatively small groups. I also found the json manifests do not list the exact same files the official site shows. For instance, for sol 0 (my nemesis!) json lists 3270 images - of which fewer than 1000 exist on the given url - but the official site mentions 2198. Any information on this subject is very much appreciated. Fernando |
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Nov 11 2020, 06:53 PM
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#6
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Senior Member Group: Members Posts: 4247 Joined: 17-January 05 Member No.: 152 |
I found that not all images in the json manifests have a -thm counter part (sol 0 gives thousands of errors, for instance). I see what you mean. I only go back a couple of hundred sols and the -thm images always exist in these recent sols. But I can imagine that things are more sporadic in the older sols. About image counts, I find agreement between the public jpeg site and json, at least back a couple hundred sols. For sol 0, json v1 gives 3720 images, and the public jpeg site lists 2198 full-res images + 1520 thumbs for a total of 3718. That's very close, but the jpeg site seems to be missing two images! |
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