Curiosity Image Retrieval Tools, scripts and software Options

[lyford]

Allow me to say OMAGERD THANK YOU

[RoverDriver]

Trying to develop a handier web interface to the raw images, here's a first go if anyone would like to help beta test it:

http://curiositymsl.com/table/view

It shows the raw images in table form, sortable by date taken, release date, etc. by clicking on the column headers. The default sort, by release date, is the handiest I think, since it shows the most recent uploads to the JPL site. It's hard otherwise to keep track of the newest files because they can come in under any sol.

Open to suggestions as to how it could be more useful. One thing that comes to mind is to be able to filter by camera, because with all the images in one big list, there are a lot of pages, mostly due to the large number of MARDI images.

Joe, you are an incredible source of amazing products! You asked for some suggestions, here they are:

1) yes selecting by camera would be great and probably necessary at some point in the mission

2) the dialog at the bottom with the sol numbers should be at the top in a separate, static frame so you can jump to any given sol without having to go to the top or bottom.

3) the dialog dialog box with the sol number should highlight the sol with the most recent images available.

4) if at some point in time they will make the image header available, or get telemetry for each image I suggest that the image name be a link to the telemetry.

One question: why keeping track of when the image was received and, most notably, why keeping track of the "lag"? I'm not sure we keep track of that, but if there is a reason I would like to know and do it as well. Never stop learning!

Paolo

[jmknapp]

I think image dimensions would be more useful than file size.

True, that was just a matter of expediency. I can find out the size of the files remotely with a "curl -sI <url>" command, but to get the image dimensions I would need to download all the files as they come in. That could be done.

I'm amused by the "lag" column, though it's not exactly fair, since it folds in both transmission lag (when did it arrive on Earth?) and raw posting lag.

Haha, I thought that was potentially snarky too, but still, it's of interest to know how "live" the images are. There was a press conference last week where a guy from "Nasa Watch" was insinuating that if they happened to find a picture of stromatolites they would withhold it (which Dr. Grotzinger of course denied). Anyway, looking at earth-shattering photos like NRA_397586934EDR_F0010008AUT_04096M_ which was "withheld" for almost a week, it would seem that real life is less intriguing.

Thanks for the other good suggestions.

[jmknapp]

1) yes selecting by camera would be great and probably necessary at some point in the mission

I'm thinking maybe some check boxes at he top for each camera to be included (not 17 check boxes, but 1 for each major type!).

2) the dialog at the bottom with the sol numbers should be at the top in a separate, static frame so you can jump to any given sol without having to go to the top or bottom.

3) the dialog dialog box with the sol number should highlight the sol with the most recent images available.

The navigation buttons do seem inconvenient down there. Note that they are simply page numbers, not sol numbers (20 entries per page).

4) if at some point in time they will make the image header available, or get telemetry for each image I suggest that the image name be a link to the telemetry.

Absolutely--did they ever do that for MER?

One question: why keeping track of when the image was received and, most notably, why keeping track of the "lag"? I'm not sure we keep track of that, but if there is a reason I would like to know and do it as well. Never stop learning!

No pressing reason for tracking the lag other than I thought it might be interesting to see a pattern--see reply above. I realize a lot of time is spent waiting in the relay queue.

[ChrisC]

Fantastic, Joe!

My one suggestion has to do with the curiositymsl.com home page. Please either A) link to the basic index page from there, or configure your site to automatically forward to the index page. That way I just have to remember "curiositymsl.com" when I get inspired to check for new images, no matter what computer I'm at.

Of course, I can navigate to UMSF, find this thread, click to the right page, and then click the link, but ...

[volcanopele]

Works great on a Samsung Galaxy Nexus smartphone, for what its worth... -Excellent job!

I have to concur, on my iPad. So much easier to look at and find images than the official site, which currently forces tablet users to the smartphone version of the site.

[mcaplinger]

...earth-shattering photos... which was "withheld" for almost a week...

In some cases the image is only partially received on the ground the first time around and retransmissions have to be commanded. That can slow things up, sometimes considerably. Also, images can be prioritized low and get stuck behind higher-priority data. I seem to recall images showing up weeks or even months after acquisition on MER. So the lag is pretty meaningless.

[RoverDriver]

...
The navigation buttons do seem inconvenient down there. Note that they are simply page numbers, not sol numbers (20 entries per page).

In that case, I suggest having the possibility of selecting single Sols.

Absolutely--did they ever do that for MER?
...

Yes, I don't know how UMSF people get MER telemetry but some limited telemetry is available. At least the vehicle position and attitude at time of image capture. Sometimes I wonder what UMSF-ers would be able to do if the full MER (and MSL) telemetry would be made available.

Paolo

[Cargo Cult]

Evening, all -

It's definitely not a fantastically useful image-listing tool like those above, but in keeping with the scraping-NASA-sites-to-present-data-in-more-versatile-ways theme, I've created a supremely unofficial RSS feed for the Martian Diaries blog.

It's at https://hylobatidae.org/misc/msl_blog.php - I haven't had a chance to test it in Google Reader, but it seems to work okay in Safari and Vienna for Mac OS X. It'll automatically check for updates every hour. Let me know if you have any issues!

(It's a horrible hack, derived from my equally unofficial RSS feed for Astronomy Picture of the Day: https://hylobatidae.org/misc/apod.php. They were built for my own use, but I hope people find them in some way helpful. Now, back to lurking on this fascinating forum! ;-) )

[Explorer1]

It works on my end; good job!

It's always a little strange when totally unrelated hobbies collide...

[algorimancer]

The AlgorimancerPG (APG) rangefinder utility is updated for Curiosity,
http://clarkandersen.com/RangeFinder.htm

I think I have the installer problem fixed, but don't happen to have another computer to test it on, so if someone would like to download/install/test it on a stereo pair of MSL navcam images, it would be appreciated.

The update only adds capability to do distances/photogrammetry with MSL's navigation camera images, and lacks any information about orientation since that database has not been made available as yet. I'm not too worked-up about adding support for the higher resolution Mastcam images, as it would take a lot of programming effort and I'm not clear on what real benefit it would offer -- sure, it would allow rangefinding out to much greater distances, but we have Hirise images already for that sort of thing. I may be susceptible to persuasion, given a good motivation.


Incidentally, loving the table view (http://curiositymsl.com/table/view).

[fredk]

Your site is already looking fantastic, Joe. I've got a few suggestions based on years of MER jpl and exploratorium use.

MER jpl is nice in that it sorts by sol, which is crucial when trying to find older images. Exploratorium is great because it sorts by arrival/release time, which is crucial when you're regularly looking at the latest images. So definitely the ability to sort either by sol or release time would make this the single best source of MSL images.

I agree with Emily that thumbs should be tossed out when superceeded by higher resolution images (though perhaps the official thumbs from Mars could be used as the image thumbs on your site, if the size is right?). It's odd that the MSL jpl site doesn't do that.

Another crucial feature of both MER jpl and exploratorium interfaces is that they indicate visited image links (ie visited links change colour). This makes it so much easier to catch up with images once a day or whenever you like, without having to remember which pics you've already looked at, especially when you sort by sols. One suggestion would be a border around the image thumb that changes from unvisited to visited colour, like with the MER jpl site.

[stevesliva]

(It's a horrible hack, derived from my equally unofficial RSS feed for Astronomy Picture of the Day: https://hylobatidae.org/misc/apod.php. They were built for my own use, but I hope people find them in some way helpful. Now, back to lurking on this fascinating forum! ;-) )

Nice! Some others that either have wonky feeds, or none at all would be MESSENGER and Dawn:
http://messenger.jhuapl.edu/gallery/sciencePhotos/
http://dawn.jpl.nasa.gov/multimedia/imageo...nth=2012-August
(Aren't those such interesting pages you might want a feed from? For your own use? )

I've just used feedity.com in the past, but it's definitely not as useful as an actual human...

[mhoward]

I agree with Emily that thumbs should be tossed out when superceded by higher resolution images (though perhaps the official thumbs from Mars could be used as the image thumbs on your site, if the size is right?). It's odd that the MSL jpl site doesn't do that.

I'm glad that the MSL jpl site is posting the thumbnails, this is actually good and I hope they keep it that way. The rover thumbnails are distinct from web thumbnails; they are really a distinct image category of their own. For example on MER, the ETH is always full-frame, while the full returned image may be subframed; so in that case the ETH thumbnail is never completely supplanted by the full image.

That said, sure it makes sense not to show them on a secondary site if they've been supplanted by a full image. But for the source of all our images? Please keep 'em.

[elakdawalla]

MESSENGER has a feed of sorts -- through its iPhone app. I get a notification every time they post a new image. I actually like their iOS gallery browser better than their Web image browser, which I find pretty clunky.