aio_gif

adafruit.io Animated GIF Server

This package gives you a way to push animated GIFs to a remote device via an adafruit.io feed. The server can be started from the command line, or you can include the module in your own node.js project. The module is also a writable stream, so you can write URLs to images directly to the server and it will update the currently displayed image.

The server will automatically scale the images to scale the image to the largest size possible so that both the width and height can fit inside the browser window.

Command Line Interface

If you would like to install the command line interface, you can do so by installing the npm package with the global (-g) flag.

npm install -g aio_gif

If everything installed properly, you should now be able to view the usage information for aio_gif.

$ aio_gif -h

  Usage: aio_gif [options]

  Options:

    -h, --help         output usage information
    -V, --version      output the version number
    -k, --key [key]    adafruit.io key
    -f, --feed [feed]  adafruit.io feed name to listen to
    -p, --port [port]  listen for HTTP requests on port [8080]
    -H, --host [host]  listen for HTTP requests to a specific hostname

The key and feed arguments are required when using the CLI. You should refer to the adafruit.io documentation for keys and feeds if you need more information about how to generate them. Replace the xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx placeholder with your adafruit.io key, and the GIF feed name with the name of your feed.

$ aio_gif -k xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx -f GIF
Starting HTTP server on http://localhost:8080

Node.js Interface

You can also use this package in your own node.js project. First you will need to install the package.

npm install --save aio_gif

Now you can use the module in your project. Replace the xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx placeholder with your adafruit.io key, and the GIF feed name with the name of your feed.

// require module
var AIO_GIF = require('aio_gif');
 
// create instance
var aio_gif = AIO_GIF('xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx', 'GIF');

You can also pass options as an object.

// require module
var AIO_GIF = require('aio_gif');
 
// create instance with options object
var aio_gif = AIO_GIF({
  key: 'xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx',
  feed: 'GIF',
  port: 8888,
  host: 'localhost'
});

Writable Stream

The node.js module is also a writable stream, so you can push images directly to the server without connecting to adafruit.io, or push additional images when connected to adafruit.io.

// require module
var AIO_GIF = require('aio_gif');
 
// launch server without connecting to adafruit.io
var server = AIO_GIF();
 
// push new image
server.write('http://biko.io/biko.gif');

License

Copyright (c) 2015 Adafruit Industries. Licensed under the MIT license.