Can someone save me from this foolishness around window sizes? IP Camera feeds now in tiny windows!

aruffell · November 3, 2022, 4:01pm

I have >10 IP Cameras and most are 4K (8MP). Until a few months ago the preview when clicking on the picture-glance card worked fine by opening a larger window that filled a good percentage of my 4K screen. Then with 2022.9 the window got pointless tabs (in reference to viewing a camera feed) on the top making the video too large for the window. This month, things got worse… with 2022.11 we now have a silly small window that makes viewing cameras via HA pointless.

While the screenshot doesn’t show it, the window used up most of the space on my 4K screen. This is what I wanted and expected given the feed is 4K (unless RTSPtoWeb-WebRTC is reducing it). Notice that the bottom controls are missing… this was new in 2022.9 because of the top tabs being added.

Here I just scrolled the window down to show the controls:

Now with 2022.11 the issue was made somewhat worse. In this screenshot I show the entire dashboard to show how ridiculously small the window is:

…and yes there is a github ticket for this:

github.com/home-assistant/frontend

picture-glance card issues got worse with 2022.9.0b5 edit: and even worse with 2022.11.0b6

opened 09:21PM - 05 Sep 22 UTC

alexruffell

### Checklist - [X] I have updated to the latest available Home Assistant versi…on. - [X] I have cleared the cache of my browser. - [X] I have tried a different browser to see if it is related to my browser. ### Describe the issue you are experiencing I implemented a privacy filter for my camera feeds displayed on the dashboard so I can hide them before showing/sharing the dashboard. The first issue, which is not new to 2022.9.0b5 is that once I add the boolean toggle to the picture-glance card to turn the privacy on/off, I can no longer click the card anywhere to view a larger image as all I get is a useless history window of the boolean. This is the YAML for the card: ``` type: picture-glance title: Driveway - East entities: - entity: input_boolean.driveway_east_camera_privacy - entity: camera.driveway_east_camera camera_image: camera.driveway_east_camera aspect_ratio: '16:9' camera_view: live state_filter: 'on': brightness(40%) blur(10px) saturate(0.0) 'off': brightness(100%) entity: input_boolean.driveway_east_camera_privacy ``` Clicking on the image now produces this (of no use): <img width="449" alt="image" src="https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/4006944/188512821-f5d006a2-3610-42bd-af8b-312d5d7e459b.png"> To get around this issue I added a camera entity I can click to open a larger view. This worked fine until 2022.9.0b5. Notice in the image below that now I get INFO / SETTINGS / RELATED tabs on the top which make the window too big to fit therefore pushing part of the feed off screen. <img width="1729" alt="image" src="https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/4006944/188512942-3c8b0c65-584f-4e3c-8488-b9af831091f8.png"> <img width="1703" alt="image" src="https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/4006944/188513054-25a56407-72cd-406d-962b-b6cdb8e24ee0.png"> ### Describe the behavior you expected 1. Clicking anywhere on picture-glance card showing a camera should show a larger version of the camera feed even when entities are added. 2. When a larger view opens, it needs to fit the screen, and I don't believe the tabs should be there, not unless you are adding a separate customizable preview option to display camera feeds. ### Steps to reproduce the issue 1. As per YAML included above, add state filter with boolean to turn on/off to card 2. Add boolean to card so you can turn filter on/off clicking on the icon in the card 3. Click anywhere in the picture-glance card expecting to have larger view results in getting history window for boolean 4. Add camera entity to as a workaround 5. Click on camera entity to open larger view 6. It opens but is oversized due to new tabs that IMO should not be there in a preview anyway. 7. ... ### What version of Home Assistant Core has the issue? core-2022.9.0b5 ### What was the last working version of Home Assistant Core? core-2022.8.7 ### In which browser are you experiencing the issue with? Chrome, Edge, FF - all latest revisions ### Which operating system are you using to run this browser? Windows 11 ### State of relevant entities _No response_ ### Problem-relevant frontend configuration _No response_ ### Javascript errors shown in your browser console/inspector _No response_ ### Additional information _No response_

QUESTIONS:

Is there some other way to get a larger preview of a camera feed in HA?

What other cards are there to view feeds other than picture-glance?

I added a privacy toggle to blur out the feed and since I did that, clicking on the card itself no longer opens the larger view but instead shows me the useless entity info/settings/related window for the privacy toggle (!?!) so I had to add the camera as an entity and now have to click on the camera icon…

tsightler · November 6, 2022, 5:30pm

No idea why it now defaults to such a small window or who thought that was a good feature but, if you click the title bar, it will expand so at least it’s only 1-click to get something a little more usable.

aruffell · November 6, 2022, 7:12pm

@tsightler - Thanks for the tip. I did not realize it could be expanded. I’d say the click on the title to expand gets an F in usability but better than nothing. The one good thing is that the large version is of the correct size no longer requiring any scrolling.

Great… now I have to click on the little camera icon, as clicking the image no longer works in my configuration, and then I have to click a title… WTH!

There needs to be some way to override the default window size to skip it or force it larger…

tsightler · November 6, 2022, 7:44pm

You should be able to fix the clicking on the image issue as that definitely still works for me. What do you have your tap action set to? For me it’s still just click image, click title bar, so not horrible, and indeed, at least the window now actually fits on the screen instead of forcing me to scroll around.

But it does feel like there’s just a lot of arbitrary changes without much thought to actual usability. What good is having the extra tabs for a normal user? I can’t see any advantage to it at all, and why open in a super small window that nobody is going to want to actually use. Just weird design choices that make the overall experience of using HA worse than it was just a few releases ago.

aruffell · November 6, 2022, 7:50pm

@tsightler Ever since I implemented the camera privacy and therefore needed to add a toggle on the image itself to turn the privacy on/off, clicking the image takes me to “more-info” of the privacy toggle (?!?!?!).

I did try to configure the tap action but could never get it to work so this is what I am using now:

type: picture-glance
title: East
entities:
  - entity: input_boolean.driveway_east_camera_privacy
  - entity: camera.driveway_east_camera
camera_image: camera.driveway_east_camera
aspect_ratio: '16:9'
camera_view: live
state_filter:
  'on': brightness(40%) blur(10px) saturate(0.0)
  'off': brightness(100%)
entity: input_boolean.driveway_east_camera_privacy

My non ideal fix was to add an additional entity referencing the camera so I could open the larger version.

tsightler · November 6, 2022, 8:06pm

Ah, I see, I don’t use camera privacy so that’s probably why it works fine for me.

ejackson28 · January 10, 2023, 2:15pm

FYI i found this on Reddit and it solved my frustration with this: Using browser mod

aruffell · January 10, 2023, 2:48pm

@ejackson28 The post you linked to has the YAML needed to use browser_mod! Thank you! I had tried to use it before but had no example code so I set it aside for when I had more time… now I can test it out

Coltonc18 · August 24, 2023, 8:13pm

How is this browser mod working for people? I put it in and while it does blow up the picture, it also freezes the video, so it no longer actually is a video, just turns it into a picture?