How to make dashboard update picture card when image file on local disc changes?

Configuration
1

Hi

I have made an automation that saves a snapshot from a webcam as a file to /config/www/snapshot.jpg

The automation runs one time each day at a specific time.

Then I have added a Picture Card on the dashboard that shows this snapshot.

However, when a new image is saved by the automation, the picture card will still show the previous (first saved) snapshot.

I have double checked that a new snapshot has been saved by renaming the file and displaying the renamed file in a new picture card that I made to test it.

If I rename the snapshot file back to the original file the picture card still shows the first snapshot.

Apparently home assistant caches the snapshot file and will continue to show the cached file even if the original file changes.

How can I setup this so that it works, i.e. the dashboard will show what’s on the file after it changes. I am ok with having to press a dashboard button or similar to make it update the image, even if I think it should be able to identify a change of the file.

Thanks!

2

Update

Refreshing/Reloading the page did not help.
Reloading the page with F5 did not help.
Reloading the page with Ctrl-F5 did not help.
Reloading the page with Ctrl-Shift-R did not help.

I had to open the Developer Tools and check the box “Disable cache”, and then hitting F5 reloaded the page with the correct new images.

I have never experienced something like this before. How can I make this work without having to have the “Disable cache” checked in Developer tools? I don’t want to have the cache disabled for my browser, just because of this.

I have another card that shows a “live” snapshot directly from the camera, this is updated every 10 seconds. No problem with cached image in that case.

3

no-one that has any thoughts on this?

4

Was looking for an answer on this, same issue here. If local jpg file change, the dashboard picture element is not changing. I tried (I think) all combination of cards and options.

5

Found a way:

  1. Create a local camera in configuration.yaml

camera:

  • platform: local_file
    name: SnapShot
    file_path: /config/www/digits_captured.jpg

  1. Reload HA

  2. On the dashboard add a Picture entity Card with the entity : SnapShot.

2 Likes
6

Thanks, this solves the picture-card caching issue I had

7

Thanks for helping! This works great for a daily AI image generated for todays dinner and todays weather.

8

add ?v=xxxxxxxx to de url/file name in the picture card

replace

/local/tmp/snapshot.jpg

with

/local/tmp/snapshot.jpg?v=" ~ (now() | as_timestamp | int) }}