Aggregate images taken this week, from previous years and presents them on a web page with a slideshow.

Motivation

When I migrated my photo collection from google photos to a locally hosted instance of photoprism, I missed the automatically generated slideshow feature of google photos, here it is now.

How it works

The meta information of all images are read at startup and cached in memory. When the slideshow is opened, images from this calendar week from previous years are displayed. If no images from the calendar year are found, random images are displayed.

Run the application

Native execution

Download the latest release for your system from the releases page:

# Assuming you run a x86/x64 system, if not adjust the binary name to download 
LATEST_VERSION=$(curl -L -s -H 'Accept: application/json' https://github.com/RouHim/this-week-in-past/releases/latest | \
sed -e 's/.*"tag_name":"\([^"]*\)".*/\1/') && \
curl -L -o this-week-in-past https://github.com/RouHim/this-week-in-past/releases/download/$LATEST_VERSION/this-week-in-past-x86_64-unknown-linux-musl && \
chmod +x this-week-in-past

Create a folder to store the application data:

mkdir data

Start the application with:

RESOURCE_PATHS=/path/to/pictures \
DATA_FOLDER=data \
SLIDESHOW_INTERVAL=60 \
./this-week-in-past

Since the binary is compiled completely statically, there are no dependencies on system libraries like glibc.

Docker

Docker Example:

docker run -p 8080:8080 \
        -v /path/to/pictures:/resources \
        -e SLIDESHOW_INTERVAL=60 \
        -e WEATHER_ENABLED=true \
        -e OPEN_WEATHER_MAP_API_KEY=<YOUR_KEY> \
        -e BIGDATA_CLOUD_API_KEY=<YOUR_KEY> \
        rouhim/this-week-in-past

Docker compose example:

services:
  this-week-in-past:
    image: rouhim/this-week-in-past
    volumes:
      - /path/to/pictures:/resources:ro # mount read only
    ports:
      - "8080:8080"
    environment:
      SLIDESHOW_INTERVAL: 10

Configuration

All configuration is done via environment variables:

Name	Description	Default value	Can be overwritten in URL
RESOURCE_PATHS	A list of folders from which the images should be loaded (comma separated)	/resources (Container only)
DATA_FOLDER	Path to a folder where the data should be stored, needs read/write access	/data (Container only)
PORT	Port on which the application should listen	8080
SLIDESHOW_INTERVAL	Interval of the slideshow in seconds	30	x
REFRESH_INTERVAL	Interval how often the page should be reloaded in minutes (triggers a new slideshow playlist)	360 (6h)
DATE_FORMAT	Date format of the image taken date (https://docs.rs/chrono/0.4.19/chrono/format/strftime/index.html)	%d.%m.%Y
BIGDATA_CLOUD_API_KEY	To resolve geo coordinates to city name. Obtain here: https://www.bigdatacloud.com
OPEN_WEATHER_MAP_API_KEY	To receive weather live data. Obtain here: https://openweathermap.org/api
WEATHER_ENABLED	Indicates if weather should be shown in the slideshow	false	x
WEATHER_LOCATION	Name of a city	Berlin
WEATHER_LANGUAGE	Weather language (ISO_639-1 two digit code)	en
WEATHER_UNIT	Weather units (metric or imperial)	metric
HOME_ASSISTANT_BASE_URL	Home assistant base url (e.g.: http://192.168.0.123:8123)
HOME_ASSISTANT_ENTITY_ID	Home assistant entity id to load the weather from (e.g.: sensor.outside_temperature)
HOME_ASSISTANT_API_TOKEN	Home assistant api access token
SHOW_HIDE_BUTTON	Show the hide button on the slideshow	false	x
RANDOM_SLIDESHOW	Show only random images instead of images from this week in previous years	false	x
IGNORE_FOLDER_MARKER_FILES	A list of file names which causes the folder in which the file is located to be ignored. (comma separated)	.ignore
IGNORE_FOLDER_REGEX	A regular expression that causes the folder to be ignored if it matches
PRELOAD_IMAGES	Indicates if images should be preloaded during the slideshow	false

Some parameters, as marked in the table, can be overwritten as URL parameter e.g.: http://localhost:8080/?SLIDESHOW_INTERVAL=10&SHOW_HIDE_BUTTON=false

Ignoring folders

There are two ways to ignore folders:

1. By ignore file: If a folder contains a file with the name specified in IGNORE_FOLDER_MARKER_FILES, the folder is ignored.
2. By folder name: If a folder name matches the regular expression specified in IGNORE_FOLDER_REGEX, the folder is ignored.

If a folder is ignored, all its sub-elements (files and folders) are also ignored.

Limitations

• Due to this issue of the image crate, there is currently no HEIC image support.

Visual Interaction

The slideshow can be controlled by clicking on invisible zones on the screen. These zones are divided into three areas:

• Previous Image: Clicking on the left side of the screen will show the previous image.
• Pause/Resume: Clicking in the middle of the screen will pause or resume the slideshow.
• Next Image: Clicking on the right side of the screen will show the next image.

The slideshow will automatically continue after the REFRESH_INTERVAL has passed.

Performance

Example 1

• Hardware: i3-12100T, 3xWD_BLACK SN750 (RAID-Z1), 32GB RAM
• Photos: ~80k
• Indexing: 6 seconds
• Uncached slideshow change: < 1 second

Example 2

• Hardware: Raspberry Pi Model B, Class 10 SD Card, 1GHz (OC) 32-Bit arm/v6, 512MB RAM
• Photos: ~6k
• Indexing: 38 seconds
• Uncached slideshow change: ~7 seconds

Example 3

• Hardware: LG G3 (Android Smartphone), Internal Storage, Snapdragon 801 4C 32-Bit arm/v7, 3GB RAM
• Photos: ~8k
• Indexing: 50 seconds
• Uncached slideshow change: < 1 second

Indexing scales with storage performance

Slideshow change scales with CPU performance

Resources

• Compiling static Rust binaries - https://github.com/rust-cross/rust-musl-cross
• Weather API - https://openweathermap.org/api
• Resolve Geo coordinates - https://www.bigdatacloud.com
• IntelliJ IDEA - https://www.jetbrains.com/idea
• Serving ML at the speed of Rust - https://shvbsle.in/serving-ml-at-the-speed-of-rust
• The Rust Performance Book - https://nnethercote.github.io/perf-book/#the-rust-performance-book