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Adding a Background Image in ClearWay™

Adding a Background Image in ClearWay™

Owned by Charlotte Dakin-Norris
Last updated: Jul 04, 2023
5 min read

Introduction

Adding, configuring and viewing the active elements of the system are made considerably more straightforward if you can view a scaled image of the area in the background. You can use a map, aerial photo, scaled diagram or an integrated mapping service of the area as your background. Aerial photos are the most useful for the initial configuration stage.

This section contains instructions for uploading and enabling a static Background Image.

For information about using a dynamic integrated mapping service (Open Street Map or Google Map) please refer to this documentation: Displaying a Map. Either static or dynamic options can be enabled on and off depending on the user's preference.

Contents

Importing a Background Image

To upload a background image:

  1. Enable the Config Function. Go to the Configuration Tree's basic settings, by selecting the master folder - the Site Name folder.

     

  2. Select the Background Image button.

  3. The Update the Site Background Image wizard will appear in a new window. There will be two options:

    Select a Picture: This is represented by a file graphic. Select this if no background image has previously been uploaded.

    Clear Background Image: This is represented by a dustbin graphic. Select this to delete the current background image, and then Select a Picture to upload a new one.

  4. Search through your files and select the desired image. Images must be at least 1024x1024 pixels. When exporting a maximum resolution image from Google Earth™ Pro, resolution is 4800x2886.

     

  5. Once the selected image appears in the Update the Site Background Image window, select Next.

  6. Next, the latitudes and longitudes of the top left and bottom right hand corner of the image must be configured in order to correctly align and rotate the image. Orange and red position markers placed on the image representing the top left and bottom right must be placed on the image. These do not have to be exactly at the corners, you could choose easily identifiable point of interest in the general vicinity of top left/bottom right. To determine the coordinates of the points, you could use a GPS device or an application such as Google Earth™. For example, below there is an image taken from Google Earth Pro™ in which a tree and an electricity pylon have been located and the co-ordinates labelled. Select Finish to complete the wizard.

  7. Finally, go to User Details (either through the System Menu or through selecting the specific user in the Configuration Tree's Users folder). Under Background Display, select Display Background Image.

     

     

  8. Click Save.

It is possible to simultaneously enable Display Open Street Map or Google Map and adjust the transparencies of each background in the PPI Navigation Control to view both concurrently:

Using Google Map requires an internet connection.

Video

Here is a video showing how to add a background image:

Background Image Backup / Restore

This section documents restoring a background image on a server that has been reset, or, on a different server.

When you save a background image using the Update the site background image wizard, the image is sent to the Management Server and saved to the database, as well as being written to the file system here; ProgramData/Navtech/BackgroundImage/BackgroundImage.dat.

If the database is reset, follow these steps to restore the background image:

  1. Copy the image from the location where its backed up: ProgramData/Navtech/BackgroundImage/BackgroundImage.dat and place the image file in the same location on the new or recovered server.

  2. Enable the Config Function. Go to the Configuration Tree's basic settings, by selecting the master folder - the Site Name folder.

  3. Select the Background Image button:

     

  4. The wizard will open and will check both the database and the file system for the image.

     

  5. If it finds the image in the database it will return it, otherwise it will return the image if it is saved in the file system:

     

  6. Click Next:

     

  7. The saved image will be displayed with the settings pre-populated. Click Finish and the image will be displayed on the PPI.

When a system is newly created or reset then each client will need to download the background image and create the map tiles, however, this only needs to be done once.

It will take several seconds for this process to complete so the map will not be displayed in the UI immediately.

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