Topic: GRLevel3 AutoStart and Animated .GIF

[KD4PYR]

I really like GRLEVEL3 and wanted to post a consistently framed animated .GIF to my website and have it
updated automatically from my Windows 10 environment. Well after poking around a little bit, I have
something that works pretty well and thought I would share.

For it to work the way I wanted, I used AUTOIT at boot (in startup) to:

1)   Start the program
2)   Center the image on my location consistently
3)   Zoom in a bit
4)   Start publishing the images ( I had to check the Create Sequence box the first time)
5)   Minimize the program to the task bar.

Then I used a windows batch file (run on a schedule every ten minutes) to:

1)   Copy the 10 image sequence .JPG files to a working directory in
        reverse order (so the animated .GIF would run forward in time).
2)   Run a nice (free) command  line program called ImageMagick
        (http://www.imagemagick.org/script/convert.php) to convert the .JPG
        images series to an animated .GIF for posting to my website:
        (http://www.kd4pyr.net/Images/kiln_br1.gif)

The .GIF is pretty big, but I like the output. The following are listing of my autoit
script and the windows batch file for anyone’s copy and modification.

Rick

; ============ AUTOIT Script ==================
; Start GRLevel 3.
; 1) Open App
; 2) Center Map and zoom
; 3) Start web publishing
; Note the value for WinWaitActive must match the text in the title
; bar of the GRLevel 3 window
;
; Wait for drive mappings to complete
sleep(1000)
;
Run("C:\Program Files\GRLevelX\GRLevel3_2\grlevel3.exe")
; Wait for program startup
WinWait("KILN Wilmington, OH - GRLevel3")
sleep(10000)
;Set focus to program and maximize
WinActivate("KILN Wilmington, OH - GRLevel3","")
WinSetState("KILN Wilmington, OH - GRLevel3","", @SW_MAXIMIZE)
; Move map to center on my location
sleep(1000)
MouseClickDrag ( "", 100, 100, 250, 50)
sleep(1000)
; Zoom in
Send("!e")
Send("{ENTER}")
Send("!e")
Send("{ENTER}")
Send("!e")
Send("{ENTER}")
; Open file menu and Go down to the Web Publishing selection
Send("!f")
Send("{DOWN}")
sleep(500)
Send("{DOWN}")
sleep(500)
Send("{DOWN}")
sleep(500)
Send("{DOWN}")
sleep(500)
; Start the web publishing
Send("{ENTER}")
sleep(500)
Send("{ENTER}")
Send("{ENTER}")
; Minimize Window
WinSetState("KILN","",@SW_MINIMIZE)
; ============ End AUTOIT Script ==================

Rem ============= Batch File to animate GRLEVEL3 images ==============
Rem Uses the command line grapics utility CONVERT.EXE
Rem from http://www.imagemagick.org/script/convert.php
v:
cd\radar
Rem Copy the .jpg files to a subdirectory in reverse time order
copy /y kiln_br1_9.jpg work\kiln_br1_a.jpg
copy /y kiln_br1_8.jpg work\kiln_br1_b.jpg
copy /y kiln_br1_7.jpg work\kiln_br1_c.jpg
copy /y kiln_br1_6.jpg work\kiln_br1_d.jpg
copy /y kiln_br1_5.jpg work\kiln_br1_e.jpg
copy /y kiln_br1_4.jpg work\kiln_br1_f.jpg
copy /y kiln_br1_3.jpg work\kiln_br1_g.jpg
copy /y kiln_br1_2.jpg work\kiln_br1_h.jpg
copy /y kiln_br1_1.jpg work\kiln_br1_i.jpg
copy /y kiln_br1_0.jpg work\kiln_br1_j.jpg
Rem Run the graphic conversion utiltiy
convert -delay 50 -morph 0 work\*.jpg kiln_br1.gif
Rem Copy the animated .gif to the root for display on web site http://www.kd4pyr.net/Images/kiln_br1.gif
copy kiln_br1.gif v:\
Rem ============= End Batch File =====================================