Take screenshots to monitor traffic

Take screenshots from a list of urls using playright and checks them into the repo using github actions. Based on Simon Willison's shotscraper

Schedule a Python script with GitHub Actions to take screenshots from URLS

Watch the video tutorial:

This example shows how to run a Python script as cron job with GitHub Actions. It calls an API once a week (could be any schedule you want), logs the response in status.log, and automatically pushes the changes to this repo.

• The code to automatically take a screenshot with playright is implemented in main.py
• Inspect and configure cron job in GitHub Action .github/workflows/actions.yml
• It installs and use third party packages from requirements.txt
• Secret environment variables can be used. Set secrets in Settings/Secrets/Actions -> 'New repository secret'. Use the same secret name inside actions.yml and main.py

Configuration

For the screenshots

The configuration is done via a TOML file called config.toml It contains a list of locations. Each location can have several streets. Every location/street must have an URL. Example:

>>> config = {
...     'Location1': {
...         'StreetA': {
...             'url': '<https://www.google.com/maps/>...'
...         },
...         'StreetB': {
...             'url': '<https://www.google.com/maps/>...'
...         }
...     },
...     'Location2': {
...         'StreetC': {
...             'url': '<https://www.google.com/maps/>...'
...         }
...     }
... }

Configuration of the colors that represent traffic

First, a GUI must be started to click on a map at what position the colors must be sampled.

python measure_points_gui.py shots/leuven_geldenaaksevest_20231017-114230.png -direction from

A visualisation of the screenshot of the argument will appear. It's handy to use the magnifier glass on osx: Press option-command 8

Next click in the position were colors must be sampled.

Press q.

In this case, the following will be added to the config.yml file:

"point_from": [ [ 887, 78,], ..., [ 418, 712,],]

Analysis of the screenshot

Open notebook get_traffic_info_from_screenshot.ipynb.

Adapt the global variables LOCATION, STREET and DIRECTION in the third cell:

# Which street to analyse and in what direction
LOCATION = "leuven"
STREET = "tiensestraat"
DIRECTION = "to" # must be "to" the crossing or away "from" the crossing

Run the notebook until the end. The results are in the figs directory.

Installation

To locally test main.py python script follow these steps:

1. Prerequisites

Make sure you have Python 3.11 or later installed on your system.

2. Install Poetry

To install Poetry, you can use the official installer provided by Poetry. Do not use pip.

3. Clone the Repository

Clone the repo filedrukte_tiensepoort repository from GitHub:

git clone hhttps://github.com/cast42/filedrukte_tiensepoort

4. Install Dependencies

Use Poetry to install the package and its dependencies:

poetry install

or you can create a virtualenv with poetry and install the dependencies

poetry shell
poetry install