netbox-community
New Tab for Object Images in DCIM
NetBox version
V4.1.10
Feature type
Other
Proposed functionality
Adding a Tab to DCIM objects where you can view thumbnails of images attached to said objects.
I dont think there would be a huge amount of development involved in this, and I had thought about trying to develop a plugin with a template extension to do it, but feel like it might be something that others using netbox might appreciate.
Use case
We are using pictures to "site audits" currently, then using those pictures to reference in the future instead of having to send a technician out to the site to see exactly what is going on.
We have also proposed having technician take pictures of individual devices after they make changes to the physical interfaces, and try and use computer vision to determine which interfaces have cables and which don't, but until we can get a AI computer vision solution working, it would be nice if we could view these images in a thumbnail.
Database changes
no db changes needed
External dependencies
No response
You can already attach images to any model. We do this for locations, device types, and racks and it works well for me. You can see a thumbnail by hovering the mouse, or click it to see the full size image. What's the benefit of moving it to a separate tab?
We also use the netbox-attachments plugin for PDF docs, so that appears on a separate "Attachments" tab.
You can already attach images to any model.
Just FYI image attachments are supported only for specific models.
the hover over thing only works good on PC, and while the majority of our users are on PC's we do have field technicians using mobile devices.
Some of our lineups are close together which doesn't allow us to get a full rack in a single image, so you need to view 2 images to see the entire rack. Which makes the thumbnails a bit more awkward to view
It would also be nice if i could go into a site object and view the images from all the racks in that location instead of having to go into each rack individually. The majority of our sites have anywhere from 8-15 racks but we have some that have 40 or more(1 site with over 100 racks!)
Also gallery view is cool
I agree the hover behavior is clumsy on a touch screen. I had never tried it before. I have to say, working on a PC with mouse, I prefer the current behavior. Adding a tab would require 2 mouse clicks to see the image, vs zero in the current version. It should be possible to detect whether the user has a mouse. Maybe for touch screens, that could be modified so a single tap shows the thumbnail, then a second tap shows the full image.
If there was a tab, it would be 1 click to get into the tab, then you would be able to view all the thumbnails without another click. So if your only looking at a single image, i agree with you, but for sites/racks/devices with multiple images, i still think the tab is a better solution. IMO.
Sorry, I should have clarified, I was counting 2 clicks as one to see the images, and another to get back to the main tab.
I'm also concerned about the top tab bar getting too big, it already looks a bit cluttered on smaller displays when it wraps to 2-3 rows.
Instead of a separate tab, what do you think about showing the thumbnails in the existing table? I mocked it up below, showing the current view and my proposal. I removed the Object Type and Parent columns since those are obvious from the page context.
I think the thumbnails is WAY better than how it currently works. but I still think seeing a seperate tab would be preferable, especially on objects that contain more than a couple of images.