TABLE OF CONTENTS

• Linking your Dropbox account:
• Using the Dropbox Folders:
• Troubleshooting:
  • Incorrect Photo Orientation:
  • Non-photo Files in the Photo Folder:
  • Newly Added Photos Not Showing in Rotation:
  • Images in Selected Files no Longer Display or Update:

NOTE: Videos stored in your Photo sharing source cannot play in the Photo block. To view Videos, you will need to use our Video blocks and one of the supported Video streaming services to play Videos

You can use Dropbox to randomly Display Photos in any folder that you set up to store them with the Dropbox Photo Block. To do this use the steps below:

Linking your Dropbox account:

To add Photos from Dropbox to DAKboard, you'll first need to choose Dropbox as your photo source and link your Dropbox account. To do this open your Screen Editor, for Predefined Screens this will be under the Background tab selecting the source as Dropbox, for Custom Screens, click the Add a Block button in the upper right-hand corner, and search for Dropbox. Once you have the Source set click the Connect to Dropbox button to add your account as seen below:

Follow the prompts to link to your Dropbox account and provide permission to view the Folder of your choice.

Using the Dropbox Folders:

Once an account or multiple accounts are linked, you can use the Dropbox Account dropdown to select the Account you want to use. This will load the Dropbox Folder section in a Tree format that you can expand to find your designated folder. See below:

You can expand the tree by clicking on the Arrows to the right of the root directory and all subdirectories until you find the folder you wish to use. The folder containing the images must be selected as Dropbox will not navigate to subfolders to find images. If you have a folder selected that has no images in it when that folder is tapped to display something you will receive a No Photos Found message. Make sure you uncheck any folders that do not have photo files in them.

Troubleshooting:

This section is for some specific issues we have learned of with the Dropbox integrations. Please see this section if any of these issues apply to you.

Incorrect Photo Orientation:

DropBox does not automatically rotate photos. Flickr as well as other Photo sharing sites and phones rotate the pictures based on how the picture is oriented i.e. the sky will always be shown on top. However, Dropbox will display pictures based on how the camera is oriented, i.e. the top of the picture will always be the top of the camera. If you turn the camera 90 degrees sideways for a picture, Dropbox will display the picture turned 90 degrees sideways.

Dropbox reads the EXIF metadata of the file and is not able to modify it.  Therefore if the file is in a particular viewing position, Dropbox will also show the file in the same position. As a workaround, several web-based utilities can modify the photo rotation stored in the photo's EXIF data, one of which is: 

https://www.thexifer.net/#dropbox. 

It allows you to link your Dropbox account and update the orientation within the photo's EXIF data.

Non-photo Files in the Photo Folder:

We have found that when file types other than GIF, PNG, or JPG are in a directory used for the Dropbox Photo block, the files will attempt to load and can potentially fill up the memory of your Display. It is recommended that only GIF, PNG, or JPG files should be located in the selected folders or directories to prevent your Display from crashing. 

Newly Added Photos Not Showing in Rotation:

(Updated 12/12/2024)

DAKboard and Dropbox use an automatic integration to detect newly added photos.  Dropbox will send a notification to DAKboard when the photo list has changed, and DAKboard will obtain a new list in near real-time and apply the new list to the photo rotation. These photos will only be visible if you have the folder selected directly on your Photo block. If you do not see the new Photo, check your Photo block, and make sure the folder containing the image is selected.

For redundancy, DAKboard will also manually request and cache the photo list for small folders (under 25 images) every 4 hours, and every 24 hours for larger folders (over 25 images). This means you may not see the new photos for at least 4 to 24 hours depending on the number of photos in the folder

Images in Selected Files no Longer Display or Update:

In  he unlikely scenario that photos are present in the Dropbox selected folder but do not display in DAKboard, this may indicate an issue with the authorization in use from DAKboard to Dropbox. To correct this, you can reauthorize your account with DAKboard. Reauthorizing will also generate a fresh cache list, update your files and folder names, as well as update the permissions. Use our article Remove or Reauthorizing External Apps to learn how to do this.