Comments on: Introducing FauquierCam.com

By: darethehair

darethehair — Mon, 26 Apr 2010 12:32:25 +0000

Well, let us know what ultimately was the source of the problem, since we are now quite curious! Maybe your parents can attempt a reboot of the computer in the meantime?

By: stefan

stefan — Sat, 24 Apr 2010 22:32:14 +0000

I did yes. However I am pretty positive the machine went down. It is tough not being on location to debug the issue.

By: darethehair

darethehair — Sat, 24 Apr 2010 22:24:06 +0000

As a wild guess, the camera takes/saves a pic in about 5 seconds and USB2 allows it to be uploaded in another 5 seconds, so only doing this once per minute is easy for the camera. I was worried that after running it 24×7 for *years* that it would eventually burn out, but it keeps on ticking! Apparently a DLSR *would* have its shutter mechanism wear out from doing this.

Could/did you not make your remote PC/camera accessible (i.e. SSH)? That would tell you if the PC was down, or just the camera (?).

By: stefan

stefan — Sat, 24 Apr 2010 21:49:05 +0000

interesting. Have you had any issue with your camera using it via cron at such a high interval rate? I am trying to diagnose what happened to my setup, and wondering if I might have burnt out the camera. However if you are running at such a high rate I am almost thinking now it is the linux box.

By: darethehair

darethehair — Sat, 24 Apr 2010 20:54:20 +0000

Yep, gphoto2 for the camera, and M-JPEG streamer for the webcam. I am simply using ‘cron’ for the scheduler, so it is running at the max interval rate of 1/minute that way. I think for ’smooth’ timelapse of shadows and sun, it would have to be quicker than this

My frustration has been that my camera does NOT work with gphoto2 on my tiny NSLU2 computers — which was my original intent

By: stefan

stefan — Sat, 24 Apr 2010 19:10:06 +0000

That’s cool!

I had bought online a little USB temperature gauge, however haven’t had time to install it. I hope to fix things up on my next visit to my parents and try and get the temperature tester going.

Are you using gphoto as well to take the photos? How often do you take a new one?

By: darethehair

darethehair — Sat, 24 Apr 2010 19:00:05 +0000

Well, my weather page mentions the ‘WX200′, but doesn’t elaborate a lot It is a discontinued weather station that used to be offered by Radio Shack. At the time, it was the least expensive equipment that I could find — and fortunately it was compatible with software for the Linux operating system. I am pleased that it still works!

Right now, I have an old digital camera (as you know, great resolution!) and a few webcams pointing out various windows of my house — but it would be great to put them out into the yard as well. Ideally, I would like an outdoor/weatherproof, wireless, hi-res, pan/tilt camera for under $200 — but there ain’t no such thing I am looking at outdoor IP cameras right now (i.e. Axis, Y-Cam, etc) but even the cheapest ones are very expensive — at least for me and my purposes.

By: stefan

stefan — Fri, 23 Apr 2010 16:17:33 +0000

I put the camera under neath the eaves of the shed, so it is relatively well protected. It also has good tree protection so I don’t think the wind will be much problem. With that said a few weeks after I left my parents place something stopped working with the camera, so on my next visit back I will need to fix it. What did you use for your temperature and humidity readings?

By: darethehair

darethehair — Fri, 23 Apr 2010 13:35:04 +0000

Neat! I am doing something similar to this, except that it is part of my ongoing ‘weather cam’ project. What surprised me a bit by your project is that it looks like your camera is exposed to the elements (snow, at least!). How it is possible that the wind, rain, snow, temperatures hasn’t damaged or destroyed your camera?