I have had a web cam operational
almost full time since about 1998. I first had my web
camera pointed at the Front Range from Nederland, CO. Fantastic views that
changed almost hourly due to the quick weather changes and mountain climate.
(See this movie
of a huge snow accumulating.) Not to mention the wonderful sunsets and moonsets
over the mountains. I wanted to share the view with friends and strangers alike.
I guess I was just proud of the place I lived and pride was a major motivator,
not unlike a lot of things we share on the web. In addition, I had an on-line
business at the time and felt that anything that brought people to my website
had to be good. In addition, I thought I could provide a bit of community service
having the only weather station in the mountains above Boulder that was operational
full time.
Today
Now that we are full-time RVers, moving around the country, the motivation is
similar, with the added incentive that I'm probably the only one, or at least
one of very few doing this sort of thing. I enjoy being different and I am typically
an early-adopter with the application of technology. I enjoy sharing the views
and the travel experiences. In our RV I still have a weather station, though not
as complete as before.
I get emails from around the world. Just this morning I got one from a viewer
in Denmark, the other day from Australia, and a lot from around the USA. People
helping me share the dream of being footloose and free on the roads of America.
I have the webcam on 24 hours a day. Occasionally it suffers some kind of power
quirk and I have to notice that it is down before I reset it. Also, the automatic exposure has to be set for the specific lighting conditions and often I'll forget or not be able to keep up with the changing light, so the image will appear washed out or too dark. Eventually, someone will email me, or I'll figure it out and fix it. Plus, since I am
dependent upon the satellite to transmit the images, if the weather is bad and
the satellite uplink is down, then so is the camera.
The
biggest problem in the RV is that I can't always park in a photogenic place. Also
we often stay in place for 30 days and the view can get boring. So, often the
view will be pretty mundane, but it will still serve as a weather station.
Mobile Camera
I have written
a program that allows us to collect images as we drive. I can specify that an
image be saved every x seconds or every .xx miles miles so that the playback movie will be smooth based
on mileage. Here's some examples of quicktime movies made using this technique. Here's an example of individual photos plotted on a Google Map. One
of the major problems so far is that the camera has trouble adjusting to the varying
exposures as I drive. If I set it to manual exposure it works most of the time,
but occasionally "whites" or "blacks" out when pointed at the sun or into dark places. Bugs also continue to be a problem and require a trip to the roof on the highway to clean the lens from time to time. Take a look at
the sample images taken while driving on this web
page. I've even got a page where I've put thousands of the individual images that you can select from a map of the trip to view the highway at that point.
Technical Stuff
My
web cam (NetCam) is made by Star-Dot technologies and has a computer and camera
combined in one enclosure so all I have to do is give it power and an ethernet
connection to the web. It cost me almost $2k by the time I added the enclosure,
the wires, and the zoom lens, but you can do this for about $900. Mine also has
a higher resolution version that I don't use (1024 x 768) since it takes too much
time to upload on my slower uplink side of the satellite. When I get a higher
speed uplink, I might consider using it. The camera is mounted on the traditional
TV antenna mechanism that permits me to pan it from within the RV by moving the
CAM on the ceiling.
During
driving, we power the camera from our inverter, use the ethernet hub and wireless
hub to transmit the photos to a special program I wrote on our navigation Sony
laptop PC. I can also collect GPS coordinates coorelated to each image as I drive. This can be used to geo-locate each image on Google Maps or Google Earth.
