Projects Possible

Previously on Projects Possible I posted information about the Live Streaming webcam at Old Faithful geyser.  It was actually a video link at the bottom of that post that connected you to the live feed.   Well as it turns out that live feed link is no longer valid and to try to make the camera more viable they have created an official link which will periodically time out and can not be loaded directly into the windows media player. 

The National Park Service now has a web page dedicated to the live, full-motion, streaming webcam.  You can get there by going to: http://www.nps.gov/yell/photosmultimedia/yellowstonelive.htm.  From this page you will be able to Launch the camera, get the transcript of the audio portion of the feed, get help from the Frequently Asked Questions section, and find out about Cannon’s involvement with the camera.

I have included the link below to the camera which will open in a POPUP windows on this page.

Launch Old Faithful Streaming Video

On the Deep Lake page I have installed an Mcam 100 Motion Digital Web Camera.  Created by a Korean company,  this camera features 180 degree Pan and 100 degree tilt controlled remotely via the Internet.  It really allows me to enjoy my lake view when I am away traveling for business or when I’m at our other residence. 

Initially, installation was a bit troublesome for me…  The camera that I purchased had a lower version of software included in the box and I could not get it to function over the Internet.   I quickly contacted tech support and within just a few hours I had upgraded to version 3 of the software and things began to work as I had hoped and planned.

The version of the camera that I have does require not only a USB connection but also a serial connection to your PC.  There are versions of the camera that function solely on a USB connection.  They also offer as an accessory an extension cables that allows you to extend the standard 9 foot cable for those difficult and hard to reach camera placements.  For now, I just installed it in my office window.  I didn’t need the extension.

If you have an Internet connection that uses a router you will need to “open” the necessary port to allow for the UDP traffic from the Internet to reach the PC where the camera was attached.  A typical installation would be to open the port that is 7000 + the last octet of the PC’s IP address.  (DHCP could be problematic because you would not know which IP address to redirect the traffic to.)  In my setup I just changed the PC to have a static IP of 10.1.1.99 and then I opened port 7099 to forward to that IP address. 

A quick installation would include:

1. Create an account at the mcam website.  (This is used to direct people to your camera) 
2. Configure your PC’s IP address and your router’s port forwarding to that IP.
3. Install the software (version 3) - It is going to ask you for your mcam login information.
4. Attach the camera and allow the drivers to be found by Windows,  then perform a reboot.
5. Configure the camera as you would like in the server software.  You can include time, some camera setup options, etc.
6. Link to the camera from your web page (if you want others to see it) or simply save the address as a bookmark for your own private use.

So far I am quite happy with the installation…  If you would like to try it out, there is a demonstration camera on their website.   You can also find additional tech information here.  If you have an interest in Deep Lake and would like to be able to control the camera up there leave me a comment on the Deep Lake page.

Here on Projects Possible I run multiple webcams and they are all on a single PC.  The Pan and Tilt camera runs a server that allows remote web control of that camera.  The others run in a “capture” program that grabs the images and uploads them to the blog on a periodic basis.   The problem is when Windows starts it just grabs all of the programs that need to run and starts running them one after another.  In order to accomplish what I needed to do I needed to get the server running first and THEN I would start the image capture.   If I didn’t do this I would get conflicts on startup and the server or the capture would display blank images. 

My solution…Create a batch file and put it into my STARTUP folder that runs the programs I want to run in the order and with the timing that I want them to run.

Relatively simple solution.   I created a file with an editor called WebCam.BAT in the All User/Programs/Startup folder.   The basics of this file are:

@ECHO OFF  

ECHO Pausing to wait for Windows to get through standard startup routines...

PING -n91 127.0.0.1>nul

START \"PanTilt\" /B \"C:\path to MCAM software\"

Ping -n61 127.0.0.1>nul

START \"WEBCAM\" /B \"C:\path to webcam capture\"

That’s really it.  Since I needed to have a delay and there isn’t a Pause for XX seconds command for batch files I “cheat” and  just tell it to PING my local machine a sufficient number of times to get the delay I want and send the output of the ping command to nowhere.  You can also find more information on the START command here…

We are happy to say that the static images provided by the stationary web cameras we have at Deep Lake are going to be supplemented by a full pan/tilt and zoom camera in the near future.   While the static images were nice when there is something happening that I want to see I need to be able to control things just a little better.

While this still isn’t the Canon camera that I want (check out the Old Faithful streaming webcam found in this post) we are going to experiment to see just how much use it will get.  Keep in mind I have a satellite connection with limited bandwidth so public usage of this camera will be restricted.   Those with a specific interest in Deep Lake will certainly be able to receive the password that will control the movement of the camera via the Internet.

Current Weather and Webcams

at Deep Lake, WA

Deep Lake is about 30 miles north of Colville, WA just south of the Canadian border. The setting as you can see from the webcam picture is quite picturesque. Our home sits on the north end of the lake at the site of the former Wilderness West resort.   We’d love to hear from those that are current residents on the lake or those that have memories or pictures of the former resort.   Leave us a comment below.

Weather Station Details: LaCrosse Technologies - WS 2316 HeavyWeather PC Interface HeavyWeatherPublisher for FTP of conditions External Wind Direction and Speed Sensor External Rain Guage External Temperature, Barometer and Humidity Sensor Mounted on the North side of the house about 20 feet from the ground… while not fully unobstructed by the neighbors house it does a pretty good job at giving you an idea of the current weather conditions.

The PAN and TILT Live Camera is HERE - You need a password (leave a comment). 

The last 40 static images are archived here…

So how in the world did you get here?  You thought you were going to the Deep Lake Webcam, or perhaps even bigbrofan.com and somehow you ended up here.   Through the magic of the Internet most of my personal Web pages have been redirected to here. In cases where I have decided to continue with the content or subject matter you may have been directed to specific posts or pages here on Projects Possible… my new blog.

You can expect to find some of the familiar content of my other pages and a bit more.   The goal is to provide an enjoyable and entertaining read where you can interact and comment and share some of your own thoughts on the varied topics that I will be found.

If you thought you were going to find a Web Page for a ski area in Spain you must have tried going to masella.com.   Masella is a family name and while I tried to register it, the ski area registered masella.com before I did.  I do have masella.us, and going to that domain will bring you here as well.  Two names, same great place.

What about bigbrofan.com?  The fan site for Big Brother Australia is no longer being supported or maintained.  I still own the domain and I may actually put some of the content into a page here if someone wants it.   Keep in mind I did not watch last season at all so any and all media I have would be from seasons 1-6.   If this is something you want or are looking for, leave a comment and I will see what I can do to perhaps accomodate that request.  In the meantime enjoy some of the new content.

The domains deeplakewa.com and grizzlyway.com are both for the webcams and weather station that are located at our home on Deep Lake.  These two domains will link directly to the Deep Lake page here on the blog so feel free to continue using them if you are not interested in the other content here at Projects Possible!

I own a number of other domains that may also eventually be directed to the blog.  

As I’ve said, I encourage your comments and discussion.  Feel free to use my permalinks in your posts and have a great time as you wade through the varied content of Projects Possible!

 I’m a tinkerer… and my blog is no exception…there is always a project that is happening.

If you are a regular reader you have probably seen many things changing and then changing back again… Since I like to tinker with things I don’t expect this will go away… What I do hope to accomplish soon are the following…

• Settle in on a theme… Wordpress is my blog of choice… now I just need to make sure I know how I want it to look.   (I’m thinking it is going to be K2 but I am struggling getting the sidebars to work the way that I want them to work.)
• Fine tune the sidebars to include some dynamic changing content as well as some standard fare and navigation
• Build a Deep Lake page… Deep lake for those of you that do not know is the location of our Lake home… Some items I want to include on this PAGE would be the webcam images - 2 webcams now,  an image gallery or two of lake related things, and the weather station data.
• A Yellowstone page…or more specifically a Geysers of Yellowstone page.  I want to put the single cam image there as well as the streaming image so that they are quick and easy to get to.  I will also include the image gallery and a few links.  (A great book that I’ve carried around (and read and referenced as well) for years is The Geysers of Yellowstone by T. Scott Bryan.)
• More regular blog postings… Since this blog covers the things I work on, ponder and enjoy there should be no lack of content… 

Keep your eyes posted… and if you have any K2 “tweaking” experience let me know… I have quite a few questions.

As a Montana native born and raised just a few hours from Yellowstone National Park I don’t think I really appreciated what we had.   I remembered going to Yellowstone as a kid.  I also remember my “Landform” class in high school that had us visit the park for its geologic wonders as an end of year trip.  It wasn’t until I had graduated highschool and decided to accept a summer job with the park concessionaires that I really fell in love with the park but more importantly I fell in love with the geysers.  I worked at Old Faithful each of my summers in college and between 1982 and 2004 I would say I probably only missed visiting Yellowstone during the summer on 5 or 6 occasions and I made up for those by staying longer in the years that I did get to go.

My weeks in the park were predominately spent watching the geysers… for hours on end I would sit at the same thermal feature and watch the subtle changes that led up to the eruption.  And with each year and with each thermal feature I would learn something new and notice changes in behavior from prior years.     I think it was my wife that told me that it was boring and didn’t understand how I could watch a hole in the ground with boiling water for hours in hope and anticipation of an eruption.   Over the years and after meeting many other “geyser gazers”  it became quite apparent to me that we come in all shapes, sizes, colors and commitments… There are gazer purists where everything is “black or white” and intervals and durations are tracked to the closest second.  There is also the other extreme with the casual observer who thought the eruption was pretty cool and if he happened across another one he would sit and wait.   I would guess that most “gazers” are somewhere between the two extremes.

When I can’t be in the park I rely on what others have to say about the features and their observations.   The Internet has helped this tremendously with websites like GOSA (Geyser Observation and Study Association) , and email lists that keep me updated.  I have also found the webcam to be invaluable… You can see below the first image is what we’ve had for many years… clicking on it will bring you to the page that updates every 30 seconds or so…. but if you have the bandwidth I recommend you click on PLAY in the media player… A live image from the boardwalk at Old Faithful will begin.   I’m not sure who has control of this camera but it has incredible zooming capability and they can zoom right up to the boardwalk at Lion…they can also direct this camera down basin so you can see the steam clouds of Daisy, Grand, Giant, etc…

 Enjoy and if you have other links that might be of interest or comments let us know!!!

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