Of Webcams and Weather
Nov. 3rd, 2003 01:01 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tugrikPart of what we did this weekend was get the weather system working again. It's been up on our house now for 2 years and has attended 2 BurningMans prior to that; it's a proper little trooper. The external humidity sensor needs a bit of help, though, and should be replaced soon.
The software we got for it is Weatherview32. It allows me to make drag-and-drop weather pages with nice brass dials, strip-charts and all that kinda stuff. If I pay a little more it'll also allow live weather-streaming via a Java client; I'll fuss with that one later. The interesting thing is how it lets me composite the pages. You start with any background gif/jpg/png you wish and then drag/drop/resize the live meters, dials and gauges over them. The end result can be anything from the starkly-blank like we have online right now, to a nicely detailed art-piece with weather instruments. It also lets you build up to 25 of these screens and 'brand' them as you wish on different target servers... letting Revar have a "Belfry Weather" page while I put up a "Weather at FM's site" one, etc.
I'm hoping to find an artist with time to take a good weather-related commision set and make seasonal pages that theme well with FM. Weathervanes, foxes playing in fall leaves, those kind of things. Maybe a horse stomping around in rainpuddles. I can even have the system rotate backdrops and layouts depending on weather conditions -- things like putting up a 'blustery day' layout when the average windspeed is above 18mph. Any suggestions, or artists who're reading this that want to give it a try? I'd be glad to send sample meters and layouts to show you what can be worked with.
The other interesting thing picked up this weekend was a Veo Observer remote pan/tilt webcam. The idea was that we wanted a Weather Webcam to take a picture of the sky above the house. The Weather software can nab and upload images from it to include in the page designs. The Veo was a standalone device that required no host computer -- just an ethernet link! This was too cool.
The bad news: the camera is incapable of doing a periodic upload of static images to a server. It's useless for the intended purpose of a weather-cam. Dratski.
The good news: the camera is waaaay too much fun. It can pan and tilt remotely and does live streaming with nothing but a web browser. Sure, it only works with IE (ActiveX, feh) but if you have it, it works very well indeed. Currently it's in my living room while I test it out. I don't know where it'll end up but there's a good chance I'll sell it to my office for use as a server-room camera. For now, and until we get annoyed at it and move it elsewhere, it's online. If any of my friends want to have a peek through and try steering it around just get ahold of me in email or preferably realtime (FM, phone, etc). I'll give you a temporary password to it and you can try it out.
The roomies and I value our privacy, though, and will most likely turn it off once we're home -- or point it helpfully out a window where you can see the neighborhood instead of us. :)
The software we got for it is Weatherview32. It allows me to make drag-and-drop weather pages with nice brass dials, strip-charts and all that kinda stuff. If I pay a little more it'll also allow live weather-streaming via a Java client; I'll fuss with that one later. The interesting thing is how it lets me composite the pages. You start with any background gif/jpg/png you wish and then drag/drop/resize the live meters, dials and gauges over them. The end result can be anything from the starkly-blank like we have online right now, to a nicely detailed art-piece with weather instruments. It also lets you build up to 25 of these screens and 'brand' them as you wish on different target servers... letting Revar have a "Belfry Weather" page while I put up a "Weather at FM's site" one, etc.
I'm hoping to find an artist with time to take a good weather-related commision set and make seasonal pages that theme well with FM. Weathervanes, foxes playing in fall leaves, those kind of things. Maybe a horse stomping around in rainpuddles. I can even have the system rotate backdrops and layouts depending on weather conditions -- things like putting up a 'blustery day' layout when the average windspeed is above 18mph. Any suggestions, or artists who're reading this that want to give it a try? I'd be glad to send sample meters and layouts to show you what can be worked with.
The other interesting thing picked up this weekend was a Veo Observer remote pan/tilt webcam. The idea was that we wanted a Weather Webcam to take a picture of the sky above the house. The Weather software can nab and upload images from it to include in the page designs. The Veo was a standalone device that required no host computer -- just an ethernet link! This was too cool.
The bad news: the camera is incapable of doing a periodic upload of static images to a server. It's useless for the intended purpose of a weather-cam. Dratski.
The good news: the camera is waaaay too much fun. It can pan and tilt remotely and does live streaming with nothing but a web browser. Sure, it only works with IE (ActiveX, feh) but if you have it, it works very well indeed. Currently it's in my living room while I test it out. I don't know where it'll end up but there's a good chance I'll sell it to my office for use as a server-room camera. For now, and until we get annoyed at it and move it elsewhere, it's online. If any of my friends want to have a peek through and try steering it around just get ahold of me in email or preferably realtime (FM, phone, etc). I'll give you a temporary password to it and you can try it out.
The roomies and I value our privacy, though, and will most likely turn it off once we're home -- or point it helpfully out a window where you can see the neighborhood instead of us. :)
