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looking for a weather cam for extreme cold weather..
Posted: Tue 17 Dec 2013 8:39 pm
by firemanak
Okay I am new to all this but I have my weather station up and running, next thing I want to do, is put up a weather cam. First off, we have -25 - -50 in the winter for weather. Second thing was going to put it up on the roof with the weather station. So probably a wireless cam? If not I could put a workstation right under the weather station inside the house, and run a Ethernet cable. Would like to get IR with the camera, but really don't want to go more than $300.
I have looked at web cams, security cams, etc... so how do I figure out how to pick a cam, I have tried goggle for {weather cam reviews} but not much comes up.
Thanks for any input
Tony Roof
Fairbanks, Alaska
http://home.gci.net/~firemanak/weather/index.htm
Re: looking for a weather cam for extreme cold weather..
Posted: Tue 17 Dec 2013 10:10 pm
by Super-T
You need a heater or move to the tropics mate
Re: looking for a weather cam for extreme cold weather..
Posted: Tue 17 Dec 2013 10:31 pm
by firemanak
LOL my wife would love that, she is born and raised her too, but is always cold!
Re: looking for a weather cam for extreme cold weather..
Posted: Tue 17 Dec 2013 10:39 pm
by KarlS
Here is my low cost solution: Raspberry PI computer ($35), camera module ($25), powered USB hub ($7), SD card ($5), USB wireless adapter ($10), all put into a wooden “cigar box” with a tiny hole cut for the lens.
It is installed on my top balcony against a window. The heat generated by the Raspberry Pi combined with the heat leaking from the window seem to be enough to keep it functioning. By now it has survived a week of up to -28°C and I'm waiting for a real cold spell (usually in late January) to see if it survives -35°C. Maybe not enough for Fairbanks, AK, though …
You can check out the pictures
on my website.
Re: looking for a weather cam for extreme cold weather..
Posted: Tue 17 Dec 2013 11:51 pm
by firemanak
KarlS wrote:Here is my low cost solution: Raspberry PI computer ($35), camera module ($25), powered USB hub ($7), SD card ($5), USB wireless adapter ($10), all put into a wooden “cigar box” with a tiny hole cut for the lens.
It is installed on my top balcony against a window. The heat generated by the Raspberry Pi combined with the heat leaking from the window seem to be enough to keep it functioning. By now it has survived a week of up to -28°C and I'm waiting for a real cold spell (usually in late January) to see if it survives -35°C. Maybe not enough for Fairbanks, AK, though …
You can check out the pictures
on my website.
do you remember where you got your stuff at? I found newark prices are a little off
Re: looking for a weather cam for extreme cold weather..
Posted: Wed 18 Dec 2013 12:07 am
by KarlS
Raspberry Pi and camera module from Newark, the rest from eBay.
I just checked the
Newark web site and they have a Raspberry Pi 8GB Bundle (Pi plus SD card) for $40 and the camera module for $25, which are exactly the prices I mentioned.
Re: looking for a weather cam for extreme cold weather..
Posted: Wed 18 Dec 2013 12:11 am
by firemanak
KarlS wrote:Raspberry Pi and camera module from Newark, the rest from eBay.
I just checked the
Newark web site and they have a Raspberry Pi 8GB Bundle (Pi plus SD card) for $40 and the camera module for $25, which are exactly the prices I mentioned.
sweet, just checking... I am excited about this, but didn't want to get the wrong thing, so thought I would check...thanks again!
Re: looking for a weather cam for extreme cold weather..
Posted: Fri 20 Dec 2013 3:29 am
by firemanak
Now I wait... I don't know if the stuff will get here by Christmas, but I have it all ordered... Can't wait, it's like buying myself a Christmas present!
Re: looking for a weather cam for extreme cold weather..
Posted: Mon 30 Dec 2013 4:26 am
by firemanak
KarlS wrote:Raspberry Pi and camera module from Newark, the rest from eBay.
I just checked the
Newark web site and they have a Raspberry Pi 8GB Bundle (Pi plus SD card) for $40 and the camera module for $25, which are exactly the prices I mentioned.
Can I ask you what you are using for broadcasting? I got the raspberry to broadcast to the window machine via my network, but from there, I can't get anything to work to grab the signal and broadcast. do I need to just save it as a file (photo) and just upload every 2 or so minutes to my website?
Thanks for turning me onto this, I love it and have started learning linux and programming...
T
Re: looking for a weather cam for extreme cold weather..
Posted: Mon 30 Dec 2013 5:57 pm
by KarlS
Hi Tony:
Glad you like the Raspi. It’s a beautiful "toy" to teach and learn …
This is not the right forum to explain shell scripts and cron jobs, so just a short summary of what I do. The Pi is running headless and I ssh from my Windows machine with PuTTY. I have set up a shared folder on this machine that I can mount from the Raspberry.
First I take 3 pictures, bracketed with -3ev (underexposed), 0ev (correct exposure) and +3ev (overexposed). The pictures are than cropped to the desired size with ImageMagick. I use Enblend/Enfuse to combine those 3 images into a single one (similar to HDR). Finally I use ImageMagick again to insert a timestamp into the photo and as a last step FTP it to my web site.
Hope that helps
Re: looking for a weather cam for extreme cold weather..
Posted: Mon 30 Dec 2013 6:59 pm
by firemanak
Thanks
I will look for that forum, just wanted to ask...
Re: looking for a weather cam for extreme cold weather..
Posted: Sun 19 Jan 2014 8:49 am
by tumutbound
KarlS wrote:Hi Tony:
Glad you like the Raspi. It’s a beautiful "toy" to teach and learn …
This is not the right forum to explain shell scripts and cron jobs, so just a short summary of what I do. The Pi is running headless and I ssh from my Windows machine with PuTTY. I have set up a shared folder on this machine that I can mount from the Raspberry.
First I take 3 pictures, bracketed with -3ev (underexposed), 0ev (correct exposure) and +3ev (overexposed). The pictures are than cropped to the desired size with ImageMagick. I use Enblend/Enfuse to combine those 3 images into a single one (similar to HDR). Finally I use ImageMagick again to insert a timestamp into the photo and as a last step FTP it to my web site.
Hope that helps
Hi Karl,
Do you run enblend on the RPi or on another host? I'm putting together a Pi based camera and would prefer to do all the processing on the Pi and upload the final image to my website. Imagemagik is installed and running OK.
Regards
Geoff
Re: looking for a weather cam for extreme cold weather..
Posted: Sun 19 Jan 2014 5:25 pm
by KarlS
Do you run enblend on the RPi or on another host?
Hi Geoff:
All the processing is done on the RPi. You have to install the enfuse package and than you can
Code: Select all
enfuse --output=output.jpg input1.jpg input2.jpg input3.jpg
Just ignore the Enfuse error messages about missing alpha channels and dpi info.
Re: looking for a weather cam for extreme cold weather..
Posted: Sun 19 Jan 2014 11:05 pm
by tumutbound
Karl,
I should have asked the obvious question, did you find an installable package(s) or did you have to compile it?
Regards
Geoff
Re: looking for a weather cam for extreme cold weather..
Posted: Sun 19 Jan 2014 11:47 pm
by KarlS
Hi Geoff:
I hope Steve doesn't mind too much that this thread has developed into a discussion of the RPi/camera board
Anyway, there is an installable package for enblend/enfuse. Either one of
or
will install it.