Drew's Hardware Hacks: Weather and WebCam

Wednesday, December 29, 2010

Weather and WebCam

Migrated weather station logger from WindowsXP to Ubuntu Linux. The Dell Mini 9 with the windowsXP OS was high maintenance, and was stressing the hardware. Particularly the SSD (solid state drive). After it crashed and did not recover on December 23rd, it was then decided to migrate to linux.

The Davis WeatherLink software is not available for use on linux. Wview was selected as the replacement. The software is open-source, and is relatively easy to install by the intermediate to advanced user.

The Wview software opened up a new avenue of usage. The software has the ability to upload to wunderground.com. There is a new link in the upper right corner of the blog. Clicking on this link will take you to the Weather Underground website. It also has a image of the backyard webcam. NOTE: If you click on the image, you will be taken to the webcam and webcam archive page. If you click on the weather data, you will be taken to the weather graphs and weather archive data.

Still using the Davis Vantage Pro 2 ISS weather station hardware. It has been in service since 2006.

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Drew's HD webcam project.

There are a variety of webcams on the market today. Just Google "webcam". The HD (high def) units are very $$$ and are not always accessible to the thrifty minded techno geeks.

About a year ago (sometime in 2006), I had read an article in linux journal about how to hack a Nslu2. The unit runs on 5volts, @ .24 - .5 amps. I figured that would be a good low power consumption server. Searched the internet again for NSLU2 and webcams. Found a blog "High Resolution IP Webcam" this guy did a custom firmware image for the NSLU2. Long story short, added camera component flashed the custom image on the NSLU2 and a Webcam emerged.

Of course...... There was more too it than that.

The NSLU2 and Quickcam 9000 needed to be "weatherized" for outside use. I found a weather enclosure at mouser electronics that roughly cost $30. The enclosure for the camera took some creativity. I went down to home depot, and picked out a flood light kit for about $14. Gutted the unit, and J-B welded the Quickcam 9000 inside the housing.

Powering the unit remotely thru cat5e cable. Well.... The nslu2 has a narrow tolerance band in terms of power. 5volts +- a half volt and can't exceed more than an amp. I went to mouser electronics again, and found a DC-to-DC converter that fits the requirements. The converter is isolated so there are no hazards of producing an "over-current" condition with the DC over the 100 foot length of cat5e cable. The converter handles a 12 to 18 volt input, and outputs an isolated 5 volts. Perfect for the NSLU2. The converter was about $30 from mouser electronics, but worth cost.

Tested the unit first by mounting on the post with the weather station wind anemometer. The unit is powered thru the cat5e cable ran from the garage. Of course this looked..... well it didn't look good because it was hanging. The unit is now permanently mounted on a post in the upper corner of the lot. The cat5e cable is run thru an underground conduit. And it is nestled between some trees for camouflage.

The construction of the HD Webcam project is complete. But... there is more. My plans are to publish the images automatically. Possibly do some time-lapse photography.

The Webcam has been moved to a new location and a second camera added. The second camera has pan/tilt function.

The second camera is a Quickcam Orbit AF. Again... Trip down to Homedepot and picked up another Flood light fixture. This one is roughly 2x the size as the other. Painted the inside of the light fixture with flat-black paint (to prevent glare). Then I mounted the camera inside with "JB Weld" epoxy.

................Once again, the Webcam project has been updated.

Replaced both cameras with Quickcam 9000's. Also replaced and relocated the housing further down the mounting post. The housing is also larger than the original. This is to accommodate future experiments. Future experiments include acoustic level monitoring, Ultra sonic monitoring and air quality monitoring.