Web camera images

[Charlie]

Can some one from the OBS tell me if the OBS is now doing the camera images now
I know Brad sent them all the info so you can do it with your system but nothing is being saved to the fotki site
He was going to show me how to save the months pictures but he did not get the time to do it
His computer was still sending the pictures to fotki last week i think

can some one look into this and we can work with his son Bill to see what needs to be done to get it working again

thanks

[Charlie]

Wow im saddened that the OBS does not want to keep saving the pictures like they were in the past
Maybe some day they will want to

[KathyC]

Brad did so many things, like this, that brightened our everyday lives from hundreds of miles away.
I believe that he was the glue that held a lot of this together, and brought many of us together in the process.
I miss him so much...

[Charlie]

the OBS has the computer to take the pictures and send it to the site then all we need to do is put it in a folder to save the pictures
Brad was going to show me how but did not get the time but im sure his son Bill and i can find out how to do that ,its just the computer side that the OBS needs to pick up

[Knapper]

Charlie, I'm not really sure the whole set up behind archiving the pics. It was never an OBS idea/task/duty but we were fortunate enough to have a great individual donate time, coding, and site space for such a task on their own Fotki site. If it is simple enough to do and you can let me know what needs to be done, I can dig a bit further but I can't make any guarantees unfortunately. But email me or private message me on FB and I can look into it a bit more.

[Charlie]

Ryan i know Brad gave some one what was needed to take the pictures from your computer system but im not sure who . When Bill Bradstreet gets back from vac i will ask if he can dig into it and find out who it was sent to .
The only thing Brad was on the first of the month he would start a new album and save the last months pictures ,i sait to him i would do that but he did not get time to show me how . We will see if Bill knows how
Thanks Ryan i know people miss looking at the shots and we will keep trying to get it back

[RI Swamp Yankee]

I believe if you look far enough back in the Forum you will se how he captured the pictures. I haven't found the thread yet but here is what I recall from previous posts.

Brad had a script or program running on his home computer that would access the MWO cam web images every 15 minutes, at somewhat random times within each 15 minute period to reduce the bandwidth. His computer would access the website image of each cam and each image had the timestamp as part of the file name. He would, at intervals, bulk upload (FTP) the images to his Fotki site. I do not believe the MWO saved each and every webcam image.

An example; The deck cam image URL is

http://www.mountwashington.org/weather/cam/deck/deck-med.jpg

Brad's personal computer would access that URL and save the image with a unique filename that identified the cam and the time. He would then have to do the upload by hand. Something like that requires a lot of time and effort and having the MWO staff do that would take away from the important weather, education, and research work of a small BUSY staff.

He may have upgraded the process but that is what I recall from a few years back. Hope this helps a bit.

Gene

[Charlie]

he said they would go right to the fotki site then all he did was put them in a folder for the fast month to be saved

[RI Swamp Yankee]

The pictures from Brad's webcams at the cabin were uploaded directly to his Fotki album by his webcams. The images from the MWO webpages had to be captured and uploaded by hand.

I found some of Brad's earlier posts where he mentioned how it was handled.

From 09-23-2006, his first post
http://www.mountwashington.org/forum...his-forum-Brad

From this thread: http://www.mountwashington.org/forum...-Camera-images
post #36 on 05-01-2007 http://www.mountwashington.org/forum...=4675#post4675

There were 127 posts in this thread
http://www.mountwashington.org/forum...ighlight=fotki

from post #1 on 09-30-2006 of that thread

MWO Web Camera images
The Mt Washington Observatory is currently running 4 web cameras posting the images to their site every 15 minutes. Some of the cameras continue through the night. The Deck camera image was altered for me to include the wind and temperature along with the camera image. I grab these 4 camera images throughout the day and night when they change - and upload them to a Fotki.com web site I set up for this purpose. In addition, I upload the Weather Conditions image also. This shows the prior 24 hour wind and temperature at the summit.

By going to http://public.fotki.com/mwo you will be able to go back through the images for the day in the "Current" folder and also check out prior days' images in the "Saved Images" folder.

and in post #36 on 11-19-2006

As I was afraid the process to pull the images throuh my computer in Maine (I am in NC right now) failed last night. So, I switched it over to a computer in NC and made the North, West and Ravines images larger. Now we just need a clear day to see something.

post #39
If only I were a programmer, I could make the steps I go through twice a day automatic.

this post:
http://www.mountwashington.org/forum...1650#post11650

The web cameras at MWO and the ones I have at home have the ability to FTP the images directly to the Fotki photo web site. My lake camera, for example, sends its images to http://public.fotki.com/bradbradstre...mera/lakeview/ every 2 minutes.

The MWO cameras could do this also, but they would not have the MWO logo and time stamp branding. So, the process MWO goes through to produce the images is an offline one. Once they have an image they move it to the web server and it is available to us to view. Their process could also send the image as an e-mail attachment - but setting this up is not on their priority list - especially if I can get it working. The image archive is my personal "volunteer" project.

Right now I grab the images when they change and save them to disk (this is an easy step). Sending them to the Fotki site on a schedule with the proper date and timestamp is what I do with standard programs today. I would like to make it an easier process.

This is running on a old, small desktop at my cabin in Maine and seems to fall apart and break just when I do not have good access to the machine. I finally got frustrated,went to Sam's Club today and bought a computer to run this work on. I am hoping to make this a more dependable process.

At that point you can see he purchased a computer from Sam's Club to capture the images. I never found any posts where he was able to automate the process any more. The images never flowed directly from the MWO website or servers to his Fotki album, it required work on Brad's part to make that happen. He was indeed a special person to do the work to make it all happen. Perhaps there is still a computer at the cabin at the lake still capturing images but it will require a person with the Fotki login id and password to get those images to the Fotki album.

[Charlie]

that was the old old way , it was an automatic download . you were able to see the pictures right after they were taken