ENGLISH - Installation of Webcam, and FTP all datato website

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pgoldsbury

ENGLISH - Installation of Webcam, and FTP all datato website

Beitrag von pgoldsbury »

The local school in the Whirinaki Rainforest, North Island NZ, have installed an IROX weatherstation at Community web portal http://www.whirinaki.org.nz.

Our weatherstation installation is described at http://www.kaitiakitanga.net/projects/1 ... energy.htm. The webpage that will display this foir the world is at http://www.whirinakirainforest.info/weather

We have got PC Wetter operating in stand alone mode but have two items to complete it.

1. We have installed CoreFTP- Lite to upload weather information to our webpage hosted by our ISP. We can manually transfer the files required perfectly using the Core FTP control panel. However when calling for FTP transfers in command line mode from Wetter (after hourly readings have been processed and web files created) FTP seems to run but no transfer to the website happens. If anyone else has done a similar thing and can help us (in English sorry) sort out the solution we need, that will be greatly appreciated.

2. We also want to take a webcam image every hour and FTP that up to the ISP hosted site as well.
(a) Has anyone got any advice as to the quality pf webcam needed to convey local condition under a wide range of light conditions. We assume it need to have good iris control.
(b) Can anyone recommend a simple webcam scanning program (pref freeware) that will do this for us from where (a) will FTP it to the site after each hourly scan.
(c) As we want the whole weatherstation installation to be powered off a 10 w solar panel, we want to power up the Wetter Laptop automatically using its Bios timer, start Wetter, get IROX Data, process readings, get and store the webcam image readings, FTP data to the website, then power down (with a hardware wakeup scheduled for the next hour) Has anyone done anything like this who could advise us please.

I am helping the school set this up initially. I am not a software Guru, nor are the young students who will keep it going. However we hope to have an IT Student team from The Auckland University of Technology start soon to sort out the final installation and make it robust enough for a school environment. They will store hourly records collected by Wetter on the school server where it will be used for assignment / research work. There are other schools already interested in installing a similar configuration for their learning programmes.

My email is pgoldsbury@stratex.co.nz

Regards
Peter

_________________
www.kaitiakitanga.net
NZ User of Wetterstation at Te Whaiti School
Zuletzt geändert von pgoldsbury am 15 Aug 2009 21:38, insgesamt 1-mal geändert.
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weneu
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Beitrag von weneu »

Hello,
to your fist question:
You should use for transferring a programm like hs-Upload, because this programm can upload automatically only these files which have changed.
For hs-upload have a look at
http://www.oberbergern.at/html/freeware.php
This programm you have to start from WSWIN (pc-wetterstation). Have a look at "Control - adjustments" and there "external ftp-Programm"
In this window you can also say to WSWIN how often it should upload the files.
pgoldsbury

Beitrag von pgoldsbury »

Thanks Werner,

I have triggered CoreFTP from the Control adjustments page and ticked transfer data after auto read out, so if I understand things right the data should be there ready to FTP. I may try to install and use hs Upload when I can find time.

We are using the resolution of IROX as hourly. Is there any way in which the webcam software can be triggered to collect an image by a similar trigger from WSWIN during each reading cycle before the FTP trigger That would seem to be necessary to make (c) work reliably??

Peter
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Beitrag von weneu »

Hello Peter,
it's a bit difficult for me toanswer these specific questions, but have a look at "file - options" and there at "time controling 2"
Perhaps this may help you with your webcam
joergeli
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Beitrag von joergeli »

Hello Peter,
We are using the resolution of IROX as hourly. Is there any way in which the webcam software can be triggered to collect an image by a similar trigger from WSWIN during each reading cycle before the FTP trigger That would seem to be necessary to make (c) work reliably??
I don't know a WebCam-Software which can be triggered by an external software ( maybe I'm wrong :?: ).

What's about this workaround:
Most WebCam-Software can shoot a picture at a user-defined intervall.
So why don't set an interval at every 5 minutes and store 12 pictures (amount of pictures can also defined by user in most WebCam-Software)
in the same directory as WsWIN-data (c:\programs\wswin\html).

Advantages:
1.) You get 12 pictures instead only one and your visitors can see the the weather-conditions of the whole past hour
2.) If you store the pictures in wswin\html-directory they will be automaticly uploaded with the other WsWin-data on your web-space.
(You don't need the internal ftp-client of the WebCam-Software, because the upload is done with your external ftp-program,
which is already used for WsWIN)

Disadvantage:
The laptop must always be running.
As we want the whole weatherstation installation to be powered off a 10 w solar panel, we want to power up the Wetter Laptop automatically using its Bios timer, start Wetter, get IROX Data, process readings, get and store the webcam image readings, FTP data to the website, then power down (with a hardware wakeup scheduled for the next hour) Has anyone done anything like this who could advise us please.
In this case:
Why don't start your WebCam-Software before WsWIN starts, grab an image and shutdown WebCam-Soft.
( Of course, webcam-soft must have an opinion to grab an image just when soft ist started)
Then start up WsWIN, let's collect and store it's data, start external ftp, load up all data (incl. grabbed image) and shutdown wswin and laptop.

I think, the little time-difference between image-shot and wswin-data is not from importance ?
Has anyone got any advice as to the quality pf webcam needed to convey local condition under a wide range of light conditions. We assume it need to have good iris control.
Well, this will be the greatest problem, because most Web-Cam's are designed for indoor-use only or for security.
Here the light-conditions are not so difficult like watching weather-conditions.
The best solution for weather-watching is a Mobotix-Cam, but they are very expensive.
I've heard that also AXIS-Cam's offers good pictures.
For a "low-budget-solution" take a look at my cam:
http://www.joergeli.de/cam_technik.php (hope you can read German)
I use an old DV-Camcorder (e..y :wink:) which is built in a self constructed weather-case. The output is connected with a grabber-card in my PC.
For protection from bright sunlight, I've placed a self-darkening glass (from an optician) in front of the CCD-Chip.
My cam is working since May 2007 without any problems and IMHO the pic's are not so bad:
http://www.joergeli.de/webcam1.php
(Cam is not online at night)

Last but not least:
Have you thought about power-consumption of the Web-Cam?
Perhaps you can power up the Web-Cam (f.e. only 5 minutes at every full hour) with a time-switch-clock between solar-panel and cam ?



Regards
Jörg
http://www.joergeli.de
WS 2500PC V3.1 mit Superhet-Empfänger HFS302, WsWIN V2.98.7
WS 3001, 2xWS1000, WS2000, WS2500
Wetterstation Heinzenberg/Taunus
skyewright

Re: ENGLISH - Installation of Webcam, and FTP all datato web

Beitrag von skyewright »

pgoldsbury hat geschrieben:(a) Has anyone got any advice as to the quality pf webcam needed to convey local condition under a wide range of light conditions. We assume it need to have good iris control.
(b) Can anyone recommend a simple webcam scanning program (pref freeware) that will do this for us from where (a) will FTP it to the site after each hourly scan.
I'm happy with my Panasonic BL-C140.
It's an IP web cam designed for outdoor use. Given a network connection it is capable of uploading images direct to the server by FTP at intervals of your choice.
Alternatively you can grab a jpeg image from it on demand using a http call.
There are quite a number of other happy users of this webcam over on WeatherWatch,com. There's a relevant topic here
obi3000

Beitrag von obi3000 »

Hello Peter

I just want to call the freeware webcam software booruWebCam to your attention:
http://www.booru.net/download.html

It's a very little program that needs no installation and very little recources when it's up running. You might be able to start it using WsWin, get it to catch an image and close it after a few minutes. However, I haven't tried this yet. I'm only getting there :) ...maybe tomorrow...

Take care - Florian

P.S.: Do you by any chance know a software that will archive images on a server? Basically just renameing and overwriting...
pgoldsbury

Beitrag von pgoldsbury »

Thanks folks for all the advice. You don't know how valuable it is to have the English support for this nice piece of Gernan software .. thanks Werner.

We have not got the webcam sorted quite yet but I will try running Booru net software with a Logitec Quickcam s7500 which has a glass lens, up to 8 MP resolution and I hope its "Rightlight technology" will work to adjust for the widely varying light conditions outside. It is powered via USB cable so will shut down with the Laptop.

We have the rest of the school weatherstation config basically running but have posed a few other questions re WsWin configuration with IROX on the WsWin board as well (in English)

Regards
Peter
pgoldsbury

Beitrag von pgoldsbury »

Thanks for your help folks

We have Wetter now updating to our website using Windows ftp to
www.whirinakirainforest.info/weather

We have the webcam software operating in principle on our development set up and will have it on the live site before long. That uses a Logitec s7500 webcan and Tincam software.

Our last project step is to get the laptop powering up fro a minute or two each hour ( using we hope the CMOMS BIOS alarm clock setting) so the whole configuration will run on a 10w solar panel

If anyone else wnats to know about our school setup in more detail go to http://www.kaitiakitanga.net/project%20 ... rating.doc
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