I’m wanting to put a camera on our website to accompany our weather station. I’m looking a camera to mount on the pole and I need to go about 300 feet with cable. We have a hard time getting wireless signals into our building. I was looking a the Anaconda on the X10 website but I don’t know what kind of clarity I would be getting and I’d still have to convert from RCA to probably USB using a Dazzle box I assume. Does anyone have any recommendations on a fairly cheap camera that has a good quality?
I don’t know the Anaconda from X10, but having bought one of their cameras in the past it was pretty poor quality. The lens was poor, giving a distorted image, the colour quality was very poor and it suffered terribly in bright conditions (like looking at the sky for weather conditions!)
May i ask, is it going to be a weathercam ?
Cyclone
I’d like to point it out over our campus so that you would probably see students moving (from 200 feet away) from class to class. I don’t want to be able to see students faces just them walking along. But yes, I want it to really show the weather conditions so it will be showing quite a bit of sky.
I’ve got mine 6 metres above ground level.
Higher the better. www.gorgecreekorchards.com.au/webcam.htm have a look.
Cheers
Cyclone
There are decent webcams in the $100 price range, but none of them are able to be used outside without some type of enclosure to protect them from the elements. Is a/c power available near the mount site for powering the camera? Webcams require a power source. Might be possible to use a solar panel and battery to provide 12VDC, but if the camera is wireless then power really becomes an issue.
What kind of setup do you have?
I see those pics are 640 by 480, note that the X10 anaconda is only 320
The fairly cheap part is the hard part. I run my Logitech 320x240 mode.
I plan to purchase a http://www.stardot-tech.com/netcam/index.html Stardot webcam.
They look top-of-the-line to me. However, they do not fit your requirement for cheap.
that cam will not work with WD direct dan…
you would need to grab the image from a HTTP url
Understood. I just wanted to point out the top of the line versus cheap webcams. True, the Stardot has a built-in server to handle image dissemination. And integration with WD was not a stated requirement 
We are willing to spend a little bit of money. My goal here is to stay away from the ones that I’ve seen for $1000. If I could get it all set up including connections and wires for $400 I’d be happy.
Ok, here’s one example to consider:
[list]
[li]WinCam.Live Internet Camera System (110V) CAM-LIV01 $199[/li]
[li]Light Duty Outdoor Enclosure* ENC-OUTD2 $129[/li]
[li]100 ft. Cable CAB-100 100 ft. Interchangeable Camera Cable $35 x 3 = $105[/li]
[li]Outdoor Wide Angle Lens LEN-WIDE3F16 3.6 mm, f16, fov: 74
I use a Stardot Netcam for my webcam. It is, as Windy and others state, not directly interfaced with Weather Display. However, it is a very good webcam and is not all that expensive for what you get. New cost is $599 but if you put an advertising banner on your web page, Stardot reduces the price by $100. Details are on their web page: NetCamLIVE | StarDot Technologies. VHS_Weather, call them up and tell them what you are doing. They might be willing to help you out. You can get all sorts of outdoor camera enclosures from eBay, I suggest looking for a Pelco brand security camera enclosure. They are very weatherproof. I got mine for about $30 on eBay.
My Stardot Netcam is mounted on top of a 60’ tower, enclosed in a Pelco camera enclosure, and ftp’s images every 5 minutes to my web page. You can see a pic of what my camera in it’s housing looks like at http://apsn.awcable.com/weatherstation.jpg. The white shroud over the camera enclosure is a sun shield.
I
OK, OK, I’ll bite :lol: Do you have aerial milk delivery?
You’re the first to bite! It’s just a cheap way to ensure that my 1-wire connections don’t get wet. Bottom is cut out of the jug and all the connections stuffed up into the jug.