What kind of webcamera are you all using?

Yes, @bitsotring, I’m here in North Carolina. Still unpacking and my Davis is still in a box in the garage and surprisingly when I fired-up my NAS yesterday my website (novawx.dscloud.me) was available. I assumed with a new ISP (new modem, router, etc.) that I’d have to setup the IP address again, but it’s working - just doesn’t have current info, including from my webcam, that is also in a box in the garage. I’ll be creating a new website with a new URL soon.

And yes, I use IPTimelapse for my Reolink camera. The last timelapse before I uninstalled the camera is here: Willowsford Farm - Weather Cam (novawx.dscloud.me)

Website update: Turns out my website is only available on computers connected to my home network.

Well, thanks to all. This has been very instructive. What i have learned, aside from that my camera is defective and produces partial pictures and gets hung up all the time, is that the Ambient Camera is really a Foscam. I had suspected as much. I now have a real Foscam on the way. Thanks to blainec I found the Foscam CGI command manual on-line and it all works with the Ambient and i now have wdwebcamcapture in WD working and getting my images directly from the command line.

The WD capture overlay stuff seems a little wonky and i haven’t figured out how to get rid of a little white square at the top of the picture, but it will come i am sure. Nor have I figured out how to change the background color of the overlay.

But i am on my way and its all working fine with pwsWD (to the extent my camera actually works).

Thanks again to all for your help.

Regards, Jim

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I use an old Panasonic Pet Camera - model BL-C160A. Its technology is over a dozen years old, maybe more - but it does exactly what is needed.

The Panasonic is an outdoor camera with a light and works with POE.
Under its buffered image section - you can send its images to FTP.
I use these images with Weather Display and PWS Dashboard.

There are five programmable triggers that can be set - I use two.

  1. The link to the cameraftp.com site is in Control Panel → Web Cam Image → “Web Page Java Web Cam Setup”.
  2. A static image is sent to my local webserver and used with IPTimelapse and is set at Control Panel → Web Cam Image → “Current Web Cam Image / Main Settings.”
  • CameraFTP costs $18 USD per year (1 image every 30 seconds - 7 day retention)
  • IPTimelapse is a one time purchase of $129 USD (free 7 day trial)
  • Most Panasonic Pet / Nanny Cameras can be found for under $50.

Only the camera is needed to get your image to display on both Weather Display or PWS Dashboard but the two additional items (CameraFTP and IPTimelapse) give you a lot of options. Plus I decided not to pay the 1k for DirectShow software.

Additionally, you can get also get a “free” 90 day SSL certificate from ZeroSSL

No credit card required for any of the trials that are mentioned here and I believe that CameraFTP also has a free option.

Here is my PWS Dashboard site.

Panasonic Camera is on the right using POE.

Happy to answer any questions.

Rob

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Just for everyone’s enjoyment, here is an example of how this current camera messes up. You can see my radio antenna above the treetops.

Regards,
Jim

The only beam in the Blue Ridge mountains. . .

'Thought the genuine Foscam would have been there by now, if you ordered on Amazon?

Well, not the ONLY beam, I am aware of about 5 here in Fannin County. I ordered direct from Foscam, it was a tad cheaper and still had free shipping. So maybe mid-week.

So, maybe you’ll enjoy a short British car story. I was down on a very twisty-turny narrow rural road this morning, when along came a car in the other direction. Barely enough room for both of us i hit a large pothole squarely. The car started making very wierd sounds and i found a driveway to pull into. It was the starter motor running. Even with the key off. I noticed the dash idiot lights were all lit up. I quick disconnected the negative battery cable, rooted around in the trunk (boot, for you over there) and found my spare starter relay. The only way both the idiot lights and the starter could be running was a short in that relay. Replaced it, all was well, drove home. One of the weak points in the car is braid connecting the engine to body for ground. I had (long ago) added a heavy wire to suppliment. The insulation on it had melted away.

Regards,

Jim

Wow!

Most British cars have negative ground. . . (only joking :wink: )

Can’t access the website, yet.

That’s not a British car story. Our cars don’t have spares these days. Mine doesn’t even have a spare wheel.

Yes, I discovered that I can access it on computers connected to my home network, but not externally. Sorry.

It is if you drive a 1980 Triumph TR8, the one with the V8 in it. . . he probably has a trunk full of spares :wink:

I meant the tree :wink:

If you go to QRZ.COM and look up my callsign (W4UCK) at the bottom of the page is a link to a video a friend of mine made with a drone while i was working on my tower. Quite the view of the mountains. And, yes, its a 1980 Triumph TR8, the last of the TRs. When it comes to spares, don’t leave home without them. Belts and radiator hoses, certainly, spare fuses (Lucas, the prince of darkness, used a slightly different size than all others).

I wanted to wrap this by reporting that the Foscam G4 is performing excellently. It is the same camera as the Ambient (except that it works right). It has later firmware and appears to have better color rendition and dynamic range. Thanks blainec for the cgi tips, its downloading direct into WD which then uploads to pwsWD just fine. Ambient can’t tell the difference between this camera and theirs. It has the same FCCid and the name of the company is ShenZhen Foscam Intelligent Techinologies. So i am quite pleased. Blue sky is actually blue, my antenna has better contrast against the blue sky. Its still hard to see the aluminum against clouds sometimes, but i cannot expect miracles. No extra costs or subscriptions involved.

Thanks all for the excellent thoughts.

Regards, Jim

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I thought I would mention another method to upload pictures to a pwsWD website. I use a raspberry pi 3 with a pi camera that looks out a window to our lawn and road. The pi connects to our modem using built-in wifi and uploads a picture every 15 minutes during daylight hours. The pi adds text data to the image. I use the linux scp command to upload the image to my pwsWD website. I got a lot of guidance from this article: https://andyfelong.com/2019/01/insert-webcam-image-into-a-webpage/

blainec:
Is that method sort of laid out in WD setup page, or is this something you got to work with your own ingenuity?
Can addressing a URL invoke a signal to the webcam to snap a picture?
Dale

Dale, you use the web cam capture program in WD. Its a seperate program you start from the control panel, webcam setup->Main Settings->Setup/View WD direct live web cam capture. Use that to capture the images and then process from there in the control panel web cam setup. The cgi command set is available on the Foscam website. I don’t seem to be able to attach a copy here, but its called Foscam-IPCamera-CGI-User-Guide-V1.0.4.pdf.

It all works just fine.

Regards, Jim

Marian

as Jaltman said. Get the CGI User guide to assist in using the correct command/URL :wink: