Mt Whitney Zone Forums General Discussion what would you like change on the webcam archive?

Hi all!

I run the webcam archive at Whitney webcam archive. A couple of bugs in the capture code have been bugging me.

• Duplicate images. The first image of each day is froom the end of the previous day. Images are are duplicated at the end of the end of the day. This happens because it's not a 24/7 realtime capture cam, but rather has a start time in the morning and an end time in the evening. The archive is using times slightly wider than the webcam.
  
• Partial or corrupted images. Sometimes the archive downloads an image at the same time as that image is being uploaded from the webcam. If the download finishes before the upload I end up with an incomplete or corrupted image. I need to detect this corrupt image and re-download it.

While I'm fixing these problems is a good time for other changes as well.

Any suggestions for improvements? No promises, but I'm listening.

Hi, Joel,

I noticed that, on the Whitney Zone MB, when we click on the real time webcam image, it brings up the same sized image as what gets archived, but then that real time image also can be clicked on one additional time to bring up a zoomed-in version of the same image.

Is it even possible for both the normal and zoomed-in image sizes to be available on the archive, by means of the same additional click on the normal size image to bring up the larger size? I don't know if this is even possible, but thought it worth asking, since you are soliciting suggestions.

CaT

Joel, I sure appreciate your archiving the pictures.

Things changed when wagga and I installed the new setup over the group hike weekend. Since the camera has a focus problem in low light situations, I had to adjust the stop/start times by about 10 minutes (earlier stop, later start). Fortunately I have access to the computer now, so I can change things from here.

I also changed the partial picture upload problem. The software now uploads a new picture using a different name. Once the upload is completed, it THEN deletes the old picture and renames the new one. So you should not have any more partial pictures since 10/18.

Another change I made was to compress the jpg images so their file size is smaller, giving us a faster upload and quicker display on everyone's computers.

CaT, when you click on the web cam image above on the left, that links to (and downloads) the maximum size image to your browser. Since the picture is too big to display on your monitor, a browser feature shrinks the picture so you can see the whole thing, AND gives you the (+) plus icon, inviting you to click on the picture. If you then click on the picture, your browser un-shrinks the picture, showing you the zoomed-in full size image. ...hope that explains the process.

Joel's software is grabbing the smaller image displayed in the WPS home page. If you go to the Web Cam Notes and look at the "About the picture" section, it identifies the different-sized pictures that are uploaded.

Thanks, Steve.

And thanks, Joel, for archiving the images. It's great to go back and look at them now and then, or to have them for a reference on how conditions were on a certain date, or what could be expected at a particular time of year.


That pretty much answers my question. I wasn't sure if the software could grab the larger size or not, or whether this was even desirable.

CaT

The question of which images to archive is a matter of disk space. I'll look into the various file sizes and think about it.

Wow you guys are computer geeks . Wished the heck i knew what you guys know. Hell I wish i could understand what you guys know.

My question/request was more of a "wish list" type of request. It's just fine the way it is. Thanks again.

Joel, you might note: The size of picture files before 10/17 were up around 60K, now they are around 10K. The full-size image CaT is talking about is now about 70K.

Saving 70K ea. 10 minutes 24/7 for a year is less than 4 GB, and will fit on a single DVD. That's assuming night time use.

Due to the nature of jpg, night time files should be tiny.

If it wasn't for the focus issue, it could run 24/7.

Only daytime shots are archived.