WebCam Weather Station
By Maui Systems Ltd
Not long after we set up the live streaming solution, Whiteadder Watersports in the Lammermuir hills enquired to see if we could help them get some weather information posted online, along with a view of the reservoir to help attract people up to the sailing school.
In this case, there really wasn’t an immediate need for a live video feed, so still images would work fine. There are plenty of web-cams that can upload still images on a regular basis via a variety of methods; in this case we opted to use FTP over a secure session. Once uploaded, the image can then be manipulated with whatever information and graphics are required. The customer could then just link directly to the processed image from their website.
Weather Data
With a solution for the image processing side in mind, we switched focus to
the weather information.
The customer didn’t actually have a weather station
as yet, and were happy for some advice on what might work for them.
The Vantage Vue with a console has the added advantage of letting the staff know what the conditions are right from the office - without having to check the webite for updates! With real time information, it’s easy for staff to assess the ongoing safety of activites in realtime.
From an IT perspective the Vantage Vue console has an accessory slot on the rear and a third party WiFi add-on card that fits beautifully. The weather station console can then send the weather data to our server to be integrated with the web cam images.
Additional Processing
Weather data 24/7 is fine - but the webcam image of a body of water at night is right up there in terms of being bland; rivaling those of black cats on very dark nights.
As visitors to the website might not be in the same timezone, the image processing done on the webserver (using Nginx again) considers the local times for sunset and sunrise and during the hours of darkness, substitutes a ‘stock’ image for visitors.
Where there was one…
When we were helping the people on Mull set up the ferry terminal video stream, Salen Pier Holidays asked about options for a webcam of their pier. When they heard about the solution for the sailing centre and saw the end result, they asked for the same solution to be fitted.
So anyone reading this, if you feel like a holiday on the west coast of Scotland in the only place in the UK where you can actually stay on the pier itself and get wonderful 270° views of the Sound of Mull and surrounding hills, check out Salen Pier Holidays.