Webcam up again

After the "switch-off" over the weekend and my two-day absence from work due to illness, the webcam is again up and running.

Webcam down over the weekend

This weekend, we do have a test going on at Leeds Met: shutting down all unnecessary equipment, and measuring the consumed power under these circumstances. Since this webcam is not really deemed "necessary", it will remain shut-down over the weekend and will only be restarted on Monday, 24.11.

On Travel - Update stopped

I am on travel since 1.November. The server appeared to run fine until 6.November, 4:51 - since then no new image was uploaded. I will only be able to find out what happened, after my return - which will be 17.November.

Server restart - camera update stopped

This morning at 5:07, the camera server in my office decided to shut down, probably because of some pending Windows Updates. Therefore, no new image was uploaded to the web server until now (10:55). The server now is up and running ok again. There still may be occasional outages, as I am currently getting more Windows updates.

Web cam listed on Facebook

Carl Noblet has addeds this Leeds Met Headingley camera into the listing at the Facebook group Leeds Met Headingley Campus Grounds. Thanks, Carl!

Marquee has been dismantled

The marquee has now been dismantled. A time lapse sequence of more than 7000 individual images has been recorded which can be integrated into a fast-forward-running video. The recording has now stopped, the camera has been turned to show again the James Graham Building, and the image capture time period has been shortened from 2 minutes to 30 seconds.

Webcam Recording: Dismantling of the Marquee

The webcam has now been set up to record an image series (timelapse) of the dismantling of the Marquee on the Acre, here at the Leeds Met Headingley Campus. Yesterday, the direction of the camera was moved slightly to the right, to get a better view of the marquee, instead of the walk way ikn front of it.

Back from travel

After 2 weeks of travel, I am back at Leeds Met. The webcam and server were running nicely, no crash occured.

The campus is quite empty now during the summer holiday, so the webcam picture often looks the same, like this scene below.

Graduation - Increased camera framerate

After returning from a more than one-week-long absence, the webcam and the server are running fine - no crashes or problems had occured.

The framerate is now increased to one image every 15 seconds, to account for the increased activity during the graduation ceremonies. The images are being recorded, with the potion to integrate them into a time-lapse movie at a later time.

Webcam unsupervised until 23.July

Again, the webcam will run without me being able to restart it until 23.July. The Graduation week will commence on 21.July, and therefore the camera will be set to record images. To avoid memory problems, the capture rate is set to once per 2 minutes.

Brief Problems

After an update fo Windows XP Service Pack 3, the video capture software did not run anymore. This seemed to happen due to an incorrect assignment of the used camera. Unfortunately there was no way to select explicitly a camera, so I had to access the source code and force the selection of a particular video capture device. Not very elegant, but it works. There is room for improvvement: e.g., implement a convenient camera selection dialogue. I thought that I had done that when writing the C++ class for video capture, but apparently it did not work corectly - will have to check that out later.

For now, the capture is running again well. Capture rate is set at 1 image per 15 seconds, recording is for now disabled.

Open Day at Leeds Met

The view of the camera has been adjusted to cover only the front of the marquee and the James Graham Building, no sky is visible. This provides a larger view of the area where pedestrians are walking. At the Open Day today, we expect several 1000 visitors.

The recording has been set to four images per minute. This should give nice material for a good time laps video.

Recent Camera Blockage

On 1. July2008, at 8:56, a window cleaner moved the vertical blinds of the windows in office 101 Caedmon. This resulted that the sun shield of the camera was shifted, and partially blocked the view since then. The images from the past 2 days were therefore partially obstructed. This problem has been solve dnow, and the camera view is fine and well.

Besides from that glitch, the server ran well, and the camera images were sent without any problems. There was a recording set to capture one picture each minute, which worked great. Have now a couple of sunset and sun rises for a nice time laps video montage. The recording has now stopped - images are now only shown on the web without being recorded.

The view of the camera is now slightly adjusted to give more view of the area in front of the marquee tents.

This coming weekend is an open day. There will be quite some activity going on here at the campus. I may set the camera again to recording, to get a video of the "buzz".

Webcam "unsupervised" until 3.July

For the next 2 weeks, the webcam will remain in an unsupervised state. This means that it might be possible that due to a power outage the server would shut down, and no new images would be uploaded. The current refresh rate is set to one image per minute. This means that it can be seen from the date of the last image upload if the server is live or not.

During the past 2 weeks, one image has been recorded every minute. This allows that a video can be constructed from this image sequence, documenting the building of the Graduation Marquees on the Acre. Since there is still some construction / clean-up being done, this image storing will continue during the next 2 weeks.

Refresh Time Reduced: 60 seconds

During the Carnegie Great Student Run, the webcam was set to a refresh time of 10 seconds, so that viewers could get a rapid update of the acrivities in the Start/Finish area, where the camera was pointing to.

Now we have reduced the camera refresh time to 60 seconds, because the server bandwidth will be used for other purposes. This means that even if the refresh is set by an external website to a faster rate, there will only be a new image available every 60 seconds.

Since one week, the camera has slightly been turned towards the Acre, giving a vew of the Marquee tent which is being built for our upcoming Graduations and the Leeds Met Staff Development Festival in September. So for the next few months, the camera will show those big white tents.

I have set up the system to record a picture every minute, so that one can create a time-lapse recording of the tent contruction. We will see how this comes out...

Live image - embedded in any web site

This live image was embedded here with the following code:

< IFRAME src="http://creativetech.inn.leedsmet.ac.uk/_LiveCam/index.phph=240&w=320" 
height='270' width=320 frameborder='0' >
< IFRAME >

This code snippet can be embedded in any other website. In this specific code it will show a 320x240 image, with the refresh time being encoded in the web site (this will be sometimes subject to change).

The users who embed the image can also parametrize this image more:

< IFRAME 
src="http://creativetech.inn.leedsmet.ac.uk/_LiveCam/index.php?w=320&h=240&r=120&t=Leeds Met" 
height='270' width='320' frameborder='0' >
< IFRAME >

The parameters in the URL mean:
w = image with (both width and height parameters will create a resized image)
h = image height
r = refresh time in seconds (if the user wants the update in a certain interval)
t = caption text

In addition to the URL parameters, the IFRAME parameters need to be set properly to include the imave completely (height, width).

A full 640x480 image is shown when no h/w parameter appears in the URL:

< IFRAME 
src="http://creativetech.inn.leedsmet.ac.uk/_LiveCam/index.php" 
height='510' width='640' frameborder='0' >
< IFRAME >

Webcam Blog setup

This blog will serve simply as a log of activity re. the webcam. It appeared to be necessary to inform viewers about changes, outages, etc.
Nothing very deep here, just simple technical info.