About the Canandaigua Live Cam

About the Live Cam
Interesting facts about the cam

Cam 1 The Live Cam started as a simple (cheap) camera system to view the weather and traffic conditions on Canandaigua Lake. Initially the system was composed of a spare computer, modem, and black and white serial QuickCam purchased on eBay. The computer is an Apple Macintosh IIci with 8 megs of memory and 80 meg disk. It runs a rather complicated Apple Script program to automate taking still pictures and uploading them to the web site. The web page makes extensive use of JavaScript to support it's more advanced features. Color pictures were an early priority, so a used Color QuickCam was found and replaced the B&W camera as the first upgrade. It didn't take long to realize that the wide angle of the stock QuickCam did not lend itself to a good view of the landscape. The search was on for a better lens system.

There are several articles on the net about adapting C mount lenses to the QuickCam. C mount lenses seem very plentiful and suprisingly cheap. Once again eBay was the prime shopping location. There were no adapters commercially available to connect the QuickCam to a C mount lens so you have to build your own. Camera one has a lense to camera adapter made from PVC piping parts, while camera two has a wooden adapter. The zoom lenses allow a closer view and many more options on targeting a specific spot on the lake. Both lenses are held by using a band clamp to connect the lens to the QuickCam mounting bracket. The mounting bracket is then screwed to a tripod. Cam 2

System The new lens on camera one dramatically improved the images that were available on the web. They were much closer and sharper than ever before. The zoom feature improved the images, but reduced the field of view. The answer was a second camera. A second camera, lens, and tripod (all from eBay) was obtained. The software was modified to upload two pictures at a time, and the web page got a 'remote control' to allow you to change channels. Now the view was clear, crisp, and covered more of the lake, but there was one dimension still missing... the fourth dimension, time. The upload software was modified again to allow the system to retain the last 12 images, and the remote control was changed to allow viewers to look at pictures from the past.

Technology marches on and so must the Live Cam. We finally got DSL at the lake and a fast full time internet connection opened up a lot of possibilities. I discovered TrendNet's TV-IP400W tilt / pan / wireless internet camera. It seems to be a good product at a good price. This would finally allow realtime live motion video. It also had the plus of being remotely aim-able. I can now change the view from wherever I am. Initially the camera did not work with Macintosh browsers. I spent a week hounding TrendNet and pointing out their errors and they got me a working version of the firmware. Now I want zoom! Oh well, always aim higher I guess. tv-ip400w

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	The Live Cam started as a simple (cheap) camera system to view the weather and traffic conditions on Canandaigua Lake. Initially the system was composed of a spare computer, modem, and black and white serial QuickCam purchased on eBay. The computer is an Apple Macintosh IIci with 8 megs of memory and 80 meg disk. It runs a rather complicated Apple Script program to automate taking still pictures and uploading them to the web site. The web page makes extensive use of JavaScript to support it's more advanced features. Color pictures were an early priority, so a used Color QuickCam was found and replaced the B&W camera as the first upgrade. It didn't take long to realize that the wide angle of the stock QuickCam did not lend itself to a good view of the landscape. The search was on for a better lens system.
There are several articles on the net about adapting C mount lenses to the QuickCam. C mount lenses seem very plentiful and suprisingly cheap. Once again eBay was the prime shopping location. There were no adapters commercially available to connect the QuickCam to a C mount lens so you have to build your own. Camera one has a lense to camera adapter made from PVC piping parts, while camera two has a wooden adapter. The zoom lenses allow a closer view and many more options on targeting a specific spot on the lake. Both lenses are held by using a band clamp to connect the lens to the QuickCam mounting bracket. The mounting bracket is then screwed to a tripod.
	The new lens on camera one dramatically improved the images that were available on the web. They were much closer and sharper than ever before. The zoom feature improved the images, but reduced the field of view. The answer was a second camera. A second camera, lens, and tripod (all from eBay) was obtained. The software was modified to upload two pictures at a time, and the web page got a 'remote control' to allow you to change channels. Now the view was clear, crisp, and covered more of the lake, but there was one dimension still missing... the fourth dimension, time. The upload software was modified again to allow the system to retain the last 12 images, and the remote control was changed to allow viewers to look at pictures from the past.
Technology marches on and so must the Live Cam. We finally got DSL at the lake and a fast full time internet connection opened up a lot of possibilities. I discovered TrendNet's TV-IP400W tilt / pan / wireless internet camera. It seems to be a good product at a good price. This would finally allow realtime live motion video. It also had the plus of being remotely aim-able. I can now change the view from wherever I am. Initially the camera did not work with Macintosh browsers. I spent a week hounding TrendNet and pointing out their errors and they got me a working version of the firmware. Now I want zoom! Oh well, always aim higher I guess.