State of the Harborcams - After the Storm

Just thought I would review of where the Harborcams stand after the storm.

Camera's - amazingly, all 11 cams stayed operational through the sustained 50-60 MPH winds -- I have to give AXIS credit for making good cameras. I am especially surprised that the Wisconsin Point cam stayed operational-that camera is wide open to the winds.

Internet connections -- There are lots of things that can go wrong with the internet connection and often does. My hope is that most of the cams stay up and do not get bogged down with internet traffic and poor connections. That said, there were times during this past storm when connections were intermittent and poor. Hopefully, with technology advances, things get better in the future.

Ship Alerts - I still do ship alerts when I am at my desk and notice them coming -- not always the best indicator.  Between the Ship Alerts, Boat Schedule Page and the AIS Pages, you should have a good idea when to expect activity.

Marine Scanner -- I have installed the best scanner and antenna I could find and hopefully, it is better than the old one.

Video Recordings -- I try to get the recordings up on the website when able, however, sometimes I am tied up and not able to do it. If you have a particular boat recording that you want, let me know and I will get it for you if possible.

Website -- The duluthharborcam.com website is hosted by Google Blogger. It doesn't have a lot of options to customize the comments and I cannot change the order in which they are presented. While Blogger is very limited, it is free.  In the past, even with paid sites, I would often get my account suspended due to high traffic.  Maybe next year I will try something else.

Response to comments -- I apologize for not always responding to comments -- I often fall asleep before getting to them and then I forget about them.

My thoughts -- I hope to keep the cams going for a long time as I get tremendous satisfaction from knowing folks are enjoying them.  I spend a lot of time on them, but, do try to keep a balance with other responsibilities.

I really, really appreciate all of the folks who help support these cams -- I consider myself the caretaker of your cams and while there are lots of glitches along the way -- I will do my best to keep them running.

Thanks,
Den

Camera Firmware Upgrades today

Hello,  I will be doing firmware updates to all 10 cameras today. If you cannot get one of the cams to show up, try again in a few minutes.

Thanks,
Den

What is the changing number on the bottom left caption line of the video?

Question: What is the changing number on the bottom left caption line of the video?

This number is the number of video kilobytes per second streaming onto the web from the camera. A good smooth video stream is usually under 1500.  With bright sun and small choppy waves, this number greatly increases and tends to bog the camera down. This number is constantly changing with the changing lighting conditions and the scene. That is why you will see this number usually increase as a boat approached and fills the screen.

There are many setting within the camera that I can use to control this number and every one is a compromise of image quality and streaming smoothness.  So, my job is to keep playing with the settings to find a compromise that works for that time of day and time of year. Some days will be better than others and often the issue is not with your device.

The second # is the frame rate, this also can be throttled to improve smoothness or quality.

Hope this helps you understand why this venture is like a dog chasing his tail -- never seems to catch it.