New Webcam

[Ingo]

Thanks Sparky! Great info and insight, and esp for the sneak previews !

[treeplanter]

These new views are great! Thanks for the update on what's going on.

[hooky]

Very cool of you to share, Sparky!

Thanks for the explanation too.

[RedLeg]

After looking at it again it looks like the images for the Mott cameras might be in too high of resolution for the NPS websites API interface? The Mott cams look like they're all putting out 3840x2160 which is standard 4k resolution. The Greenstone SouthWest camera on the otherhand is loading in 1365x767. That's a much more practical image size to be transmitting in this circumstance I would suspect.

Is it possible there's a different max resolution the web API needs to process it?

[sparky49931]

Nice work digging in and seeing how the pages are formed, RedLeg. Sounds like you know a thing or two about this stuff.

Images are often pushed out of the cameras at a higher resolution than we display on the public website. When the webpage is built, the webmaster (not me) sets the size of the element that will be displayed and then the web server scales up or down to make it fit.

Images are sent from the cameras at full resolution to a server on the mainland where they are distributed to different application. Sending a single image from the camera to a mainland server makes it simpler to manage and saves bandwidth on the island.

You are correct that the cameras at Ojibway are lower native resolution than Mott (or Rock Harbor). It comes down to how much money is available for the project. We're very restricted in brands /models of cameras we can use.. the inexpensive brands are generally off limits administratively and it's much easier to find the money for a $700 camera than a $2500 camera. For Ojibway it was a matter of doing it cheap with some leftover funds from something else or not doing it all- I would obviously prefer the higher resolution.

Mott has a single camera with much higher resolution, but PTZ so we can capture a variety of views from one camera.... it was experiment from few years back, but we overall have not been happy with the results.... the camera doesn't go back to precisely the same location each time, so it's problematic to do timelapses or any kind of machine based analysis of the images... additionally, if that camera goes down we lose half a dozen views (not all images go to the website) rather than just the one.

The issue for Mott this Winter is that we lost reliable communications with that site back in December.. a weather station and a GPS reference station out there are down also. The partial image being displayed since is just that... a partially image that didn't quite finish uploading. You are 100% correct that sending lower resolution images off the island would save bandwidth, but from a practical standpoint it doesn't make a big difference in reliability with our system. If the system is good enough to link up and function at all, it's generally good to go with the full resolution images.... we're not in a hurry for them as (in the case of Mott), the next image isn't coming for 2 minutes.. taking a minute and 59 seconds to upload a single image is just fine and no one notices the difference.

There will be crews going out to the island in just about 3 weeks. It shouldn't take long to get the camera up and running again once the right people are on the ground.

[fonixmunkee]

Here are a few other cameras at Ojibway you can check out... they are not linked on the park's website yet, so the forum members here get the sneak peek preview. Same connectivity as the SW viewing camera so subject to the same limitations/outages.

https://www.nps.gov/webcams-isro/northshore.jpg

https://www.nps.gov/webcams-isro/greenstoneridgene.jpg

https://www.nps.gov/webcams-isro/middleislands.jpg

This is so awesome!

[torpified]

these are amazing! Here's a screenshot from the GR one just now:

[WiscoDude3]

It's really great being able to sneak a peak at the island.
Would it be possible to have the temp displayed with the time/date stamp on the images?

[RedLeg]

Does Isle Royale have a weather station? That data feed would be great to watch!

[Ingo]

Does Isle Royale have a weather station? That data feed would be great to watch!

The lighthouses:
https://www.ndbc.noaa.gov/station_page. ... tion=pilm4
https://www.ndbc.noaa.gov/station_page. ... tion=roam4

Over the years I've occasionally found stations at Mt Ojibway, Windigo, and/or Mott Island on wunderground.com, but I don't believe they were ever official and haven't seen them for some time. Would be nice wouldn't it. Obviously they've improved the data transmissions over the years, so hopefully it's on their list--gotta think they (NPS) have some sort of station for their own use. They do show current conditions for Houghton and Grand Marais weather on their webpage now. I'd presume that anything from the island would show up there.
https://www.nps.gov/isro/planyourvisit/weather.htm

[RedLeg]

Thanks for the links on the buoy ststions!

[sparky49931]

In addition to the Passage Island and Rock of Ages Lighthouse weather stations, which are operated and maintained by NOAA, the park maintains 2 automated RAWS stations on the island.

The automated stations can be accessed with these links:

https://mesowest.utah.edu/cgi-bin/droma ... ?stn=winm4

https://mesowest.utah.edu/cgi-bin/droma ... ?stn=OJIM4

Ojibway station is currently down as far as communicating with the outside world. We have parts on order and hope to have it back up soon.

[Ingo]

In addition to the Passage Island and Rock of Ages Lighthouse weather stations, which are operated and maintained by NOAA, the park maintains 2 automated RAWS stations on the island.

The automated stations can be accessed with these links:

https://mesowest.utah.edu/cgi-bin/droma ... ?stn=winm4

https://mesowest.utah.edu/cgi-bin/droma ... ?stn=OJIM4

Ojibway station is currently down as far as communicating with the outside world. We have parts on order and hope to have it back up soon.

That's great Sparky! Thanks! I'm curious where the Windigo station is, since it says it's at 962', or 360' above lake level. If that's true, it has to be out in the woods up on a ridge, right?

[Backpacker534]

That's great Sparky! Thanks! I'm curious where the Windigo station is, since it says it's at 962', or 360' above lake level. If that's true, it has to be out in the woods up on a ridge, right?

I was wondering the same......


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[sparky49931]

yes, the station is up on a ridge near Windigo. A good bit off the trail so it's not generally noticed.


@wiscodude Some of the cameras used have the ability to display temperature along with the image, but the temperature is internal to the camera and the cameras are not mounted at the standard height for reporting outside temperature (6' above ground) so the readings can be pretty misleading as to what's actually happening. Seems better to not provide odd or misleading information even though I agree it would be very cool.