ATTENTION: A new, improved version of this solar powered webcam is now up and running! For details please click over to this page. The webcam described below had some short comings but the information contained herein will remain published in hopes that someone smarter or more patient than I can improve upon it and tell us how. I invite the rest of you to check out the new improved version which took many cues from this original masterpiece and which in fact uses many of the same components. Find out more about both versions at www.vandalm.net/webcam. Thanks for visiting!

Welcome To Mark's Realtime Streaming Webcam Display
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The webcam is currently pointed at my computer table. So, in the frame below you're most likely looking at my monitor, sometimes with me or my wife sitting in front of it, and my collection of solar eagle hot wheels hanging on peg board to the right of the monitor. If the stream displays as jumpy or strobe-like on your screen, chances are it's because you're visiting my website with a dial-up connection. The webcam software is set to capture and display images at 6 frames per second! Most dial-up connections will have difficulty transferring image data at that rate. If there appears to be a spotlight shining in the center of the image it's because the webcam contains a ring of infra-red LED's for viewing images in low light conditions. The "spotlight" effect occurs when the light in my computer room is very dim and the LED's become the primary source of light on the scene. This effect becomes minimal and the colors become more vivid if and when I decide to turn the light on in the room. See below for more information about the hardware.

As you might have already read elsewhere on my website, the inspiration for this webcam page came from a desire to create a realtime weather page for the town I live in. However, I'm still far from taking my weather page from concept to construction and one reason is because I think the inclusion of a realtime streaming weathercam is essential for a weather page's usefulness. To that end, I needed to be sure that I could set up such a webcam before investing in all of the various weather sensors that would serve the weather page. But what would I do with a webcam if my weather page wasn't yet ready to go online? It would still have to be used in a way that would attract the interest of others and generate visitors to my website. After all, generating hits really is the ultimate goal of any website, isn't it? So, besides realtime weather data, what else in my little domain might others take an interest in?

Our backyard sits in the middle of a large oak grove and has a small swimming pool that doesn't see much use. The location of the yard together with the combination of trees and a still pool of water help to make it a calm, cool, peaceful environment. A pair of birds that would appear in the yard every spring caught my attention, particularly because we had a pair of cats at the time and I was always worried that the birds would end up as kitty food some day. And as I started to pay closer attention to the birds I noticed they had favorite perches that they would always return to, and that they would often feed by skimming the surface of the swimming pool late in the afternoon catching insects that probably were drawn to the coolness of the water. And then I discovered their nest. The sound of faint chirping one day led me into our carport where I found a nest full of baby birds that had been built in the rafters above. And I also found the answer to my question about what to do with a webcam while my weather page was in development - use it to watch birds, of course!

So, this webcam's primary purpose will eventually be to serve as a weathercam. But until then it will be used as a birdcam whenever the birds have returned to nest. Either application requires the camera to be placed outdoors which means it would have to be somewhat weather resistant. And getting power to an outdoor webcam would also be a challenge, as would getting the captured images from the camera back to a PC for publishing on the web. These were the challenges I had to try and overcome as I began to research available components for this project.

Weatherproof cameras are often used for surveillance purposes and are rather common. Conveniently for me these cameras are also made as wireless for the purpose of being stealthy. This type of camera, also known as a bullet camera because of its shape, comes with a recieving unit that plugs into a PC's video capture card while the head of the camera with the lense in it serves as the transmitting unit. Such a camera solves two of the challenges I was faced with and is what I eventually settled on. Coincidentally, these cameras are also available with infra-red LED's for use in low light conditions. Low light is an issue I didn't initially consider, but because of the nest's location in the carport rafters there really isn't enough available light to sustain an around-the-clock observation using a traditional webcam that relies on incident light to light a scene. An infra-red LED camera solved another problem for me by making it possible to observe the birds even at night.

My last major obstacle was to come up with a reliable source of power for the camera. One possibility was to run some conduit and wire out to the carport and install a receptacle that I could just plug the camera in to. The trouble with that approach is that I don't own the place I live in and I didn't want to invest too much in improvements on a place that isn't even mine. Besides, I would've had to have gotten the landlord involved and I was hesitant to put someone through so much trouble for a hobby that was really just experimental anyway. The camera I had purchased came with an adapter for attaching a 9 volt battery for use as the power source. I liked the idea of using a battery, but the obvious disadvantage is a battery's limited lifespan. But what about devising a way to recharge the battery? It just so happens that while in school I participated in a cross country race for solar powered electric cars so I know a little bit about solar power technology. The cars used in the race are essentially solar powered battery chargers in the sense that the power from the solar panels is used to charge a bank of batteries and the power from the batteries is what drives the motor. Houses that utilize solar power are also set up in this fashion. But these systems usually rely on 12 volt batteries and I wasn't sure if a camera that could operate off of a 9 volt battery would survive a 12 volt power source. I was astonished when I inspected the AC adapter that came with the camera and saw that it was actually a 120 to 12 volt adapter. What luck! With the revelation that my camera could tolerate a 12 volt power source I set out to put together a battery pack that would use the sun to recharge itself.

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This webcam display is powered by Java and the freeware program called Yawcam...

This shout-out has been placed here voluntarily and is not a requirement for use of this freeware.

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