Why I Built It...
Team Weatherman
My interest in building this solar powered wireless webcam grew from my interest in creating a website that displayed real time weather information. I was always curious about meteorology but never really took a serious interest in it until I became involved in building a solar powered race car while in college. As Team Weatherman I was determined to learn how to accurately predict cloud cover. Race strategy hinged on the amount of available sunlight that could be expected.▼
Satellite Imagery
Of the many weather websites in publication at the time the ones I found to be most valuable were those that displayed real time satellite imagery. I wanted to know when to expect cloud cover and these sites showed a bird's eye view of regional trends in cloud formation. Close-up views were also available which made it possible to get a real sense of how dense the pending cloud cover was going to be and how fast that cloud cover was travelling. But not all regions along the race route were included in the close-up imagery. And learning to accurately interpret the satellite imagery was a daunting task. The brightness of the clouds shown in the imagery was a fairly reliable indicator of cloud temperature but gave no indication of cloud ceiling (elevation).▼▲
Weather Website Concept
I eventually came to realize that what I needed was to be able to see the sky from the next city or county over and from a ground level perspective, not just from the bird's eye view that satellites provided. Webcams seemed to be a perfect solution except for the fact that there weren't very many in use as weather cams in general, let alone along the race route. I wondered why that was given the proliferation of personal weather stations, and given the undisputable relationship between clouds and the weather. It was my contention that every personal weather station should give some visual indication of the degree of cloud cover, not just temperature and wind speed. So I set out to build my own weather website as a proof of concept. Of course, the site would include a weather webcam stream that showed sky conditions.▼▲
Stream Quality
"Yeah, but why solar?" you might ask. Well, I thought that to really convey useful information about the clarity of the sky the webcam stream should be as clear and vivid as possible. Pointing the camera at the sky through a window would detract from that objective since the resultant image could be distorted by dirt on the glass, by impurities in the glass itself or by reflections. So the camera should be mounted outside. But that introduced the problems of how to get power to the camera and how to get the feed from the camera back to a computer where it could be published to the internet. There was also the concern of keeping the final installation as unobtrusive as possible since I live in a rental unit and didn't want to create an eyesore that the landlord might object to. A solar panel solved the problem of getting power to the camera and a wireless video transmitter and receiver solved the problem of getting the feed back to the desktop computer. And since the need for running visible wires was minimized an aesthetically appealing installation was achievable. Greater freedom in camera placement would also be realized.▼▲
In Summary
To summarize, my goal became to build a system that would capture real time images of the sky and display them on a weather website where the degree of cloud cover would be relevant information. Image clarity was a priority so the camera would have to be mounted outdoors. Solar power and wireless transmission would facilitate an aesthetically pleasing installation by minimizing the amount of visible wire runs and would also provide greater freedom in camera placement. Other objectives were born during the course of the project and I'll elaborate on them elsewhere on this website, but for the most part I feel my primary goals have been achieved.▲
