Can Blue Iris do this

BobW55

BobW55

Getting the hang of it
Apr 8, 2015
175
46
[h=2][/h]
I have on order a PTZ IP camera.
http://www.aliexpress.com/item/507-2...287476107.html

I have not received the camera as of yet. I have downloaded the software from the vendor, while it appears to have most of the normal stuff I am not sure if it will do the following:
I intend to use this as a Weather camera to take pictures of the sky.
I would like to be able to do the following:
1) Rotate to each of the 8 compass points (N, NE,E,SE Ect.) Wait 5-10 seconds take a picture.
2) Tag each picture with time and date stamp and the direction facing..
3) Upload the pictures to my web server with the same name each time. (8 Pictures and names in all)
4) Sleep for 15-30 minutes.
5) Repeat the process till dark. (may have to program that in by hand as the seasons change)

I have to see the size of each picture it will produce to see how band width will play in to how often It takes and uploads a picture.​
 
That really is a tricky one.

1-4) maybe
5) probably. Blue Iris lets you create schedules that begin and/or end at sunrise or sunset. Blue Iris even calculates when sunrise and sunset are for your location.

You may have to make 8 copies of the camera in Blue Iris. One for each of the compass points, with the text overlay customized for each. Fortunately Blue Iris will only pull the video stream once if you add the camera 8 times so you won't overload the camera or the server CPU :)

But I'm not sure you can schedule the camera to go to presets and upload snapshots with the kind of timing precision you need.

Something you might consider is that this could produce significant wear on the PTZ mechanisms so the camera may not last as long as you want it to. My state has a lot of public highway cameras that operate in a similar fashion. They move automatically every few minutes to take 3 pictures (i.e. north, south, zoomed-in road surface pic) and those get uploaded to the state's department of transportation site. Now they're using some old cams for this, probably analog from the looks of the pictures, but I often see pics on their site where the camera has failed to move properly or the zoom got stuck. They are probably using custom software that they paid some contractor tens of thousands of dollars for.
 
I sent an email to BI and they also said it may be possible, but a PIA to set up.
Reason I want the camera to sleep is to save wear and tear.
That is the one spec I never see posted about PTZ cameras is how long the PTZ drive will last.
May have to get back into programming and write my own code. I have searched till I am blind, but not have found any real PTZ software dedicated to watching the sky.
Will have to check some astronomy forums, they may have something.
I even thought about trying to track the moon at night.

Thanks for the input.
 
Hah. I once considered trying to track the moon with a PTZ. I even got help from a guy who wrote an android app for astronomy calculations, and had the moon position calculations all ready to go. But I fell short trying to find a quality PTZ that I could mount upside down without risking water damage. Even bubble dome style PTZs tend to be built in such a way that water would pool up around the dome and sneak its way inside. I don't think an IR cam like this would stand a chance if mounted upside down.

Besides that, for automatic tracking of the moon you'd need the camera to support precise absolute positioning and it remains to be seen whether this camera brand is capable of that. The upper tiers of Dahua and Hikvision PTZs are, but a lot of the Chinese models I investigated over the past few years are not capable.

I personally hope this model is capable, because a friend just ordered one last night and I agreed to look at it when it arrives in a few weeks to see if I can make it compatible with my camera proxy application for panoramic PTZ control. This too requires an absolute positioning API.
 
It would be hard to hold the moon center frame with any accuracy, I could mount the camera on my telescope mount which has a controller built to track the moon.
I was thinking more just track it an snap a shot every 5 minutes or so, if it is a bit off center so be it. I am not sure how many degrees up from horizontal this camera can do. Will have to remember to check that and add it to my review. I am hoping to get some good shots of moon rise, have a pretty good open view to the east here, depends on which leg of my tower I mount it on.
 
Highest angle above horizon I have seen is 15 degrees. 5-10 is more common. Some cams are 0!

In theory with

* a perfectly level mounted upside-down PTZ
* accurate absolute positioning
* accurate moon position calculations

it would be no problem to get the moon in center frame. I was going to use one of those 12x Dahua PTZs for the moon tracking project. It gives a view angle of something like 4 degrees fully zoomed in, and the moon itself is half a degree if I recall, so I would have only a couple degrees margin of error. But I canned that project, not wanting to lose an expensive PTZ to water damage, so I have no idea how accurate it would have been.
 
I am kind of fortunate where I live here in Michigan the moon never goes directly overhead, is on a more south of me track, but not by much.
It was one of those, when it is low in its track, would be nice to watch it for a few hours at a clip. Would get boring trying to watch it all the time.
At night, kind of hard to see the sky anyway.
 
BobW55, Will you be posting a review of the camera? And if so where? I am interested in that same camera.
 
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