No More Weather Underground Webcams

[wxman]

Bad news for nature/weather hobbyists that host your backyard webcams on Weather Underground...They're doing away with their webcam hosting service.

WU says goodbye to Webcams – Customer Feedback for Weather Underground

Granted, those that have used the service probably learned fairly quickly that it was less than reliable...Still was interesting to be able to map out live webcam images around the world...and the ability to FTP directly from the cams to their server without the need of a computer made it simple.

I'm not aware of any similar alternatives for this kind of service yet, but checking around with some of my sources. Can always create your own server or ftp to a cheap hosting account and use javascript to display the latest image on your own personal page to continue hosting your own cam on the web....but still it's not mapped out in a network with millions of other cams making it easy for enthusiasts to find you.

 

[looney2ns]

Bad news for nature/weather hobbyists that host your backyard webcams on Weather Underground...They're doing away with their webcam hosting service.

WU says goodbye to Webcams – Customer Feedback for Weather Underground

Granted, those that have used the service probably learned fairly quickly that it was less than reliable...Still was interesting to be able to map out live webcam images around the world...and the ability to FTP directly from the cams to their server without the need of a computer made it simple.

I'm not aware of any similar alternatives for this kind of service yet, but checking around with some of my sources. Can always create your own server or ftp to a cheap hosting account and use javascript to display the latest image on your own personal page to continue hosting your own cam on the web....but still it's not mapped out in a network with millions of other cams making it easy for enthusiasts to find you.

Well that's a fine how do you do. I think that I will stop supplying them data from my weather station as well. Which I've done for 16 years. Seeing as IBM is selling that data for a profit now. The site in it's current form....blows anyway.

 

[weigle2]

Well that's a fine how do you do. I think that I will stop supplying them data from my weather station as well. Which I've done for 15-16 years. Seeing as IBM is selling that data for a profit now. The site in it's current form....blows anyway.

Couldn't agree more. Although, I have to say there forecasts seem to be the most accurate for my area. If only their web site developers could get their heads out of their asses, and come up with a much more efficient approach. Loading ads before loading the main site, shows how greedy they are.

 

[tangent]

Well that sucks. I wonder how many weather stations will go dark in protest. The writing has been on the wall for a while with all the bugs and outages and lack of effort to redevelop the flash based timelapse. The time lapses and image archives have been very useful to me over the years.

@bp2008 wrote some software for his own webcam archive, I just wish it didn't run on asp.net: Weather camera image archive server application

 

[looney2ns]

Couldn't agree more. Although, I have to say there forecasts seem to be the most accurate for my area. If only their web site developers could get their heads out of their asses, and come up with a much more efficient approach. Loading ads before loading the main site, shows how greedy they are.

Last I knew, $5.00 per yr does away with the ads. Their mobile app sucks pond water.

Depends on which forecast you have selected? NWS or their own.
I think the NWS is best in most case's. WU's data is suspect anyway because all the stupid cheap stations they have allowed to contribute, especially the crap Netatmo junk. Their readings are all over the map.

 

[wxman]

Just heard back from a meteorologist friend that owns a weather company that deals with this kind of stuff (even selling IP cams specifically set up to use weather underground)...He said that he recently learned of this and has been trying to come up with a work around. Said while his company is small and doesn't have the space and bandwidth to host webcams, he is exploring cheap options for a self-hosting network.

If I'm understanding correctly, basically a "weather webcam directory"...You would host the images from your cam to the web yourself and he would host a primary website with links on a zoomable map to the different cams that are live. If you had the bandwidth to host from your own server, he could link your cam for free. Otherwise, you could purchase a cheap hosting account on your own that he could link to or either he could purchase hosting accounts that could be shared by several users, splitting the cost. He said the goal would be that anyone could get their webcam on the network for $5 per year or less.

I already have a cheap host that I pay for that I think would be able to handle all the traffic my cams would generate, so I told him I may join his network if he's able to get one going.

He also mentioned that he could create an archive backup of any users webcam history from Weather Underground, but would have to charge a small fee because it would be a manual save of each image and video and be very time consuming. I can only imagine. Especially for users that have years of data.

I can message you his contact info, if anyone wants to chat with him.

 

[looney2ns]

Well that sucks. I wonder how many weather stations will go dark in protest. The writing has been on the wall for a while with all the bugs and outages and lack of effort to redevelop the flash based timelapse. The time lapses and image archives have been very useful to me over the years.

@bp2008 wrote some software for his own webcam archive, I just wish it didn't run on asp.net: Weather camera image archive server application

There are several templates available that allow a fairly easy way to publish your own weather and skycam pics/videos.
I used to do it, but got tired of maintaining the site.