Portable Camera For Portable WX Station?

[LTCSZ]

Hello: I am looking for advice. I am a weather fanatic and have a good portable weather station setup. I visit a lot of state/national parks, etc., set up my station, and record readings of the weather. (OK, there's no practical reason to do this, I just enjoy it!) I would like to add a live webcam to the setup, but I am not sure how to begin. I would simply like to be able to feed the camera output to a webpage that I want to create for friends (and other weather addicted folks) so that they can follow my wanderings and see all of the useless information I am gathering. This sounds like a daunting task, and maybe it is beyond what I can accomplish, but I thought I would put the idea out there and see what happens...Thanks for your assistance and advice.

Steve in Kansas

 

[TonyR]

IMO, one of the biggest issues facing having a webpage and placing media on it to be viewed by others is the ability to successfully view that media across different platforms and/or browsers.

You could avoid a lot of that by simply uploading a JPEG still image as every browser on every PC, Mac, smartphone (iOS or Android) can view a simple image. It's also is a small file and will simplify your process.

Instead of fumbling around with an IP or analog camera and laptop, I'd install a FTP client app on my smartphone, take a picture on my smartphone and FTP it to my web page. If you want a short video instead then you could take the video with your smartphone and upload it to YouTube (or Vimeo, etc.) and embed the public link in your webpage.

 

[LTCSZ]

TonyR: Thanks for the suggestions. I am brand new at this webpage stuff (you can probably tell) and your suggestion makes perfect sense. I was trying to make it more difficult than it is! I need to learn about FTP uploads, etc. from my tablet but that's a lot simpler than the webcam idea I initially had. I want to be able to quickly add a picture of significant weather events without reloading the entire webpage, especially since I am often at remote locations when these events occur. Thanks again!

Steve in Kansas

 

[TonyR]

I want to be able to quickly add a picture of significant weather events without reloading the entire webpage, especially since I am often at remote locations when these events occur.

Let's say your webpage is called "weather.html" and the image that you'll replace frequently is named "latest.jpg".

Just insure your new image is the same size and has the same name ("latest.jpg"), FTP it (upload) to the directory (folder) on your website that contains the "weather.html" page and the program will ask you if you want to replace the old image with the new image (in so many words) and you say "yes".

It make take a few minutes and you will likely have to clear your browser's cache before you can see your change.

The reason for insuring the new image is the same size as the existing (old) one is so that if you sized the first image to give you the appearance and layout you want, then you don't want to mess that up with a differently sized image.

 

[LTCSZ]

Wow...Thanks for the step by step guide...Going out of town on work first part of the week (I hate it when work interferes with my hobbies) but will give it a try when I get back. Thanks again!

 

[TonyR]

To clarify (and this will be all your call when you create your webpage):

Oftentimes all the images for a website will be in a folder that is nested inside the folder that holds the page(s) that will call up that image. In other words, your "weather.html" page could be found in "/public_html" and your "latest.jpg" could be found in "/public_html/images/"; that path says that the "images" folder is located INSIDE the "public_html" folder.

Here's an example (click on it): http://www.winstoncounty.net/webcam/Cam3.jpg

 

[LTCSZ]

More great information...How did you place the overlay data on the photo? Thanks once again! Lots for me to learn.

 

[TonyR]

More great information...How did you place the overlay data on the photo? Thanks once again! Lots for me to learn.

I use Blue Iris VMS software on a PC instead of a NVR. @Mike wrote the free Blue Iris Tools ("BIT") which does that among many other great things for Blue Iris.