Outdoor Web Cam

[K7VZ]

I want to setup a web cam outside and have it upload a photo every 10 minutes with my weather station. IE, you can look at my weather station page and also see a live photo of said weather. www.silhanek.com/Weather

Does anyone have suggestions for what web cam to get?

What direction do I point it? I plan to place it on the south end of my house, so South, East, or West are the available aiming directions.

Do I get a wireless one or run a long USB cable?

Any suggested software to make this work?

[W6DPS]

D-Link makes some inexpensive and easy to use network cameras. This is the simplest and cheapest, but probably isn't weather proof.

Wieless n network camera

Set up in a window it should work fine, and a simple set up while you learn the ropes is probably a good idea.

I would be very cautious about faceing a fixed camera South, as the sun can cause wash out or even damage.

Dave, W6DPS

[AD5VG]

Ah yes, the weather webcam. I went thru this myself a few months ago and here is how I solved it. I went to WalMart online and found a MS Lifecam 5000HD for $30, then went to Frys and picked up a dummy security camera enclosure which I gutted to make a weatherproof housing for the Lifecam and it's held up to one full summer monsoon with multiple dust storms and some decent rain. For the connection I used a Monoprice active USB cable thru the coax hole in the wall of my bedroom to a powered USB hub. Here's a sample image captured yesterday:

capture1.jpg

On a weather forum I frequent there are a lot of folks who are using some of the older Olympus mid range models for webcams - 5-6MP with optical zoom makes for a real nice image. There is even a company that will sell full units with housings and control software but they're a bit spendy As far as direction consider that most of the really good weather tends to come out of the south/southeast, particularly the haboobs during the monsoon. But also consider that a southern exposure brings the chance for the sun to get into the field of view for extended periods in the fall/winter/spring months, and even though you'll only be requesting one frame every ten minutes the cam will be capturing video continually which could lead to issues down the road (kind of like screen burn-in on the old CRT monitors).

[K7VZ]

Great info Kevin. Thank you. Now I'm thinking I need a motorized camera that can be controlled from my web site. At least something that could switch from eastward to westward.

[K7VZ]

I bought a HP Webcam 2100 today at Fry's Electronics for $17.99. I loaded Camorama 0.19 on my Ubuntu laptop and set it up to take a picture every 10 minutes. It also has the option to FTP upload photos, so I think that'll do what I want. Next step is to get it loaded to the Raspberry Pi.