Western Railroad Discussion > Dunsmuir Webcam - what's up?

Im confused. One moment, there is a crowd at Dunsmuir. The next photo, not a sole in sight. Now it shows a night shot and it is still bright-daylight up there right now. It's as if we're getting yesterday's pictures, today. Anyone care to enlighten me? I don't THINK I'm an idiot, but it's possible. What am I missing?

The camera has been having some issues I guess that
is what you are catching.

Hope Todd or someone from the support team can give you
a better explanation.

Ac4400cwgevo

The night shot is now gone, but the others still up are from another time....the parking lot is suddenly empty and the 200+ people out there have all vanished. I'm sure Todd & Co. is on top of it.

YEAH,
Same problem here. Kept telling my little guy that there would be a big steam loco to view and he was all excited until it got dark in the cam. What's up with that Todd???
jd

Todd sent this to the other thread.......

My feeling is the camera problem did not capture its arrival. The camera is motion activated. It cannot tell the difference between a train and people awaiting its arrival.

You will notice a whole tons of trains as we had some communication issues today with our webcams. The system has been transmitting about 300mb of trains so yesterday's images will be mixed in with today's.

Todd

Did this not happen awhile ago when another Special beauty was to come thru??
jd

Inquiring minds want to know.....Did the UP 3985 go past the webcam and miss being photographed account of the webcam's problems?

jdmero Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Did this not happen awhile ago when another
> Special beauty was to come thru??
> jd

Yep, sure did. The same thing that allows the cam to capture trains, also causes it to capture large groups of foam producers. There's a certain amount of "down time" between photos, I'm thinking to keep from wasting bandwidth on the same train when it's in the station. So, if there weren't a whole group of foamers waiting for it at the depot, we likely would have seen it on the cam. Instead, all we'll see if the evidence of its impending arrival (large crowd at the station) and the evidence of its passage (lack of people at the station) some time later. That's just the way the system works.

DaveE

Check out the captures at 7:45 PM and 7:59 PM. Both contain the famous UP Steamer, but the stills show it mid train and tail end. I haven't run the videos yet to see if the locomotive is caught anywhere. It looks like the web cam server ( I don't know how that thing is set up) may be backed up a bit and still sending video. The train went by at 5 PM, but the videos are labeled almost 3 hours later.

Better'n nuthin'.

JIM

Don't ever expect these camera systems to capture special trains. As long as there is a lot of people around the system will be set off prematurely. It takes about 2 minutes to post compress a video clip, then another 5-10 to transmit it.

As far as malfunctions go if we lose communications the system will keep taking video clips. The clips will be transferred automatically when the lines return. Keep in mind the date and time displayed is the time the video arrived on the server, not the time it was captured. We have a new software upgrade that will fix this issue in the coming month. Maybe a little longer if I get bogged down with other projects.


Todd Clark
Trainorders.com

webmaster Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Don't ever expect these camera systems to capture
> special trains. As long as there is a lot of
> people around the system will be set off
> prematurely. It takes about 2 minutes to post
> compress a video clip, then another 5-10 to
> transmit it.
>
> As far as malfunctions go if we lose
> communications the system will keep taking video
> clips. The clips will be transferred automatically
> when the lines return. Keep in mind the date and
> time displayed is the time the video arrived on
> the server, not the time it was captured. We have
> a new software upgrade that will fix this issue in
> the coming month. Maybe a little longer if I get
> bogged down with other projects.
>
>
> Todd Clark


Todd,
I there not a way to tweak the sensors?? Not an expert on the video sensor setup you have but I do know alot of the motion sensors used for robotics, wafer chip manufacturing all have a sensitivity control.
jd
> Trainorders.com

> Todd,
> I there not a way to tweak the sensors?? Not an
> expert on the video sensor setup you have but I do
> know alot of the motion sensors used for robotics,
> wafer chip manufacturing all have a sensitivity
> control.
> jd

I'm sure the problem is that the sensors have a hard time differentiating between a steam locomotive and a typical railfan.

SP