Topic: webcam recommendations

[Shantelle_JJR]

Does anyone have a live webcam they stream to their website, that is attached near their weather station?
If so can anyone recommend me a good quality webcam and post a link such as if it can be bought from Amazon

I would like to have it shown on my website and also wunderground.

Thanks,
Shantelle

[kbellis]

I was wondering the same thing, and was surprised nobody has answered.

[Bushman]

What budget?  What features do you want? Etc.  Lots of OK cameras out there, depending....

[kbellis]

Thank you for your reply.

Satisfying the hosting service
Bandwidth and storage requirements are somewhere near the front end of an answer to your second question. For example, is there an industry standard, or best practices, for image delivery/ user upload to WU, etc.; e.g., file sizes and compression? What is a typical maximum file size that can sent? I read somewhere 150k; this maximum allowable seems small in 2018, though reasonable for 1998. Does anybody know when the 150k limit was first introduced policy/ rule?
 
And then the next question relates to how much compression can be chosen by the user, and how much more compression occurs without user control?

Is there an ideal document size for webcam image recipients like WU, for example 1080 x 720 px with a preferred compression method?


Satisfying the image provider
Maybe more to the point of your second question; 1) directly transfer images via WiFi to internet; 2) remotely control via WiFi all camera settings; 3) include ability to add text and data onto image, for example:

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uj_3EtuFWXc[/youtube]

[Bushman]

On WU cams?  Forget it.  Almost impossible to get on there even if they are still doing it.  I gave up long time ago trying to meet their requirements.  And 150Kb limit is insane anyways.  Probably introduced the limit when the Internet was 2400 baud.  LOL  Might as well use a paper pinhole camera. 

More answers:
1) Pretty much all of them do it.  I use DLink; Hikvision seems to be popular for weather folk.  You can spend as little as 50 bucks or $1000 (like my StarDot)
2) Again, many allow it via an app (Dlink) or if you know your way around a router, port forwarding will get you in.  Or cheat if your ISP is a douche, and run a VPN into a box on your network.  I do that with a Raspberry Pi and remote VPN.
3) Adding text etc is a bit more interesting.  My StarDot does it natively.  there are third party apps  like the ones from Nirsoft; some weather programs will do it; you can roll your own via ImageMagick.  Or if you use Smartbedded's Meteobridge and variants, it does it for you.

[kbellis]

What is the hosting service to be used if not WU?
What is the maximum document size, file size, and least lossy compression setting of the image upload?

[kbellis]

Do any of the webcams allow bulb ramping?

Before getting a consulting gig five years ago for a GPS manufacturer, I was doing some experiments that may be applicable to this thread:

 [ You are not allowed to view attachments ]

[kbellis]

Sorry the attachment didn't appear correctly. Here the PDF is again, hopefully

[Bushman]

What is the hosting service to be used if not WU?
What is the maximum document size, file size, and least lossy compression setting of the image upload?

I use my own website.  There are several picture aggregation services around though (google World webcams hosting etc.).  I load up the max camera image in JPG. 

[Bushman]

Bulb ramping?  Had to look that one up.    You mean image compensated timelapses.  Sebtec and IPTimelapse do it AFAIK.  Many cameras autocompensate but not the way you would want.  And AFAIK, unless you use a local server they won't compile a timelapse for you.  There are lots of posts on the forum about how to do this so I won't recreate the threads here.