Seeing some fantastic time lapse links to people's view of incoming weather and sunsets and nighttime skies and so on, I once again turned to thinking about setting up something for this coming storm season.
I have one 'slight' problem; my home is on a slight hill, surrounded on all sides by older oak and maple trees, with 40 t0 60 foot heights. I have a nice ham radio tower, sturdy and well guyed Rohn RG-45. which goes up 80 feet. I can no longer climb it and never was too happy up there, but I have a couple contacts who have helped me with the placement of solar radiation sensors and wind monitors at the tree line and above.
Now with Power Over Ethernet rather than to have to run live power up the tower with all the potential dangers, I'm thinking of modifying a little side mount I have, and then putting something like a ReoLink PTZ that I recently got to be able to watch weather, and to do those things that others are enjoying.
One big problem is that my kitchen and other windows need to be washed at least a couple times a summer to get rid of the dust that sticks after a rain, and of course winter snows clog up the anemometers after a big heavy wet no-wind snow.
I'm not particularly worried about the snow but a dirty lens would be negating almost all the work and tower climber expense. I spoke with the chief engineer at the local TV station with a 1000' tower, and an IP camera at 350' with great views. He said early on, before I knew more about the planning, that the camera they used was POE, IP (which limited the height up the tower they could go) and has some sort of gizmo that shakes the camera to sort of make like a dog shaking or duck rousting it's feathers to throw off the moisture. I wasn't thinking to ask about how often then need to clean the lens. I guess on a nice day they could just send one of their guys up with a bottle of Windex and a rag to clean it (seems a few of them there love to climb).
Questions for the members here include: Has anyone mounted a camera up on a tower, and if so, what sort of thing did you use, like a triangular mount with the camera on top, below the mounting flange, etc.; has cleaning the lens been a problem; did you put the camera inside one of those domes; has the tower been struck by lightning (that you know of); plus if there were lessons learned, what did you learn which might be of value in my assessing this as a spring project to get wx pics? We have had some spectacular sunsets, only visible through the trees with and without leaves on them, enough so that if it looks like a nice evening, I load the dogs up in the car and drive out to a field with great westerly views to try to enjoy the beauty.
I'm hoping that something is encouraging enough to go for it, realizing having a camera on a tower higher than I can or could climb is like having a rain gauge on a steep roof or an anemometer out of reach for any needed maintenance.
How often do people with weather cams clean their (accessible) lenses as they have had them up for awhile?
Dale