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over 40 gigabytes of imagery
The
3 shots above show dark water flowing out of the intercoastal area
through the inlet. The exceptionally dark color is due
partly
to runoff from all the rain, and partly due to the naturally dark
colored water from the Everglades.
please feel free to submit your own 'best of' images and we'll add
them to this page...send them to
EVS
Web
Page Statistics
* Note that
'Total Visitors' includes multiple visits by the same person
May 23
2007: Weather-Loop
Video added to Web Page. This is an experimental flash
application that buffers the last 20 images received from the video
camera, and plays them back in a time lapse manner (similar to a
weather loop). The sequence of images is 'played' every time a
new image comes in. A new video image is uploaded every 2-5
seconds, so you should see about 2 minutes of action. Since the
video camera is inside the same housing that the digital camera is in,
you will often see the camera 'move' around, at various zoom values.
For example, when the movie of the end of the jetty is made, the video
camera is zoomed in all the way. If a digital shot is done next,
the camera housing will be repositioned for the digital camera, and
the video camera may remained zoomed in all the way, so all you may
see are waves in the middle of the ocean. We are working on
modifying its sequence of shots so that when its moving about, the
video camera is zoomed out. NOT
WORKING?? If the image has not updated in the
last minute, try refreshing your browser
(F5), and if it still doesn't update, it means for some reason, new
images are not being uploaded form the camera station....could be
maintenance, or a bug in the program, which should fix itself within
the hour ( a watchdog circuit will reboot the system).
April
18, 2007: A new Rainwise MKIII Weather station was installed to
replace the old Davis Monitor II station. That old Davis system has
been up there since the system was first installed in 2002...time
to go!
Feb
4, 2004: New weather data software was installed that gives much
more complete weather data and statistics. Updates now occur
every 5 minutes. Weather trends and forecasts are also provided,
along with past highs and lows.
Oct 6 2003: A new camera and pan/tilt unit has been installed
and the results are excellent. The 5 mega-pixel Olympus C-5050
digital camera takes some of the highest resolution shots on the internet.
A polarizer has been attached to the lens, and the saturation levels
have been increased to provide beautiful images that show almost glare
free colors, allowing one to see the near shore turbidity and the
colored (typically brownish) waters that comes out from the inter-coastal
areas. The camera has been mounted on its side, that is, rotated 90
degrees from the normal position, so the images are taller than they
are wide. This picture shows the
inside of the camera housing. Next to the digital camera is
the Sony block video camera. It has excellent low light capabilities
and an 18x optical zoom.
Aug 21 2003: A new system has been installed to replace the
one damaged by the tornado on Aug 10. This new system has both a digital
camera for beautiful hi resolution shots (an Olympus C-700 with polarizer)
and a Sony Block Video camera that features low light and extended
zoom capabilities. The digital camera is programmed to take
hourly shots during the day of both zoomed and wide angle views, stitch
them together into one high resolution image, and upload them with
a thumbnail to the Internet. The video camera takes more
frequent images of both a wide view and a zoomed view on Jupiter Inlet.
For more information about this system, please visit
Erdman Video Systems.
July 30 2003: Up until July 2003, the camera system watching
Jupiter Inlet had been using a digital camera (Kodak DC4800),
and was taking images about every 30 minutes. The quality of
the images was excellent thanks to the 3 megapixel sensor of the
digital camera. The weakness of the system is that the digital
camera has a limit life time in terms of the number of pictures it
can take (this is due to the mechanical shutter, something video cameras
do not have). We thus limited the system to updates
every 30 minutes in order to extend the camera life time to about
2 years. The original camera failed in June 2003. At the
time
we were discussing fixing the camera, the people at Jupiter Inlet
District (who pay for the camera and its maintenance) decided
to upgrade to a video camera and DSL in order to get better zoom capabilities,
much more frequent updates to the web pages
and the possibility of 'taking control' of the camera during emergency
and security monitoring situations. A high quality Sony
video camera has been installed, and it is capable of taking an unlimited
number of shots, the practical limit being the archiving
and uploading of the images. The Sony camera also features an
18x optical zoom (compared to 3x for the Kodak camera)
and low light capabilities. Although the quality is good compared
to many video cameras, compared to the digital camera, it is
not nearly as good.
The benefits of the new video based system is much faster updates
to the Jupiter Inlet Web Page, and better zoom on the jetty
where conditions can get hazardous. We currently update the
zoomed in Inlet shots every 3-6 minutes from 6:30 am to 8:00
pm, and the wide panoramic view is updated every 10-15 minutes.
The past few days of images are kept online in the form
of a slide show so one can view all the recent shots taken.
Unfortunately, there were some conflicts with the digital camera,
and we have temporarily stopped taking and uploading the
digital images. We are actively sorting out these new conflicts
and plan on bringing back the digital camera in the next few
months. When this happens, we will have to decide how often
to take the digital shots, and how often to take the video shots.
The digital shots take a few minutes each to process and upload to
the internet. If we were to take digital shots every 30
minutes of the panoramic view, this would cut down on the number of
video shots we can take by about 20%. If we did the
digital shots every 2-3 hours, the number of 'missed' video shots
would be a lot less. If you have opinions about how often the
video shots should be refreshed, please send us an email. The
camera system is a service for the northern Palm Beach County
area so we will listen to your needs, requests, and comments. |
