The FBC construction webcam is located on top of the Kid’s Zone and is facing south with a wide enough angle to capture hopefully the entire project. The camera is an Olympus SP-350 Digital Camera placed inside a Pelco EH4718-1 environmentally controlled camera enclosure. The camera enclosure has a small fan and heater inside it to keep the front window free of fog. The AC adapter for the camera is also located within the Pelco enclosure.
The camera is controlled by Erdman Video System’s VM95 camera software running on an old Compaq Presario laptop computer with Windows XP housed inside a rainproof housing directly below the camera. The computer communicates with the camera via USB. Images are scheduled to be taken every 2 minutes and are automatically uploaded to the internet ftp server using the VM95 software.
This particular setup can not stream live video, it must be snapped as a photograph. This was a hard choice to make between streaming and still. The still photo was chosen for a few reasons with the main one being the expense to quality ratio being low. The picture quality is excellent, it is an 8mp photo. High-resolution webcams are still in their prime so the expense is a bit higher. The camera being used for this project is no longer made and can be obtained for relatively cheap. The software running the camera is also free. If this camera is a complete failure for the project a high-resolution streaming webcam would be the next step.
[...] About the Webcam [...]