I've made a few changes to the scripts for the video players to try and
resolve a couple of issues at RDRC.tv . Among other things, you will now
notice that the players "auto-start".

Dave

Dave,I'm not sure who all to thank what's been done with the video and
weather station, but it really looks great. I have to believe it's one of
the best arrangements in AMA. Thanks for all your work and others that
contributed.
Bill Zinno

--
Bill Zinno
919-556-8725
wcz1...@gmail.com

 
I second that emotion....! Great job.
 
(Remember to wave at the cameras, everybody...)

--- On Fri, 10/16/09, Bill Zinno <wcz1...@gmail.com> wrote:

From: Bill Zinno <wcz1...@gmail.com>
Subject: [RDRC] Re: RDRC TV
To: rdrc@googlegroups.com
Date: Friday, October 16, 2009, 8:29 AM

Dave,
I'm not sure who all to thank what's been done with the video and weather station, but it really looks great. I have to believe it's one of the best arrangements in AMA. Thanks for all your work and others that contributed.
Bill Zinno

I've made a few changes to the scripts for the video players to try and
resolve a couple of issues at RDRC.tv . Among other things, you will now
notice that the players "auto-start".

Dave

--
Bill Zinno
919-556-8725
wcz1...@gmail.com

At 08:29 AM 10/16/2009 -0400, you wrote:

Hi Bill,

There have been several contributors of hardware, ideas, and legwork from
club members. We set out with a budget of $0, and have stayed pretty close
to that so far for hardware purchases. Chris originally had the idea of live
video when I was thinking of just doing 1-minute snapshot uploads from
webcams...I didn't think it possible, but it has really come a long ways
(and has been one heck of an education, hehehehe). It's still moving
forward, as we have some cams that should be MUCH better than what we have
running now, are making more improvements to the weather data, will have
wireless in-flight cams broadcasting, a remote pan-n-tilt cam, etc.

It's a fun thing, and just helps the membership enjoy the club a little more
when they can't be at the field. I was watching Blair fly his giant Curtis
Jenny this afternoon, while working at the shop. Neat stuff!

Dave

Dave Hockaday WB4IUY
aka "Tweek", VROC #940
AMA 119484, IMAA 31979

RC: www.RD-RC.org - www.FlyForTots.com - www.EastRC.org -
www.ipass.net/wb4iuy/rc.html
Motorcycle: www.ScootWorks.com - www.ipass.net/wb4iuy/index1.html
Ham Radio: www.TEARA.org - www.ipass.net/wb4iuy/radio.html -
www.eQSL.cc/Member.cfm?WB4IUY
Personal: www.2Vulcans.net

I'm working on improving video quality. I've been tinkering with lots
of software changes and such... You'll notice the two "Roving Event
Cam" players I've installed. These are for the cams that I'll use for
portable operation and such. You'll probably be looking inside my home
shop for several days while I figure out some of the bugs, then
they'll go dark until they're running at other flyins or at the field
in odd temporary locations. I'm using them to test the video quality
issues for now...

Dave

OK... I'm running the camera broadcasts from the field on Adobe FME
only, now. Not repeating the video stream from the FME streaming
server, back through the Ustream broadcast console, and then back to
Ustream saved a bit of overhead and eliminated (I hope) some of the
burps that knock things offline from time to time. It also saved some
more processor overhead by not having three browser-based broadcast
consoles open in the background on each computer. FME also gives quite
a bit of adjustability on stream parameters over the standard Ustream
console.

The framerate is now somewhat higher, and you can see this if you open
one cam at the time (single cams, or maybe the 3 flightline cams on
one page as opposed to opening all cams on one page)  and look at the
update rate (screen flicker).

I noticed, depending on the computer I viewed the cams on, some
computers could display more cams than others. You can open the task
manager on your computer in windows and look at the CPU usage in the
task bar at the bottom of the task manager. Some computers can run all
cams and still not be at 100% load, while one of the laptops I tested
could only run 3 cams without hitting 100%. This was the reason I
wrote the page at rdrc.tv to allow you to select 1 or as many cams as
your computer can handle.

One other thing that is a by-product of the software updates, is much
improved video quality, and it's really obvious on the southeast
flight line cam and the black/white south pits cam.

These software changes over the last few days was in preparation for
installation of the new high-resolution cameras. Oh well, more coming,
I'll post as I make more progress with the new cameras.

Dave

Wow... now that the sun is shining, there are people (lot of!) at the
field. I was just looking at the webcams and can now see that the
motion in the cams is much smoother, so it looks like the software
upgrades this weekend were a help.

Dave

Substantially smoother video...very nice, Dave!  Although, now it makes me even more jealous of the lucky folks who are enjoying a fine afternoon of flying.

_________________________________________________________________
Windows 7: Unclutter your desktop.
http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=9690331&ocid=PID24727::T:WLMTAGL:ON:W...

The main flightline cams are down at the moment while undergoing a bit
of work. They will return to operation shortly.

Dave

I've had a couple of requests to install the weather dials on the
flightline cam pages, so they can be seen while watching the video,
without having to jump back and forth between pages. I made a change
tonight to work with this idea. I may try to streamline those dials a
little to save page space, but it's up and running now.

Next, Chris has built a new computer to handle the flightline cams
better. We're in the process of getting all of the broadcast software
loaded (we're now running Adobe FME to handle all camera broadcasts)
and everything back up and running. Hopefully, it will be back online
in another day or so.

Thanks for the feedback from everyone about performance and layout.
Upward and onward!

Dave

I installed the new computer that Chris built at the site this morning
about 7:30am or so. We configured remotely and it ran all day without
any issues that we could detect. The video throughput looks even
better than before, so it was a definite improvement in the camera
broadcast speeds/quality. All cams are now back online and
operational.

We're now working on the new cams, and getting them installed to
improve video quality. Stand by for more progress :-)...

Dave L, once I get these new cams in operation and get those tasks out
of the way, I'd like to get the remote pan-n-tilt cam and begin
working on that idea.

Dave

Wow...looks like the wind flags Jim made at each flight station are
now missing their ribbons. A few days of 25-30mph winds was hard on
them!

Dave

Wow...interesting I was wondering how long they would last with constant
weather exposure. They will be replaced tomorrow

Jim
jcharbonn...@nc.rr.com  

On Nov 14, 10:56 pm, "Jim" <jcharbonn...@nc.rr.com> wrote:

They held up really good, until these few days of continuous 25+ mph
winds. I haven't seen the windsock yet, I wonder how it did. I could
see it's shadow in one of the cams ysterday, and it looked to at least
still be on the pole.

Dave

A new cam was installed under the shelter on monday eve, replacing the
semi-sick unit that was looking north into the pit area. The colors
and clarity seem to be much better.

The next cam to change will be the old B&W unit looking south through
the pits. It'll be a good test for the cams that Ken Wade donated to
the system.

The new computer that Chris built is running very efficiently, and
hosting the 3 flightline cams. Our overall power usage for the entire
system is now down to around 300 watts, from over 2000 watts when we
were running the blade server. Boy, we have learned a lot and come a
long ways with this experiment!

Dave

Nice!  What are the specs of the current system (cpu, ram, os)?  I remember you speaking of how the cameras really sucked up the processing cycles before.

Jeff

_________________________________________________________________
Hotmail: Trusted email with Microsoft's powerful SPAM protection.
http://clk.atdmt.com/GBL/go/177141664/direct/01/
http://clk.atdmt.com/GBL/go/177141664/direct/01/

you speaking of how the cameras really sucked up the processing cycles before.

Hi Jeff,

Part of the problem was the applications we were running. For every cam that
was broadcasted, we had a registered Ustream channel. We would open up a
particular channel...like the East-facing flightline cam. It would transmit
the stream to Ustream, that was flected back to a browser window where the
Ustream broadcast console controlled the feed, then back to Ustream. This
happened for every cam. Lots of packets sent back and forth, both consuming
internet bandwidth and PC overhead while running all this stuff. Now, we run
Adobe FME and transmit directly to our Ustream channel. Much better
resolution, and we're able to run 15+ fps without nearly the load that the
old system presented while running only 5 fps. FME also allows us to set
limits on the bitrate, to better manage the bandwidth that is there. Out
bitrate cap on each cam is 100k, but the average bitrate is under 50k!
Literally, one cam could run on dialup.

Now, we're running 2 light-duty PCs running 2.6 ghz processors, 2 gig ram
each, and it all sits on XPpro sp3. The processor load while running 5 cams,
the weather station, firewall, and some remote connection software is only
about 70% per box. They're both running small light-duty power supplies, and
they're not even warm. All is sitting on a cheapie UPS to cover for power
failures.

Early on, we'd have done well to run two cams with 100% processor loading on
each box, fans running, and still only have a 5fps feed with at least 20
seconds of lag in the stream.

Dave

Dave Hockaday WB4IUY
aka "Tweek", VROC #940
AMA 119484, IMAA 31979

RC: www.RD-RC.org - www.FlyForTots.com - www.EastRC.org - www.RDRC.TV
Personal Site: www.2Vulcans.net
Ham Radio: www.TEARA.org - www.ipass.net/wb4iuy/radio.html -
www.eQSL.cc/Member.cfm?WB4IUY
Motorcycle Parts: www.ScootWorks.com

Here's a few statistics from the cams at the field. Since going online
with the first cam and pittiful video on August 19th, the main cam has
been watched by 8,407 viewers...and 5,253 of them were unique viewers.
The other cams have been watched by thousands of people as well,
though the number of viewers has varied from cam to cam.

The audio channel that was started about 2 weeks ago to broadcast the
R/C Flyers net from ham radio has already been listened to by 948
people, 654 of them were unique listeners.

When viewing a cam, you can move your mouse pointer over the area that
says "2 Viewers" or some such, and a little dialog box will popup.
It'll show you how many people are watching at that moment, and how
many have viewed since the broadcast was started. I'm constantly
stopping the broadcast to make an adjustment, and that resets the
total. For instance, I restarted the East flightline cam last friday
morning when I installed the new computer that Chris built, and there
have been 649 people to view it since then. I restarted the Southeast
flightline cam today after making a minor adjustment, and there have
been 65 viewers since then.

Not that any of this means much inthe scheme of things, but I thought
some of you might find it interesting.

Dave

I'll take the cam you swopped out back if that is ok Dave.. it was the one
from my setup at work I think .. the Intel one.

Thanks
Dave L

At 11:28 PM 11/17/2009 -0500, you wrote:

The one I swapped out for an old one that Chris had, and it's kinda sick,
hehehehe. We're still running the Intel cam, it's the Southeast Flightline
cam, and it's working pretty good :-)

Dave

Ahhh okidokie, no prob mate

Dave L

I've made another change to the software on the Southeast Flightline
Cam to improve clarity. It "seems" better, but time will tell.

I'm working on a color cam now, to replace the South Pit Area cam
(currently black & white). It's using an old, and I mean OLD, X-10
security cam at the moment. It works, but that's about all I can say
for it.

Dave