We wish to thank a bunch of people and businesses for bringing us these exiting views from this camera. A project such as this requires assistance from many entities, and they certainly came through. There are several major donors in this project:
 
  • The Fortuna Chamber of Commerce for funding the camera.
  • Fortuna River Lodge for allowing us to install the camera on their roof.
  • The City of Fortuna and the Fortuna Public Works Department for making available the workers (thanks Eric, Aaron and Neale) and the tools to install the camera mast and dome and run hundreds of feet of electrical and network cables. We rely on Neale and his boom truck (that's him in the picture further down this page) for the dome maintenance and making sure you have a clean window to look through.
  • RWS Services for their valued assistance and expertise (and their bottomless parts box) in the installation.
  • Springville Networks for the initial design and site plan, and for the coordination between the network and the web sites.




The Technical Stuff

The River Lodge web camera is a Sony SNC-RZ30N pan-tilt-zoom model, mounted inside a weatherproof dome along with a fan and heater to prevent condensation. The dome is is 25 feet above ground level.
Material costs (in 2003) were approximately $2,400 and the installation and setup took around thirty man hours.
The camera has a built-in ftp client and web server networked to a dedicated DSL line with 235Kbits of upstream bandwidth. It is capable of sending multiple video streams. The DSL line is bridged with Sonic.net in Santa Rosa. They've been the cam's ISP for the last three years and it has NEVER encountered a problem - if you use DSL, use Sonic.net as your ISP, it's a local bridged connection, does not use PPPoE.

The cam is located at the end of the local telephone company's DSL service area and it is not possible to upgrade the speed until they do. Because of the limited bandwidth, the streaming video server is occasionally unavailable during periods of extreme use. That last occurred during the New Year's Day 2006 high-water event when the video demands saturated the connection. The camera experienced difficulty uploading the static images and the streaming server had to be placed out of service until demands decreased.

Neale steadying the mast while Eric tightens the mountingsThe camera has interactive video and pan-tilt-zoom capabilities. During daylight hours, unless it is interrupted by someone wishing to control it, the camera is on a pre-programmed tour, moving to a different view every twenty seconds and uploading a new picture to the web server every ten seconds. Each new image overwrites the older one and your browser's web page automatically fetches it, replacing the image that's on your monitor. The camera sends around thirty thousand images to the server every week (1.5 million a year!). Images are not archived on the server.

The Lodge Cam's location allows it to showcase some awesome images of the Eel River and its upper delta. Its pictures are also a very popular destination during periods of high water. This camera also shows scenes and live battlefield action throughout the entire Fortuna Civil War Days event held behind the River Lodge in September.

The Lodge Cam, installed in July of 2003, complements the Event Camera, used to bring you images of Fortuna's events and festivals.

Send mail if you have a question.

Camera FAQ
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