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 thermostat which controls a fan to prevent overheating and a heater to prevent condensation. The dome is about 25 feet above ground level.
Material costs (in 2003) were approximately $2,400 and the installation and setup took around thirty man hours.

In 2010, several components on the camera motherboard failed and the unit was no longer able to pan by itself nor send its images to the server. A temporary workaround was quickly instituted for the images, but it was not possible to fix the panning function. Estimated repair costs were at 80-90% of a new camera. A funding drive was held, sufficient donations were received from the viewers, and in the spring of 2011 the camera itself was replaced with a slightly different model.

The camera does not require a computer except for the setup and administration. It has a built-in FTP client which uploads its images to the web site during daylight hours. The web server sends to the viewers (that's you) an average of 2 GB of pictures every day, and that number may increase five-fold during times such as the New Year's Day 2006 high-water event.

During daylight hours 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, that's a million and a half images per year! This camera is a popular Internet destination, and the image downloads to the viewers account for a tremendous amount of server bandwidth, well over a million images per month.

Images are not saved nor archived on the server and disappear forever when they are overwritten. In addition to being 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.

This camera complements the other webcams in Fortuna, including those that bring you images of Fortuna's events and festivals.

Send mail  if you have a question.

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