“Cabin Cam”

Site Address: http://www.edlsite.com/
Note: If you have previously bookmarked a different site for the Cabin Cam, please update your bookmark to this new address, in order to get all the new features and future updates to the Cabin Cam site.

Although we list the “Cabin Cam” here as a Southwest Shore activity, the Cabin Cam is actually a project solely owned and operated by Southwest Shore cabin owner Ed Leonhardt (Cabin 39). Perched high above the lake, Cabin 39 has a bird’s eye view of the lake and surrounding forest just east of Keystone Point. In addition to a current snapshot views of the area, the Cabin Cam page provides extensive climate information about the Southwest Shore. Our Southwest Shore families and friends frequently visit the Cabin Cam site to check on weather conditions at the SWS before heading up the hill for a visit to their cabins. We are all grateful to Ed Leonhardt for his dedication in providing and maintaining the Cabin Cam over the past many years since 2004!

New System Installed — March 2019

After 15 years of Cabin Cam operation, Ed decided that his original, and now antiquated, PC system and related software had finally reached its limit. It was time for a whole new Cabin Cam setup. For all you tech geeks (like me!), here is Ed’s own description of the new Cabin Cam system and its installation. Enjoy!

It was a matter of time for the PC (with an annoying fan) running Windows XP and the Ambient software plus 8 other pieces of freeware cobbled together software packages to finally succumb to computer rot (15+ years was a good run). Running Unix harkens back to the 60’s, but it is more maintained than Windows XP at this point. It is also a lot easier to script and manage. The setup is all different too, the cams now send the images straight to the webserver versus being batched up on the PC in the cabin. This way if the RaspberryPi croaks, each of the cameras can keep sending away.

Got up there on March 22nd and installed the new RaspberryPi inside the cabin in place of the dead Windows PC. If you recall I was looking for some help the weekend before but the blizzard in Denver plus the grounding of the MAX planes shuffled my itinerary. The drive up was beautiful going the backway. Rolling up to the cabin I was greeted with a flagman that was holding traffic. Looks like they were working on that vertical stack of rock just ahead of Keystone Point road on the north side that folks would rope climb now and again (spray paint on one side). They looked to be clearing loose boulders. Anyhow, the flagman let me park with maintenance folks on the side and I got down to the cabin.

Now we get data updates every 30 minutes and Cam1 updates every half hour too. Adjusted the website scripting to now have the gif movies be built completely from images so no more morphing between them. The WeeWx software barometer data reads a 30.xxx nominal value where the old software would read a 23.xxx value and still watching how far the swing is (needs to be within 0 to 100 to make sense). Also different is the wind direction indication where it will read N/A when there is no wind which does makes sense but seems odd initially. Will have Cam2 update every half hour after I get sense of cellular date plan usage but at this point that does not look to be an issue.