Long thread there - going to hit the magic #40 post soon...

A couple parrots:

Quite surreal lighting

now look at the same shot. they are having quite a storm!

I'm so glad they cleaned the cam for us...

close up shot

sorry :-( just saw my pic in the other thread.... busy at work hard to keep up with the threads

Denise - no problemo - we all dupe. Made a nice quadruple, tho!

How'z the pup?

Oscar is fine - has definitely won my heart, sleeps with me now. He still has bandages on his ears and socks on his feet to keep from scratching at his ears. He has taken over the cats. Soooooooooo cute!

off to work for me...looks like another beautiful day....I'll be back around 10:30 for my wogga wogga! have a good day all

here is blijke...where is everyone today?? the one day i am working from home, and our publishing engine is sllllowwwww today so i have time to peak whilst i am waiting for things to load...

Mysterious blue globe in the water.

Cynde, I've looking in every once in a while. It's a day off that I've spent moving snow and playing maid. The snow has been a pain, small storms not worth moving but after three of them this week the white stuff has built up.

On another note; I've been playing with a new project/hobby. I've been trying to build a timer/light for Jake and the web cams. The specification is a small box that runs on batteries and keeps accurate time and turns on a light (LED) every two minutes for a few seconds. I'm sure it would be nice if you actually knew when the cam was capturing. A future design could be waterproof and go by the reef cam.

I was going to keep this secret till it was build but I though I should verify the need and also get a little push. I have the Alligator mouth/ Hummingbird a** syndrone, I great at starting projects not as good at finishing them.

Note: the following is a engineering discussion and could increase the reader's geek factor.

The orginal design was to use a digital watch and tap into the LCD display to get at the 10's of second digit. I got a cheap watch and tore it apart while it was running, I measured at the outputs and could not measure any change over time. On to a new design. I'm presently looking to build an accurate (triggered from a quartz crystal) time base (probably 60 Hz) and then divided down to one signal every two minutes. The watch idea was nice because the watch could be set, with the time base I need a reset button to reset the time.

Thoughts or comments.

cecil, sounds good. thougths or comments on the timer for the cams or your geek factor? no comment on the latter, but the former would be great...so as to know when to pose, and turn my best side forward so i can look as svelt as possible for the world!

duck...

I'm shocked that Picasso didn't get posted! I was busy wheezing and sneezing and didn't get in here to do it. Cynde's right - people were busy doing other stuff (imagine that!) today...



Here's a shot of Blikje (I think) letting herself out for a walk:

Hey - it's 5:00+ and a Friday on the righthand coast! Let the festivities begin! Cynde - you can join in - you're HOME!

god bless you rusty! great post of picasso

And that Italian fish up there was for you - I know you dive with the little biters!

Time for some sunset atmosphere:

rusty, at this point, i am so frustrated with the sluggishness of our publishing engine, i am ready to tip a glass...maybe i can manage to pull the stopper off the bottle :-)

I with you guys, already had some BV. Still waiting for the best sunset, the storm (on the North Cam) to the right looks promising.

Never really developed, here's one from earlier.

very nice cecil...i have missed your sunsets

grendel's sneaking out (if you can sneak at her size )

oops, forgot the pic...

oops, looks like grendel got caught!

get into the car quitely ms. richter...

ok, now i am getting worried...is grendel ok?

I can not believe it. For once I get chance to play on a PC after work hours but I missed everyone. Wogga Wogga Friday contines

love ya all. Too much wogga, maybe!!!!!



Good nite all from the UK. I mean its only 2.30am
where are you all!!!!!!!! Most unhappy, going on a drunken rampage now!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Some one must be out there, for heaven sake were addicts arn't we. or isit just me.

Good nite

xxxx

chris...too funny...glad you had a nice wogga wogga friday night only 7:00PM here on the left coast of the USA....

Hey...TGIF...on my 2nd Wogga Wogga...did Grendle ever get in...? now I have to worry about more than my daughters getting home...Thanks for todays captures, to all who contributed...This is a wonderful way to relax after a long LONG day at the hospital....

Cecil:
When someone speaks of timers I always think of the old 555 IC timer that every electronics experimenter has used. If my memory serves me right it has an external trigger that could come from the 60 hz line freq. I don't know how stable Bonaire's freq. is but if the cam Jake uses is 24 vac powered you could get your time base right from it. On second though I'm thinking it is a 12 volt bullet camera but I can't remember. A 555 in it's self is very stable without an external trigger.
marty

Marty 555's are dependant on an external resistor/capacitor combination to set the delay. It makes for a very simple circuit but would not be nearly accurate enough and would drift with temperature, humidity and time. I will use a 555 for the 10 second turn-on delay.

Marty & Cecil,

The cams are 12V DC. Sorry :-)

For time synchronization, we currently use the Network Time Protocol (NTP) to synchronize the captures on the WebCams (see http://www.eecis.udel.edu/~ntp/ ), and could get an ethernet cable run over to where the camera is (or, if you could build a small network device which can send a trigger to the timer, that would work too - smaller wire that way :-) ). We had been thinking about this problem too, and it seems that having an LED which would starting blinking some number of seconds before the capture, more and more rapidly, and then go solid during a 10 second or so time window during which the capture occurred, would do the trick - designing something like this would be another trick entirely :-) ).

Meryl - Grendel was a surprisingly good puppy - she stayed inside the wall (with most of her body anyhow).

Jake

Jake, I was trying to avoid a another cable from the computer. I assumed you have a video cable from the cameras to the computer. This would be cake with the capture computer, then it's only software (I do love that line, but that's another story). Use the joy stick fire button to send the signal to the LED.

I thought of the blicking light also and did start designing a circuit to do that, it would be an addition circuit adding a long saw tooth with a sine wave to get the increasing blick rate. I later decided that was silly and just turn the light on a couple seconds before the capture and off a few seconds later. Once the people sychronize with the captures they'll figure it out.

I mentioned battery power but batteries are a problem on Bonaire. I can substitute a power supply and a low voltage extension cord. The underwater version would need batteries.

Cecil:

Since I am trying to get caught up at the office before I head to Bonaire on Wednesday I have had little time to design or research a circuit for your project. Check this IC application page and see if it will work. http://www.powerdesigners.com/InfoWeb/design_center/Appnotes_Archive/an9317.pdf

Hope this is of some help. Good luck.
Marty

has anyone thought about wireless and solar????