SpruceCam Technical Details

SpruceCam was originally set up to check snow and security at the cabin over the winter. Now hits from all over the planet and many local property owners checking weather at Indian Mountain. This page is in response to frequent email asking for technical details on the solar web cam which has been providing images since 2005. The panels have been upgraded since this picture, the racks now hold four 80 watt panels and four 60 watt panels which is enough to run the cabin during summer and the cameras all winter. The cabin is completely off the grid and these panels run the entire household. Pumping water from the 350 foot well is the biggest use of energy.

The solar panels charge the bank of lead acid batteries. There are twelve 6 volt 220 amp batteries "Trojan 105". The inverter is a Heart Interface 2500 watt. This was selected because 240 vac is needed for the well pump and it matched the 24vdc battery bank.

Version 1, images from South Park. 800 Mhz desktop running Ubuntu and USB cameras. A lot of difficulty in keeping the computer stable for more than a couple of weeks. Power consumption was a problem with the CPU and cameras (with heaters) running 24 hours, drain on the photovoltaic solar system keeping charged during the very low sun angles of winter. The communications out is via dial up phone line, challenging for a location this remote. Version 2. The Axis 2120. Chosen because it has a serial port that supports US Robotics 56k external dial-up modem. Camera pictures are sent over dial-up to a local ISP. It doesn't matter if sending the image is slow, we just view the result.

This camera has a couple of nice features suitable for this application. It can be dialed into to change parameters like motion detection or scheduling, and it has a built in web server so no problematic external computer is used. The camera is on a timer that gives it a power-reset once a week in case of a glitch, the linux based camera has been very stable. The camera's logic flow goes like this: Snap an image at predetermined time (currently 45 minutes or upon motion), activate the modem, dial the local ISP, FTP the .jpg image to the spruce.net server and hang up until the next image. The web site then shows current images and a few from the past, like summer, winter, friends, some wandering deer, etc. Easy to manage from any internet connection. This system has been very stable and works well. Version 3, EVDO is here! Verizon broadband not stable for unattended operation. Requires lots of attention, and a directional yagi antenna pointed to Breckenridge. Gave it the best shot with two summers and a winter. Version 4. Thank you Qwest for DSL broadband. April '11. Qwest DSL is highly reliable. Provided DSL router has accessble port so camera can be managed from anywhere.

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