www.cabincam.net

Welcome to CabinCam!

On this page, underlined text links you to another page on the website.

Christmas 2000
Photo taken 12/24/2000 by Scott Davis Kodak DC 120

The picture at the top of this page, shows what the Dome looked like on Christmas Eve 2000. The Web Cams update every few minutes all the time. We are constantly adjusting them based upon how interested I am in what I see on them. At night, they may only update every 30 minutes, and if I see someone on camera, I may change them to every 30 seconds or so. I can adjust them from any internet connection in the world! They currently reset at midnight each night. They are VERY reliable and have an uptime ratio greater than 99.9%. We have made many changes since our first webcam's 320x240 images in 1999. Currently we are thrilled with the equipment we are using, are currently uploading at only 60% jpg image quality as determined by our chosen level of compression. Because of the broad band DSL connection, we can upload both at 1280x960. (New in July 2006), but have to give consideration to our visitors to the website.

We have a high pressure sodium spotlight, and a high wattage fluorescent lamp on a photoelectric switch to illuminate the snow stake and surrounding area during the winter months. We use the photoelectric light to take over in case the high pressure sodium light fails. The sodium light usually keeps the florescent on off because of the photoelectric sensor. Sometimes snow covers it and they both illuminate. We also use timers to control the lights in case the snow would make the photocells believe it was nighttime all the time. This helps to keep the costs down to the electric company. We typically do not illuminate Netcam2, but it is on 24x7 to keep it warm/cool in the case. It may not be updating 24x7, but I am able to see through it's lens anyway. The eight foot tall snowstake is repainted each year and returned to the area in late summer. It has a new color scheme this year. The temperature, humidity and barometric pressure are displayed all the time on both cameras. NetCam1 has an automatic iris on the lens, so the pictures are surprisingly good - even at night. This camera is amazing with this lens, but the lens alone is a $569 option. NetCam2 is a manual varifocus lens. It takes excellent daylight pictures. It has a wider field of view, than the auto lens on Netcam1. It is variable and can even telephoto, but I leave it set to wide angle. I also close the iris down to it's smallest F-stop to protect the imaging chip. Netcam1 is able to be zoomed over the internet. I currently am not allowing net viewers to do this, but you may see me moving it from time to time.

In September 2005 we took a direct lightning hit to the control cable running between the cabin and the camera. I did not realize this and headed north to get the camera back online in the later part of October 2005. This trip turned out to be unproductive and to make it worse, I had the entire family with me. We knew the modem had been hit, so I called STARDOT Friday morning and they shipped us a new modem UPS Next Day Air Saturday delivery. We could not receive Saturday delivery in the Eastern UP, so we awoke early Saturday morning and drove 2 hours south down to Mamma Leona's in Gaylord to get it. After having breakfast and another two hours back north, I got back to the cabin and installed the new modem and still no luck! Needless to day, besides wasting a weekend, lots of diesel fuel and a ton of money on parts and shipping, I was pretty bummed out. My family saw the tears I was holding back from absolute frustration and they were so wonderful. Ages 1,3,8,10 and 14 and not a single "are we there yet" all weekend. Upon returning home to West Liberty, Ohio, I shared our concerns with our web visitors. We asked for small donations and within a couple of weeks were able to replace the NetCam MP Web cam. Some people even sent us funds for fuel. One family from Indiana was especially generous and I can not thank them enough. I had the opportunity to thank them in person in July 2006. I was thrilled that our little web page was cherished enough that folks would send funds to help get the camera back online. I had a good month at the store in November, so in late November I added the necessary funds to purchase an automatic lens that allows the camera to take very good pictures at night. Below are pictures and some tidbits about our setup. It is not a cheap setup with total costs running over $2,000.00, but it is in my opinion the only way to go when you are 500 miles away and want to be able to control the camera remotely.

This is how the camera and lens looked as they arrived from the manufacturer. I was most impressed with the custom packaging. The lens is already mounted, greatly simplifying the focusing process. We did not use the 25 foot control cable and 12 volt adapter packaged at the top while up at the cabin, but do use it for bench testing.

I purchased this PELCO heated enclosure off of eBay for about $80.00 brand new. It is the perfect size for this camera and lens combination. The silver plates to the sides of the lens will keep the front view glass and lens clear of fog and ice. We also treat the view glass with RainX on both sides annually. The back of the enclosure has the blower to keep it cool in the summer. We feed the heater and blower with 110 volts AC from the cabin on a long extension cord. If we loose commercial power at the cabin the camera looses heat and lights. In this picture, the camera and lens are not moved to their final position yet (more to the left). The enclosure is sealed and vented for outdoor all weather usage.

In this picture you can better see the resistors that heat the lens and front view glass. This automatic lens allows automatic iris control and I can even zoom it 6x via the internet. I can do this from my cell phone anywhere I have cell coverage! We did not insulate the enclosure as the temperature inside the enclosure seems to stay about 75F warmer than the winter air temperature. Both heat and blower are thermostatically controlled via PELCO's onboard electronics.

The enclosure is sealed and this picture shows the cables coming through the bottom of it. We have a filter in the vent to keep summer bugs out of the enclosure. The rubber grommets and plastic nuts tighten down on the control cables. The gray CAT5e cable controls the camera and brings it 18 volts from the cabin. The 18 volts is needed because of the voltage drop over the 200 foot length of the cable. The camera requires 12 volts. We have the 18 volts on a APC UPS Battery backup/Surge protector. The black cable is the 110 volts for the heating/cooling of the enclosure. The white cable is the 3 foot cable connecting to the outside sensor for temperature and humidity that you see in the second line at the top of the CabinCam image found at http://www.cabincam.net/netcam.jpg

This picture shows the camera and control cables in their final position. I glue or lock tight all connections as the fan will induce some vibration into the camera. (I have learned this from past experience) The labels remind me not to use the 18 volt AC adapter with a 25 foot cable. The RS-232 adapter at the bottom of the picture allows us to bring both camera control and power through the same CAT5e cable from the cabin to the camera. The electronics that mate the camera to the automatic lens are in the small white box on top of the camera. It is velcro'd in place. The RS-232 cable labeled "WX" is the three foot cable connecting the camera to the outside weather sensors. The bronze colored tray under the camera allows some adjustment in mounting heighth and positions it fore and aft. The black border around the PELCO enclosure is the rubber gasket that keeps the weather out. It is a top notch enclosure and is extremely well built.

This picture shows how we setup the camera our first night of bench testing outside my computer store in Bellefontaine, Ohio. It later was put closer to the road and received brake light reactions as some drivers felt we were taking more than their pictures! I should have set our RADAR gun next to it for the full effect! We left it outside in 20 degree F weather to test it under real world conditions. The bogen Tripod has a fluid pan tilt head and the camera was nearly perfectly balanced using the existing 1/4-20 mounting hole. Unfortunately this will not be strong enough for the CabinCam location with the heavy snows we expect to pile up on the enclosure.

This was during the attaching of the larger mount on the bottom of the enclosure up at the Cabin location. It was during these few minutes that some of our website visitors sent me emails making sure I knew the image was upside-down! They were from Michigan of course! We thanked them anyway . . .

Finally we are on top of the 12 foot treated 4x4 that sits 4 feet in the ground. It gains us 8 feet of height and is stable enough that we can set a ladder against it. I usually use my "little giant" as a step ladder so as not to shake things up too much though. Under the snow shelf is the sensor for the temperature and humidity. We also are able to tell the temperature inside the case of the camera and display that under the Netcam temp reading shown on the second row from the bottom of each image. The light is a high pressure sodium type. It is cheaper to operate than other types of spotlights and is very reliable (original bulb) but it does cause us to have a yellow cast to our pictures. We also have a 175 watt florescent light closer to the snow stake just out of view to the left of the image. It is what causes our shadows to come from the left.

This is a front view of the camera in the enclosure. The gray box at the bottom is where we bring all the extension cords together and keep everything water tight.

The Original (non heated) enclosure and halogen spotlight

Picture showing relative positions of the snow stake and camera pole. The banner went up after OSU won the Fiesta bowl. (Yes we are from Ohio) Notice how large of an area we illuminated with the old lights.

This is Netcam2's position outside out cabin

(Click on picture above to see live image)

We put it in the shade to see how different it's temp reads from Netcam1's

(It is tilted forward and pointed South to prevent the sun from hitting it directly)

A view showing NetCam2's relationship to our cabin

(It would be off to the left of the view from Netcam1)

If you happen to be checking out CabinCam and see something interesting, just save the shot (right click, save) and email it to me. If you just send me the link, I will see the updated (10 minutes) picture and not what you saw!

We were the original "CabinCam" in the UP of Michigan, but we are now not alone. All across the snow belt of the midwest, others have set up cameras that regularly post to the web. They may be accessed at or you can link directly to the other Great Lakes camera's in the North woods Camera Network.

Technical information of CabinCam:
CabinCam's hardware has been running non-stop for several years now. Both cameras are a product made by Stardot-tech.com called the NetCam MP Web cam. This type of camera does not have a computer attached to it. It has a web server built internally. We are also using their temperature and humidity probe on netcam1. STAR TECH is more than helpful when I have questions, and I did have a bunch due to the remoteness of our location. Before installing we test and test. Those of you who follow the site may remember FREEZER CAM. Since it's installation in Late November 2002, the camera has worked flawlessly. I must say I am impressed with the quality of this camera. I am extremely picky about equipment, and I feel as though I have received a good value for my dollar. While on dialup we were only shooting at 640x480 (70% jpg compression) to keep the image size small. This camera is capable of a 1280x960 image, and in July 2006 when we got DSL at the cabin, we started uploading 1280x960 images at 70% compression. We are now sending them to the internet at 60% jpg quality and I honestly cannot see a difference. We use the lower quality because it is not noticeable on the website and at 100% jpg compression it's image is in excess of 1.5 megapixle in size! I like the higher image quality of the CCD in the MegaPixle version of this camera, but it is $300 more than the regular netcam. I believe we have the best images in the north woods.

In July 2006 we did finally get DSL in the cabin. I am thrilled at the possibilities the future holds. How about live pan/tilt/zoom. It may be coming! We are using an automatic lens that adjusts the iris to the light conditions about once a minute. I need to keep the camera above -40F and the lens above 15F. With the heated Pelco enclosure, this is not a problem. The glass on the front of the enclosure is heated and the camera generates it's own heat internally. It seems to run about 75F higher than the outside probe's temperature when the heater is on. We have the ability to adjust the CCD light levels remotely from Ohio via the internet! That is why if the picture is dark or overly bright you may see it improve in the next update. (or not if I take the iris the wrong way!) Because this camera is so darn reliable, we no longer use an appliance timer to reset the camera every three hours. I have a way to remotely reboot the entire system remotely. In October 2006 we changed the DSL connection from a Dynamic to a Static address. We then use port forwarding to control each camera individually. In this way we can have more than one device on the same IP address.

Explanation of the image overlay text:
Top Rows: The date/time stamp at the top is the moment that particular image was taken. The camera processes the image with the jpg compression level I determine (90%), and then dials up and uploads the image. This is why the camera's image may seem just a bit behind actual time. The temperature is measured from a probe that will also show the humidity and Barometric pressure. The probe is mounted below the camera under the shelf that keeps most of the snow off of it.. Our goal is not to become a National Weather Service reporting station, but to give visitors of the website honest information on conditions at our cabin in Paradise, Michigan. Netcam2 now has a WX probe as well, but will show a slightly warmer reading due to the proximity of it to the camera enclosure.

Bottom Rows:
NetCam Temp: is the actual internal temperature of the camera. Ideally we try to keep this between -40°F and +120°F. The camera is housed in a heated Pelco enclosure that need house current to run. The camera will run for two days on battery backup. The heater does not have a battery backup system. The Res: is the current resolution (1280x960, 640x480, 320x180) setting of the camera. We are still experimenting with the balance between size of image (longer downloads vs. quality) and speed of display. Because I have dialup at home and DSL in the store, I can see both sides of the argument. Because the primary purpose of the camera is therapy for Scott (Seriously ;-) your opinions on this matter will be ignored We are also displaying the exposure of the camera so I can better choose the proper aperture setting for differing conditions. Remember, we take pics from the bright light of a sunny snowy day to a night picture with no snow on the ground. Lastly we display the pic no. to show how many pics the camera has taken between reboots. We are also posting how long the camera has been up since the last reboot. By comparing this time to the time of day, I can tell if the cabin has lost power in the last 24 hours.

The camera has been an absolute joy to work with so far. This setup takes superb photos, but it is not inexpensive. A complete system like ours with lights, pole, camera and lens will set you back around $2,000. Thanks for visiting us, it is truly a labor of love, -Scott
Scott Davis, Web master CabinCam.net
eMail: superioroffice@earthlink.net
Cell Phone: (937) 539-0081

We greatly appreciate all of you who have taken the time to send us an email about the site.
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