Category Archives: Video

02 Sep

Farm Cam Moves to Farm Site

After some hemming and hawing, and consulting with Sarah, we’ve decided to move the Farm Cam Project to our Gage Hill Crafts site.  It was something being considered for some time, and now seemed like the time to do it.

All the articles and technical musing on the project will remain here, in my private stash. If one is interested more in the technical aspects of the project than catching a glimpse of a good snow storm or one of the llamas posing, those types of musing will still live on this site.

The images are also all still being uploaded to this site, which will remove any broken image links from the past. Redirects have also been established for any links to the previous location, so there really shouldn’t be any interruption to the find visual products you are used to seeing at Rick Scully dot com.

Be sure to bookmark the new location; and follow me on Mastodon for daily reminder links when the new videos post.

Lastly, there is a new outdoor webcam project in the works. Stay tuned.

20 Feb

The SecuritySpy That Doesn’t Love Me

Almost immediately after I posted my last entry on the trials and tribulations of an EvoCam on life support, the software crashed again.  Fresh start, minimal other applications running, and poof. I cleaned up the mess, and then instructed my iMac to restart itself every Sunday at 1am.

If all goes as planned (stop laughing!), this will be enough to help keep EvoCam running between restarts.  If not? Then the next step is increase the frequency of the reboots until I can set up the Mac Mini, and start all over on that machine.

Because, I am all out of options as far as out-of-the-box software after giving SecuritySpy a close look this weekend. The results, as always, were mixed.

Read More →

10 Feb

Pros and Cons of Wide Dynamic Range

Recently I wrote about night vision and green screen, and I assumed that it was a trade off.  It kind of is, but maybe not in the way I thought.

Every time I make a change to EvoCam or to the Hikvision settings, something new occurs. Not necessarily good or bad, just new. And times like this I am simply baffled.

Again, it’s time to look under the hood.

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07 Feb

Do As I Say, Not As I Did

Look, I have never claimed to be an expert on anything.  I hunt and peck my way around the keyboard, and do the same when it comes to figuring shit out.

I like to pretend that what I am creating with the FarmCam Project is like software development; each tweak or improvement a new version. Sometimes it feels that way as I wrestle with EvoCam to get the most out of the abandoned software, that has gone dark without explanation. I can’t just make a support request or post to a support forum. If there are diehard EvoCam enthusiasts, I have no idea where to find them.

These instructional entries are here for two reasons. One, I hope to help others who may have similar interests — or needs — to my own. Secondly, if I don’t write this stuff down somewhere, I am likely to break something and forget WTF I did. These are my own manuals in some sense. Hence, many entries with lots of guess work and promises to report back later. Most of the time I forget to do some things in advance, and I am left wondering if a change will make any difference at all. Other times, I’m not patient enough to test things before I write about them here. [This is another of those times!] Read More →