Welcome to the xmas_webcam at 2049 - webcam operational for another 1 hours, 11 minutes
Use the christmas webcam to view live images of a buncha christmas lights
and also CONTROL them - i.e. YOU can turn them ON and OFF via your web browser!
The christmas webcam has PAN and ZOOM capability that you can
also control. The webcam and webcontrol are ONLY operational between
1800 and 2200 Mountain Time.
Each web surfer can only
update the webcam 10 times,
change the lights 3 times,
and play with the pan/zoom 5 times,
withen 5 minutes - this limits
the load on my server/Internet connection and I'm concerned about the
christmas webcam being (ab)used too much and
the blinking lights bothering the neighbors! ;-)
34 other web surfers (INSANE!) have used the christmas webcam in the last minute: 004.253.103.007 012.076.135.044 024.013.222.182 024.167.100.222 063.229.128.055 064.012.116.005 065.039.092.164 065.054.097.203 065.068.190.170 066.057.101.203 066.082.009.032 066.231.220.181 067.160.000.078 067.165.136.251 067.227.171.002 068.009.143.158 068.085.004.011 068.091.128.247 068.118.068.211 068.158.145.231 068.169.240.229 068.196.190.132 068.224.185.246 069.133.006.032 069.153.007.060 069.241.164.092 071.000.208.071 172.151.000.005 195.093.032.007 198.081.026.017 203.094.178.230 205.188.116.005 206.063.227.209 216.063.200.169
Note that everyone can "BATTLE" for control of the webcam and lights!
Message for c-67-167-148-63.client.comcast.net: You have changed the Christmas Lights 2 times, played with Pan/Zoom 3 times, and updated the webcam 6 times
You threw a ROCK!
Requesting that zone 2 be turned ON ...
doing X10 status check ...
Zone 2 is NOW ON !!!
You threw a PAPER!
Requesting that zone 3 be turned ON ...
doing X10 status check ...
Zone 3 is NOW ON !!!
You threw a SCISSORS!
Requesting that zone 4 be turned ON ...
doing X10 status check ...
Zone 4 is NOW ON !!! (warning: voltage sag to 103.66 volts detected)
Sending request to change webcam Bearing from 185.0 to 180.0 ...
confirmed new camera Bearing of 180.0 degrees (true)
Sending request to change webcam Elevation from 10.0 to 5.0 ...
confirmed new camera Elevation of 5.0 degrees
Waiting for webcam update ...
still waiting for webcam update ...
retrieving image ...
got it!
Querying various sensors (read how these work) :
Temperature is 41.9°F ... Looks like no rain in the last hour ... Humidity is 38% ... Pressure is 29.96 inches Hg ... Wind Direction is 271 and averaging 7.0 mph with gusts to 16.4 mph ... Garage Sensor indicates garage is open ... Ground-Motion-Cam did not detect anyone walking around ... Road-Cam indicates possible car drive-by ... Sky-Motion-Cams do not detect any airplanes ... Sky Sensor detected TONS of stars - probably no clouds ... Total house amperage load currently 73.6 ... Steady-State voltage is 108.1 Volts
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Change Zoom:
1.0
2.0
3.0
4.0
5.0
Change Lights: 2 3 4 <=== Click anywhere on the image to re-center webcam with changes Email Santa if you see anything 'interesting' and I'll add to the webcam cool pictures page! ;-) Webcam Usage Stats (1800-2200) - Update_Webcam: 2,226 Change_Lights: 10,028 Change_Webcam_Pan_Zoom: 16,802 Webcam_Overloaded: 13,909 |
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Control the Webcam - Pan & Zoom it!
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You can PAN the webcam - i.e. move it to the left/right and/or up/down. The bearing shows the (true) compass heading, so lower numbers slew to the left and higher slews to the right. The elevation is the verticle angle of the webcam - higher numbers are up. The webcam also has a ZOOM feature - i.e. take a closer look at something.
The easiest approach is to just click on the image where you want the webcam to move.
Optionally use the arrows to slew the webcam 5° in the selected direction or use the +/- buttons to zoom-in/out by 1X. Finally, here are one-click buttons that will cause the webcam to zoom in tight on the item of interest:
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Control the Lights - turn 'em ON & OFF!
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The current state of the X10 zones is shown to the left. Also look at the picture above and the light count/amperage table below. Then simply toggle a zone (or zones - you can do more than one) to whatever you want, and then hit "Change Light Setting" which will send X10 commands to change the lights, and then refresh the picture ... and hopefully not annoy my neighbors too much! | ||||||||||||||||||||
Circuit X10-Zone Amps Lights Description - red means it is ON Garage-1 1 0.8 154 Driveway Lights, Red Bells Garage-2 2 8.1 2,400 Green Tree, Bushes, Mailbox Panel-1 2 9.7 2,300 Juniper Nets, Upper Icicles, Column Westside 2 2.5 750 Back Fence Icicles Window-L 2 1.0 250 Lower Level Window Novelties, Clock Lights Window-U 2 1.0 250 Uppper Level Window Novelties Balcony 3 3.5 750 Balcony lights, Santa Panel-2 3 6.5 1,900 Side Fence, Baby Tree, Juniper Blue Lights Panel-3 3 9.9 2,400 Lawn Ornament Back-Deck 4 9.5 3,150 Roof, Chimney, Left Curtain, Garage Icicles, Soldiar Panel-4 4 10.9 3,050 Arch, Tree, Deer, Right Curtain TOTALS 11 63.4 17,354 TOTALS |
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2004_09_01: My halloween decorations are the warmup for christmas - check 'em out!
While you are waiting for Christmas, consider using your PC's idle CPU cycle to help Stanford's medical research - click here for details
2004_10_01: The halloween decorations are up and the
halloween webcam
is quite the hoot! ;-)
2004_11_05: The Halloween "warmup" is over and it was outa
control as there were over a million hits from almost 150,000 web surfers - I'm a little worried about what is going to happen at Christmas. I've taken all the Halloween stuff down and packed it away for next year, but starting work on my Christmas Stuff - come back after Thanksgiving to see that extravaganza!
2004_11_17: I have activated the environmental sensors (check out the local Colorado weather) and the near-real-time Christmas 2004 Web Stats. I'm a little behind schedule with the Christmas Lights deployment, so might not have things up until the first week of December.
Thanksgiving: Happy Turkey Day! Christmas Webcam is now using mod_perl ...
this is a huge gain in terms of web server performance,
but the real test will be if the Slashdot crowd comes by again this year.
While mod_perl is unforgiving of
poor code (I forgot to close a lock file in one corner case - yikes!),
not much tweeking was required. Some misc. ApacheBench testing shows
that mod_perl can sustain about 5 times the number of connections (under
heavy load) than cgi_exec using the exact same code. Yea, I shoulda done this a
long time ago! Read more in the
Christmas FAQ
which also talks about the
other program (running as a daemon) that handles the lights/webcam/etc.
(it communicates with the CGI using UNIX signals) and that remains
throttled at one update/second - X10 is not a speedy protocol.
And on a less technical note, my folks flow into town (and brother Myke
surprised 'em) today. Fed 'em a buncha turkey and fixings ... and after a
walk, they all decided football/naps were "better" than putting up Christmas
Lights ... so hopefully I can put 'em all to work tomorrow - looks like the
weather will stay decent for a few more days. Here's a picture of the
christmas helpers ... and SOME of the lights! ;-)
2004_11_28: Got the lights up before the big cold front
came in ...
so my Pink Flamingo's are a bit chilly in the snow, but hey,
no need to get out my weed puller!
I installed some new Beta webcam software last week and it's looking good,
so have fun with it ... my neighbors have been "warned" that the light show
is about to start up! ;-)
2004_12_01: I've added a handful of "cool pictures" from the webcam.
2004_12_02: The folks at MajorGeeks.Com (true recognition!) have linked to the site and the
USA Today Hot Sites Crew like it too - maybe because
The HULK was caught
reading USA Today by Christmas Lights?
2004_12_04: Holy Christmas Lights Overload Batman!
Kim Komando mentioned
my site to her (gulp!) 3.5 million fans Saturday morning - it was
one heck of a "light show" tonight! We had company over (served the infamous
BBQ Shrimp and
BBQ Ribs)
and my friend
Jon thought it was NUTS as there was thousands of hits/hour and typically
50+ people trying to change the webcam/lights at the same time (remember it is
throttled to one/second - X10 is a slow protocol, plus the webcam is
optimized for image quality over refresh rate). On a related note,
mod_perl ROCKS - web server broke a sweat, but not much of one, so I think
I might stand a chance against the Slashdot crowd this time. I did have one
inline light fuse pop and take out 6 strands of 900 lights (yea, I know,
only connect 3 strands togather) ... but hey,
when you have 17,000 lights, it probably wasn't even noticed! ;-)
2004_12_05: Ummmmm ... while mod_perl continues to ROCK,
I have a bit of a memory leak in the daemon program that handle the
communcations and interface between the CGI and the analog stuff.
It basically just sits in an interupt loop waiting for signals (USR1)
from the CGI, gets the requested actions, then "talks" to the lights
via X10 and other sensors/webcam via Ethernet, and provides the
image and info back to the CGI ... but after bazillions of actions, the process
size increased 800 MBytes - yikes! I restarted it, but it is growing again
tonight so I'll need to look into this ... once again, stress-testing
is good! ;-)
