I need to upload single jpeg frames every 1 to 3 minutes.
Background: I have a camera that I use as a weather camera. It looks at a mountain range about 10 miles to the west. I FTP a JPEG image every 3 minutes to Weather Underground. WU produces a time-lapsed video of the shots. The local TV station likes it so much that I frequently see my camera featured in the nightly weather report.
I would like to upgrade my camera to one with better low light capability. My present camera (a TrendNet) currently serves those single JPEG shots directly to WU. I can't tell from most camera specs if a selected camera can serve the shots to WU so I look to SecuritySpy to intervene and fill that function. I'm testing it now with my present camera using the Update-image-on-FTP-server function, but it isn't working.
Can someone confirm that SS will (or will not) work with the Weather Underground site. Otherwise, can someone comment on the following from the WU site?
Use the following information to start sending your images to Weather Underground using FTP.
▪ ............
▪ Binary: Please make sure that you are uploading your images through FTP using the binary setting.
...............
We've noticed a couple of common problems. Please check your camera software for the following issues.
▪ The most common problem is uploading images that are over our file size limitation which is 150K. Please check to see that your images are not over this limitation, and adjust your camera or software settings accordingly.
▪ Some software packages upload a tmp file and then try to rename that file as the image name. This is not working with our current ingest daemon. Please check the settings of your software to see if this feature can be disabled, allowing a direct FTP of the image. Some software packages also try to upload HTML content with an image. This will stop your image from being successfully ingested. Please upload a single image only.
▪ If you are able to upload, and the upload process reports success, but none of your images are showing on the site, make sure that your uploads are set to binary as our image conversion process will fail for images not transfered in binary format.
▪ If you are trying to upload using Active FTP and it's not working, go ahead and give Passive FTP [Also called PASV FTP] a try.
I would like to upgrade my camera to one with better low light capability. My present camera (a TrendNet) currently serves those single JPEG shots directly to WU. I can't tell from most camera specs if a selected camera can serve the shots to WU so I look to SecuritySpy to intervene and fill that function. I'm testing it now with my present camera using the Update-image-on-FTP-server function, but it isn't working.
Can someone confirm that SS will (or will not) work with the Weather Underground site. Otherwise, can someone comment on the following from the WU site?
Use the following information to start sending your images to Weather Underground using FTP.
▪ ............
▪ Binary: Please make sure that you are uploading your images through FTP using the binary setting.
...............
We've noticed a couple of common problems. Please check your camera software for the following issues.
▪ The most common problem is uploading images that are over our file size limitation which is 150K. Please check to see that your images are not over this limitation, and adjust your camera or software settings accordingly.
▪ Some software packages upload a tmp file and then try to rename that file as the image name. This is not working with our current ingest daemon. Please check the settings of your software to see if this feature can be disabled, allowing a direct FTP of the image. Some software packages also try to upload HTML content with an image. This will stop your image from being successfully ingested. Please upload a single image only.
▪ If you are able to upload, and the upload process reports success, but none of your images are showing on the site, make sure that your uploads are set to binary as our image conversion process will fail for images not transfered in binary format.
▪ If you are trying to upload using Active FTP and it's not working, go ahead and give Passive FTP [Also called PASV FTP] a try.
Comments
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Hi,
I can confirm that SecuritySpy uses Binary transfer and Passive FTP, doesn't use a temporary file to upload, and doesn't upload any HTML content. I've had a quick look at the requirements from Weather Underground, and I see no reason why this shouldn't work.
A few things I can think of are as follows:
- The file size many be too large. WU's 150KB limit is small, especially for megapixel images. To see what sort of size of image is being produced, right-click on the camera in SecuritySpy and select "Save image as JPEG". Save it to your Desktop and then Get Info in the Finder to see the size. If it's too big, go to Compression Settings in SecuritySpy and reduce the "Still image JPEG compression for email/FTP upload" quality setting.
- The directory that SecuritySpy is trying to upload to may be wrong. For the "Server path" setting in SecuritySpy, try both a forward-slash character as well as leaving that blank.
- Have a look at SecuritySpy's log file (File menu -> Open log). Any errors encountered attempting to do FTP uploads will be shown here.
Let us know how you get on. -
Thanks. It will be a while before I can get back into this. (I've got other pressing priorities. -- taxes) I think I have already tried all your suggestions. I have had other problems with Weather Underground and have been told that their intake processor is over-loaded. They are hoping to up-grade later this year so the problem I'm having may go away by waiting.
