Ockanickon Science Center's WeatherCam FAQ's


New LIVE! WebCam

No image displays when I click on the "LIVE! WeatherCam" Link

JavaScript must be enabled for your browser to open up the LIVE! WeatherCam window. Also the ActiveX Axis Camera Control ocx component must be installed once. Just allow the ActiveX file to install automatically. For older operating systems such as Windows98, you may need to manually install the file from this link.

How does the LIVE! WebCam work?

The LIVE! WebCam is a night vision video camera connected to an Axis camera server. The camera server is a powerful standalone computer programed in Linux that allows direct downloads of streaming video or still images at will. The camera server also transfers an image by FTP periodically to Science Center's web server for display on our web pages.

Original WebCam

Nothing happens when I click on the "Original WeatherCam" Link

JavaScript must be enabled for your browser to open up the Original WeatherCam window. It is highly recommended that you enable JavaScripting in your browser, but if don't care to, try this link. It should display the image, but will not automatically update the image.
The image appears black
The most likely cause is that it's night time, and it gets DARK here. The area around the Science Center is not artificially lit, and the original web camera lacks sensitivity to render an image at night.
The image appears out of focus or fuzzy

Unlike the new WebCam, Ockanickon's original WeatherCam is situated inside the Science Center. Its view to the outside is through double paned glass at an oblique angle. This introduces some unavoidable distortion. Also digital image compression is employed to make the file size manageable for downloading.

Time Lapse Video

How does the Time Lapse Video work?

Images from both of the Science Center's WebCams are transfered by FTP directly from our web server to the Weather Underground site. The Weather Underground maintains an image archive for both of the WebCams and assembles them into the Time Lapse Video.

 

e-Mail any additional questions to James Moyer, GEB-SC[at]bma2[dot]org and I will add them to this page. Thanks!