About our Weather Station and Field Cam
In response to some queries by our members about our weather station and field cam setup, here's a description of the system and how it works.

The Weather Station
The weather data is collected by a Lacrosse Technologies WS-2315 Wireless Weather Station.  (Click the thumbnail image to enlarge the photo.)  The outdoor components are a group of sensors for collecting wind speed and direction, rainfall, humidity, and barometric pressure, along with a radio transmitter.  This gear is mounted on a mast near the driveway of our field owner and club president, Grant Sharp.  It's located about 1000 feet from the flying field's main runway, which gives us weather readings that closely match the actual conditions at the field.  

The outdoor sensor group sends its data by radio at 45 second intervals to the receiver in the weather station's wall console, which is located inside Grant's residence.  The wall console displays the real time weather conditions, and also connects to a computer in Grant's home via a serial port.  (Click the thumbnail image to enlarge the photo.)  The computer continuously runs software which retrieves and stores the data, formats it for the web site, and uploads it at five minute intervals to our Weather Station web page through a DSL high-speed internet link.

The Field Cam
The Field Cam system is designed around a video camera (actually a handheld camcorder in continuous viewing mode) and a video capture card inside the Weather Station computer.  The camcorder is mounted on a tripod next to the computer.  It's focused on the flying field through a window next to the weather station computer, giving it a view of the flying field through a break in the trees and shrubbery across Grant's driveway.

The camcorder feeds continuous, live video of the flying field to the computer's video capture card, which is programmed to snap a still image every five minutes and save it as a JPEG file.  This file is then uploaded to the website at five minute intervals along with the weather station data files.

The camera's present location is temporary in order to test the concept and ensure that it's worthwhile before investing additional time and effort in improving the camera's view of the field.  Now that we know that this idea works, we're looking at options for relocating the camera closer to the field for a better view.

Automation and Reliability
Over the past few months, we've had to overcome a number of system reliability problems while designing and building this system.  It's now completely automated, self-maintaining, and even self-correcting when it encounters problems.  

For example, DSL modems occasionally lose their connection to the internet and need to be reset. We designed and built a separate system to correct this situation automatically whenever it occurs.  To do this, the computer checks the internet connection for a response from a known website every ten minutes.  If the connection responds normally, the system does nothing and goes back to sleep for another ten minutes.  

If the internet connection does not respond, the computer sends a signal via one of its serial ports to a home-built "black box" device which then powers down the DSL modem and wireless router for 15 seconds, then powers them back on to reset the connection.  This may seem like a minor problem at first glance, but these frequent internet connection problems really plagued us during the early stages of the project. 

In addition, the computer is programmed to reboot itself several times daily to clear any possible software glitches or hang-ups.  As a result, the entire weather station and field cam system has become extremely reliable and requires almost no human intervention to keep it operational.

It's taken a lot of time and effort to design and implement this project as an integrated, low maintenance system, but the response from our members has convinced us that it's been worthwhile.  We think our Weather Station and Field Cam is a feature that's offered by only a handful of flying clubs throughout the world.  If anyone has any questions or comments about our system, please send an email to webmaster@molrca.com.

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