Webcam Covers the Dalzell Construction Project

Welcome to the Dubuque Community School District's Webcam page. The Webcam is a unique camera that transmits continuous video over a network, and right now, the camera is trained on the construction site of the new Dalzell Construction Project. The camera is capturing construction activities, but the cool thing about this technology is that the video stream is real time if you have a high speed Internet access like that provided by Mediacom Cable.

Here are a few things you may want or need to know about this technology:

This is the camera from Axis Communications. It's a fairly high resolution camera with excellent optics and image processor. It delivers an image far greater and more highly resolved than we can afford to transmit over our network, but we have optimized our connection to provide you with the best possible image quality. The rule is: The better the camera, the better the picture in low bandwidth situations. The implications of this technology for reasonably priced security purposes, as one example, extends far beyond its value as an entertaining way to monitor a construction site. Already our building maintenance people are monitoring the site as the image provides some valuable visual data on the building's progress.

For you to receive a high quality video image, high-speed access is recommended. If you are on a phone modem, any movement will stutter and the picture quality will seriously degrade.

If several people are trying to access the Webcam at one time, you may notice degraded performance. Transfer of video data streams requires appropriate bandwidth. We will continually monitor the traffic and determine if more bandwidth or adjustments are required to further optimize performance.

There's a timeout limit of five minutes. This means you can't tune in to the data stream and just let it sit on your computer. It will freeze the last frame at the five minute mark requiring you to refresh your page if you want to see another five minutes. Once again, this is to minimize the amount of bandwidth required affording the most people a chance to see the camera's data stream as possible.

So what does all this cost? We shopped around for the the best camera we could afford that emphasized quality optics, and the Axis Communications model pictured above rated quite high in terms of buyer satisfaction, ease of installation and product support. We ordered the camera mail order at a substantial discount and it cost just over $800. It required no additional hardware to install except a network cable. The camera represents a renewable not a consumable resource and it can be used for a variety of projects now and in the future.

If you have any questions about the camera or the process, e-mail us.

 

Attention Windows Internet Explorer Users: Please click here to launch the camera window. You may be asked to install Axis viewing software. It's free, of course. And you may be asked to activate your ActiveX controls in Microsoft Internet Explorer if they are not already active. ActiveX controls merely allow your browser to accept streaming media which is what our camera produces. Simply follow the step-by-step instructional prompts that will appear on your screen. Turning on IE's Active X Controls requires you to open your browser's Tools menu at the top of your browser window, then select Internet Options. Cl ick on the Advanced Tab. You will see a long list of check boxes. Scroll down the list and check all of the ActiveX controls to activate them.

All Other Browsers: If you don't see the image above, or there's nothing moving, please click on your browser's "RELOAD CURRENT PAGE" command to restore the connection. The image above is a real-time video stream of data originating from a camera trained on the Dalzell Construction Project. The camera is plugged into our wide area network and feeding the data stream through our server to your browser.

The quality of this data stream depends on your Internet access bandwidth. If you are on a high-speed network, you'll have a better image. Quality of the data also depends on the number of other people trying to gain access to the camera. If more than 20 are trying to gain access, the data will stutter.

We have the opportunity to transmit sound from a remote location as well, however, we've elected not to do this since it takes up even more precious bandwidth.

Here is a time lapse of the progress from April 25th to June 4th.

 

 

 

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