Monday, 31 December 2007

Webcam Test Page

*Derby Peregrines – Nest Cam 1*

*Derby Peregrines – Nest Cam 2*

Monday, 10 December 2007

Maintenance Work

The webcameras have recently been out of action, and may be again. Electrical safety checks inside Derby Cathedral over the last week or so have been severing our connection to the internet at frequent but irregular intervals. This work is essential to ensure the safety and integrity of Derby's most important (and oldest) building. Resuming the video stream each time involves a climb to the bell-ringing chamber to manually re-boot a PC and, in the run-up to the Christmas season, this is hardly something we can ask anyone to do for us at the "drop of a hat". We hope that we may be able to configure this item out of the circuit entirely for next season, making the video stream less susceptible to power failure. You will also see that our main camera has now "drooped" somewhat. This will be fixed on our next abseil.


How close can we zoom? Closer than this picture taken last June of one of the legs of a ringed peregrine check. But who would want to?Meanwhile we will remove and rebuild the control unit which allows us to remotely focus and zoom one of our cameras. This was lashed-up for us last summer by John Salloway, who has kindly agreed to box it up to make it more rugged, too. To give you an idea of how close we can go, here's a picture captured during the summer of one of our ringed chicks. Click the image to enlarge.