20210424 – Whittling down the pre-launch list

0600 – wake up; laze about

I am not feeling too energetic after working through yesterday‘s post vaccine side effects.

I’m delighted to be fully vaccinated, but the side effects were not very thrilling.

I felt tired and my left arm felt like the neighborhood bully had thoroughly tenderized it. I tried to be productive at work, despite the discomfort my my arm. I at least managed to finish most of an important task and started the next one, so I suppose that is productive enough for any given workday.

0730- head to dentist. ROUGH cleaning! Next time I’ll make less work for the hygienist.

Lisa’s Big Mouth

0930 – fill out HOLD MAIL card (for vacation) at the local post office.

1000 – lie down and relax; plan out the rest of the day

See my to-do list, way below!

1115 – Took a peek at the back yard: Freaking #Dandelions! Time to commit an act of herbicide

1133 – Take a quick test video: walkaround of the van (not posted, see tomorrow’s instead)

1145 – Met friends at Red Lobster for lunch

1315 – Charge first DSLR and video cam batteries. Three sets altogether.
GoPro and external battery packs will get charged later.

1515  – While sorting through AC chargers and USB cables, I found the second charger for my Nikon batteries. DSLR camera battery number two is charging now. I do not believe I ever got a second charger for my 4K camcorder (Sony FDR-AX53). Perhaps it might be wise to purchase an additional battery for the camera; I only have about 200 minutes running time across my three batteries for that device. Another hundred minutes might be beneficial.

1559 – first Nikon battery is fully charged (2 hours! Can that be right?)

I’m going to head to the store and take away the reading while I am there. There is nothing I could do to make these batteries charge any faster, so I’m going to make use of the time.

Also took a quick Kestrel reading and calibrated its internal compass.

Kestrel 5500
Kestrel 5500

1730 – Returned from shopping. Just enough food to make it until a day or two
before vacation.

I can eat out those last few days, as I do not want to make trash that’s going to decay for 2 1/2 weeks in my house while I’m gone.

External batteries are charging, albeit slowly. (Two of them are missing in action, however; I’ll look for those around the house and replace them if necessary). Nikon batteries are fully charged.

2359 – At end-of-day, the list is like this:

X     Charge DSLR and video cam batteries

  • Inventory camera/video gear
  • Pack clothing for trip
  • Walk through ‘to do’ list from van shakedown cruise

X     Get weather reading on Kestrel 5500

  • Ask neighbor if I can borrow long ladder on Tuesday pm

X     Do last grocery run before vacation

X     Test camera batteries

  • Test video cam batteries (after charging)

X     Charge round 2 of batteries

X     Decide which camera/tech gear goes on vacation; pack it:

  • Nikon D7000 plus three batteries
  • Sony AX-53 plus 3 batteries (total 200 minutes runtime)
  • Lots or 32GB SDHC cards and one 4TB HDD

 

 

 

20210418 – VanCam Project – Phase 2 done

Timeline:

Saturday (21/04/17) : All five cameras physically located in the van and secured using Velcro. Of course, I had to “unsecure” them to do the firmware upgrades as the upgrades require insertion of a microSDHC Card in each camera.

Sunday (2021/04/18):

07:00: Woke up, did daily chores
09:00: Attended online church
10: 00: Continued firmware updates on cameras. Downloaded both the Dafang and official Wyze camera firmware updates to enable RTSP.

I struggled a little with these since the tiny SET up button must remain depressed when power is applied to the camera after insertion of the new firmware image on the microSD card. This is what happens when a tiny switch meets a fat finger. It took up to three tries per camera to get the firmware to load, but once loaded, it did not need to be reinstalled each time the camera powers up. Had that been the case, this camera solution would have been rendered useless. I certainly could not be running around resetting five cameras every time I started the van. That would just be intolerable.

1130: Had lunch with friends. After yesterday‘s surf and turf lunch, I went with something simpler: bourbon-glazed salmon.

14:00: Returned home to do a couple quick errands, then took the 20-minute drive over to a local ham radio gathering. Some of the people there were friends I had not seen in several years, so it was good to get reacquainted. I enjoyed exchanging information about our latest projects. Everybody seemed very interested in the van camera project (“Operation VanCam“).

15:30: Headed home from the ham radio operator gathering.
16:00: Unplugged from ongoing tech projects. Caught up on some television viewing. #CouchPotatoTime
21:00: Grabbed a cup of hot peppermint tea to wash down my evening medications. Took those meds and did my insulin injection. Time to get some well earn rest after a busy weekend.

It was great to enjoy the warmer weather, with temperatures in the mid 60s at a light breeze.

This is the kind of spring day I appreciate here in Chicago land. I am not looking forward to Tuesday’s predicted snowfall, Just passed the middle of April. While not unprecedented, the event is unwelcome.

VanCam Project summary:

  • Phase 1: Purchase cameras and USB extension cables. Do rough install of these in the van to determine best placement. Native WyzeCam firmware running with no RTSP (realtime streaming protocol, for the uninitiated) available initially.
  • Phase 2: Upgrade to the latest WyzeCam , Then move to the RTSP-compatible firmware. Test the cameras with the new firmware, using iSpyConnect via the onboard laptop.
  • Phase 3: Testing and tuning. Determine the best combination of parameters (such as disabling security detection) to get the best real time video experience. Experiment with video recording under iSpyConnect; Recording should be written to Dropbox space, so space on the laptop is not exhausted and video is safely backed up in near real-time.

20210417 – CameraFest 2021

07:00: woke up for the day

09:45: doctors appointment; give blood sample for A1 C test

11:45: lunch with Joe and Barb

12:45: ran some camera tests in the van. Four of the five wyzecam V2 units are working

13:00: started debugging Camera 5

13:30: all five cameras working

14:00: went to Home Depot to get Velcro for  mounting the cameras (semi- permanently)

15:00: started the process of choosing permanent mounting positions for the cameras.

This process was much more lengthy than I anticipated.

17:00: cameras placed and Velcro mounted

18:00: dinner break and watch some TV

20:00: created 6 microSDHC Cards with the rtsp capable image for the cameras.

20:30: inserted micro SDHC cards in two cameras. Report camera ejected the card unceremoniously, sending it to parts unknown. Spent 30 minutes looking for the annoying little card, but did not find it. Looked outside the vehicle to make sure it was not underneath. Will look again in the morning when I have better light. Extremely frustrating to have such a positive day and have a airborne micro SDHC card mess it up. I’m a little upset with myself for not quitting when I was ahead.

 

 

 

 

 

 

20210406 – Murphy’s Law of Central air-conditioning

There seems to be an old established rule about central air conditioning: if there is a three day heat spell in April, the air conditioning will break down on the next to the last day and then not be needed until the month of May.

There seems to be an old established rule about central air conditioning: if there is a three day heat spell in April, the air conditioning will break down on the next to the last day and then not be needed until the month of May.

2021 Test Drive 1

I took a 90-minute test drive of the chase vehicle and the technology onboard

Here’s a list of issues I’ve found:

      1. The camera mounts easily loosened up. Fortunately, the camera “droop” did no damage to the cameras.

  1. The GPS puck is seen by Franson GPSgate, but it’s output is not seen by GRlevel3 or other applications.
  2. The dashcam needed to be tested beyond seeing it power up and display a video of the road ahead.
  3. The cabling clean-up has yet to begin, but should be a fast task. Last year’s set up is unchanged, except for the mysterious disappearance of the original dashcam micro-USB cable. I replaced it today, but have some disconnected cables dangling.
  4. The rear seat’s Android tablet needs to be re-installed.
  5. Luggage space needs to be reclaimed. It’s full of bric-a-brack at the moment.
  6. The iPhone bracket need to have the stabilizer arm glued into place. It came off in my hand! WTF??
  7. The antenna cluster needs to be road tested. It was ‘indoors’ today. One antenna needs to be glued to its mag-mount.

All this amounts to another weekend afternoon spent with this new ‘to do’ list.

20190603 – Under the … Workload

Hi, all-

After a successful chase tour and an extra few days chasing — with nothing but a REALLY well-washed van to show for the latter period), I’m back to work.  I’m focused on recharging myself, as work has been insanely busy this last week.

My next chase-related activity will be extracting the videos and stills from my GoPro cameras and Nikon D7000, respectively.  I have also spent a little bit of time cleaning up my GPS tracks, as several dropout occurred during track recording.  Hopefully, I can recover (or reconstruct) the lost tracks, so I do not have to beg for them from fellow travelers, a last resort.

Hoping to have a REAL update for you by this coming weekend (08-09 June).

 

20190522 – 10% Hatch Surprise

This morning held a pleasant surprise: the SPC has put a 10% hatched (EF2+) risk blob up, where there was none yesterday.

 

 

 

I’m a little bit tired, but will catch up on writing later.

To sum up:  there was a 10% tornado risk this morning (more than we expected given yesterday‘s day two predictions), but development of storms did not follow the pattern we be expected. We did briefly see some interesting features (like a wall cloud by Mulhall), but nothing hinting at tornadoes. More violent weather was off to our Northeast, into an area with very dodgy roads (due to flooding, shown here in a couple pictures below). While we could have gotten show those areas, the risk of being trapped by floodwaters or sinking our vehicle up to the axles in mud was simply not worth it.

Congratulations to those who did see tornadoes this day. We would have loved to join you, but with a group of 16 people we could not risk getting stuck. I’ll be watching for your spectacular pictures on Facebook, Instagram, and other social media outlets.

(Text updates coming later)

(Descriptions of photos coming later)

Enjoy these pictures meanwhile!

Xxx

20190520 – Mangum,OK Tornado

The day started with a 6 AM wake up call at our hotel in Amarillo. It is very quiet. Very quiet, indeed.

The morning round of storms has already started to our north.

My first look at the SPC Convective Outlook is very scary:

   ...SUMMARY...
   An outbreak of strong tornadoes and severe thunderstorms is expected
   today across parts of the southern and central Plains. In addition,
   many of the storms will have very large hail and wind damage. The
   severe threat will be concentrated from west Texas and the Texas
   Panhandle eastward across Oklahoma, Kansas into western Missouri and
   western Arkansas. Additional severe storms with wind damage and hail
   will be possible this afternoon from southeast New York into
   southern and central New England.

   ...Tornado Outbreak Expected Across the Southern Plains Today Into Tonight

 

Graphically, we see these:

Today appears to be a historic tornado outbreak in the making, and here we are ready to jump into it.

Stopped at Clarendon, Texas for a quick lunch. (See http://m.360.io/f8CMYu)

Continue SW

More updates later!

More updates later!

More updates later!

Tornado videos are here:

20190519 – Road to Amarillo

We started this Sunday at the Northwest in in Woodward, Oklahoma. We expected the date to be a down day, so we repositioned for Monday. Monday look to be a very big day, so it is critically important that we position ourselves correctly to get the most out of the day.  After considering the forecast, thanks to do along the way, and where we like to wake up Monday morning, we headed toward Amarillo.

We refueled and re-provisioned at Shattuck, Oklahoma.  As we rounded the bend toward El Tipi fuel station and the Ventura grocery/fuel store, We all noticed a large collection of windmills. We doubled back after our fuel stop/ pit stop/grocery stop to check out the windmills.

We wrapped up the day with a visit to the Big Texan Steak Ranch (BTSR). I enjoyed a 12 ounce Fort Worth cut ribeye with all the trimmings. It never ceases to amaze me how wonderful a side of cowboy beans can taste at the end of a long day. Must embrace the simple things!