Here Is City Of Night's Live Telerobotic Camera!

Welcome to the City Of Night BBS Live Camera in Alameda, California. Our camera is mounted on the roof of the City Of Night BBS Installation which is located on the South Shore of Alameda Island in San Francisco Bay. Several different cameras have been used. The color pictures are from a Konica CV-301 CCD. The black and white pictures are from a Kocom CA-H34A 1/3 inch CCD. The camera mount is about 20 feet above ground level, sharing tower space with several amateur radio antennas. The camera is on its own tv-antenna rotator unit.

The video is digitized using a Quanta WinVisionPro card. Custom software triggers the conversion , and generates a .JPG format file at specified time intervals. The card and software are capable of conversion resolutions up to 1280*960, but we typically use a much smaller format to conserve limited connection bandwidth!

Camera motion is handled by more custom software that communicates through the servers 2nd parallel port (not being used for a printer), with a circuit to control the rotator unit.

There is a 'stop' just to the right of the large power pole in front of the house. You will not be able to rotate the camera past this point. However, by rotating the camera all the way around in the other direction, you can achieve a 360-degree view. Each push of the rotation buttons moves the camera about 15 (or 90) degrees. Note that if several people are moving the camera at the same time, only the last request in a given 5-second period will be honored.