"Detected possible problem..."

Report and discuss bugs here!
Post Reply
kingqueen
Posts: 7
Joined: Thu Feb 28, 2013 2:14 pm

"Detected possible problem..."

Post by kingqueen »

Firstly, thank you very much for this excellent software which I have been using for years. It's great.

On to the bug / feature. I've recently set up a webcam pointing through a window across the landscape, as part of a weather station, using Yawcam 0.4.0 built 2013-02-17 to take regular shots and FTP them up to some webspace. All is fine except at night. Being rural, it's completely dark at night out there, and the cam therefore correctly returns a fully dark screen.

Yawcam detects this as an anomaly and assumes there's a problem. It therefore repeatedly resets the webcam until daylight. Here's one example of the multitude of entries in the console:

"[28/2 05:44] Detected possible problem with the video device. Restarting it now. (Restarts: 1275)"

This results in a lot of the captured "images" put up to the webspace saying "No device selected".

I appreciate this feature provides a useful and thoughtful solution to faulty webcams / faulty software that needs resetting occasionally, but is there any way of turning it off?

Thank you
kingqueen
Posts: 7
Joined: Thu Feb 28, 2013 2:14 pm

Re: "Detected possible problem..."

Post by kingqueen »

Silly me, I think I've found the relevant option. Apologies, I hadn't thought of checking the Startup tab.

Settings > Startup > Enable device error monitor

Sorry
betwixt
Posts: 9
Joined: Sat Mar 27, 2010 10:24 pm

Re: "Detected possible problem..."

Post by betwixt »

You could also consider activating the scheduler so the program doesn't run after a pre-set time.

Brian.
malun
Site Admin
Posts: 1589
Joined: Sun Jan 04, 2004 1:29 pm

Re: "Detected possible problem..."

Post by malun »

@kingqueen
Good that you found the setting to turn it off.
This is interesting though... What kind of camera are you using?
Most cameras will produce some noise in the image even if it's pitch black. This noise till will make sure that the device monitor won't be triggered.

Does your camera produce images completely without noise when it's pitch black?

/malun
kingqueen
Posts: 7
Joined: Thu Feb 28, 2013 2:14 pm

Re: "Detected possible problem..."

Post by kingqueen »

hi Malun

It's an old, cheap and nasty no-name webcam using the Sonix SN9C201 chipset. I bought it off Ebay some years ago.

It's got odd behaviour when it gets properly dark. It has dead / stuck pixels that are "always on" yet when the image gets below a certain level it or the driver supplies a completely black image.

For examples, see the imgur album at http://imgur.com/a/dSkat . This is images taken just before and just after the end of sunset, similarly the beginning of sunrise, with the oldest images at the bottom. There are distinctly black images, with no stuck pixels or anything, in between.

Thanks
Post Reply