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SUGGESTION - operation during daytime or night only

Posted: Sat Mar 27, 2010 10:36 pm
by betwixt
I appreciate the facility to set the start and stop times are programmable already. I have started using Yawcam to FTP outdoor webcam images to my web site but I have to manually start the program after sunrise and manually stop it when it gets dark again. Obviously, these times are different every day. Sometimes, if I'm away as it gets dark I stream pictures of darkness, just black on black!

May I suggest an option to enter the camera latitude and longitude so the program can calculate the time of sunrise and sunset and start/stop accordingly. Even nicer would be an option to add offsets so it starts and stops a set number of minutes before or after sunrise and sunset.

The calculation is complicated but the algorithm is posted in many places on the Internet. The time in GMT is also needed so the locale time zone has to be added to the system time.

Webcam is at http://www.dyfi.com/Dyficam.html

Brian.[/url]

Posted: Sun Mar 28, 2010 2:57 am
by bben95
It would probably be easier for yawcam to rely on an external source for the sunrise/sunset times. An example is http://www.wunderground.com/. You can check the sunrise and sunset times for many places on there but I'm not sure if there is a way to get it in plain text for yawcam, which could be edited to allow you to change the scheduler from a text file, kind of similar to the text file variables.

Posted: Sun Mar 28, 2010 11:29 am
by betwixt
Agreed- you could do that but then you rely on a third party for the information and as you point out, you would have to create 'false' text entries for one scheduled time and select that as the one Yawcam used.

I think a 'live' calculation would be easier and more reliable, it would need entry fields for latitude and longitude and some calculation once a day. The time and time zone are already readable from the host computer.

I have a 20 year old 80386 computer here which amongst other 'home control' things, operates the lights in an outdoor swimming pool at dusk and dawn so it is possible. Sadly, it isn't networked and with a 33MHz processor and 1Mb of RAM I don't think it could be, or I would try using it as a source of the schedule text.

Brian.

Posted: Sun Mar 28, 2010 7:17 pm
by malun
I like the idea, but I doubt that this function will be used by many users. I'll keep the idea in mind, but won't spend time to implement it anytime soon...
Sorry.

/malun