Rfalconcam Forum

We plan to work on the equipment at the Times Square building this Friday through Sunday. There will be intermittent camera outages during this period. Everything should be up and running by Monday.

Ok, as long as it's intermittent! Good luck, hope Beauty behaves and Archer, (if he didn't leave yet)!

Been meaning to ask, but now I'm probably too late...

Can something be done about the dripping seam between the roof boards on the nest box?  Maybe a bead of caulking & a piece of half-round molding? 

I know I'm anthropomorphizing, but I felt so bad every time it rained & it was dripping right on Beauty's head.

Do they waterproof the nests after their built? That nest does get quite wet Ei.

Do they waterproof the nests after their built? That nest does get quite wet Ei.
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I don't think so. I would think most waterproofing chemicals wouldn't be good for the birds.  That's why I was thinking along the lines of something covered by plain molding.

Most of the rain getting in is just blown in from the front, which is normal.  I think it's more apparent with this nest box because the gravel is different & darker as well as the higher resolution camera.  

It's just that one drip on the south side that aggravated me dripping right on Beauty's head. I KNOW they're actually water-resistant...most of the drips just beaded up & rolled off...but still...just a softie, I suppose  ;)

 :yes:  I'm with you Ei. That drippage bothered me too!  Maybe a few shingles would take care of it.   :wave:

good idea :2thumbsup:

A reminder that work will be taking place at TS this weekend. Expect camera outages.

I'll take a look at the leaky roof and see what can be done about it.

 :2thumbsup:    Thank you Shaky!    :notworthy:

Expect more outages this afternoon.

Thanks for the warning...and for looking at the roof. 

 :clap:

Main camera is back, and a new camera has been installed on the south side of the porch. We also added streaming video to Main Camera.

We replaced the two aging cameras inside the nest box, but ran into a bit of trouble drilling a bigger hole in the wall for the cables. Our really big masonry drill bit needed to be really, really big in order for the cables to fit through the hole. So we will be returning next weekend to finish drilling the hole and connecting the new cameras.

We also removed Camera 1 so it can be repaired or replaced. As you may recall, it got stuck pointed in the wrong direction several times during the summer. This is to prevent that from happening again.

So for the time being, there are only 2 cameras, but both are streaming video and should give us excellent views of our falcons in the nest box and on the perch.

PS. We also looked that the leaky roof and have a couple of ideas on how to fix it without negatively impacting the falcons.

Thank you Shaky, Jim and Carol. Good job. Lovin the Main cam stream. Now we just need some falcons to come and visit.  :2thumbsup: The Powers building is so pretty at night, all lit up. Something to look at now.

Excellent!  Nice view from the new cam!  Does it zoom?  Just wondering since it has a good view of the OCSR I-beams.

Thank you for doing all that you do!   :thumbsup:

Thanks all! :clap:

The new cam does not zoom or move, but it does see at night and it gives us an important missing camera angle.

A pan/tilt/zoom camera in this location would be a good future upgrade, especially if it could tilt upward far enough to see the top of the building. Maybe next Fall. We'll make that decision after we see how this arrangement works

Thanks.  It definitely covers areas that were hair-raising when no one was around to move cam 1-when the little stinkers were napping away on the ledge while we all got gray hair!

Thank you so much for all you have done!  :thumbsup:

The Falcon spiders were out in force while we were working at the nest box!   :scaredblue:

Ewwwwww, gross. There all gone right? For now!

Nope, they're still there, safe and sound.  One of them surprised Jim when he was working on main camera.   :laugh:

I would have fallen over the edge!  :hurt:

arachnophobia

I wonder if that spider who surprised Jim was in communication with the other "surpriser"  Mariah?!

There was a really large spider on the floor of the well.  The body was so big, s/he kept tipping over.  I'm sure the cold air wasn't helping.  Thinking, "what would Mirta do?", I escorted the big bruiser to a safe corner.   ;D

 :scaredblue:

Pictures ? :scaredblue:

I know Carol has at least one good pic of a spider cuz she showed it to me. Come on Carol the cat's out of the bag! Don't be holding out on the peeps.  :harhar:

While we were working Beauty kept an eye on us from the corner of the Wilder building.  It looks like that perch is well used, to judge by the pellet on the copper flashing...

 :clap: Thanks for sharing your pics Jim! :flash: :2thumbsup:

Oh, I got some pictures of our creepy, crawly friend alright.  Plus, some pics of how Archer and Beauty see their Watchers.  ;)  I'll be sure to share as soon as I find a free moment. 

Thank you for these pictures of Beauty!  How precious!  She is keeping an eye on her home :-)
 :)

We will be working on the cameras Saturday and possibly Sunday. Expect more outages.

Work is done for today. We have 4 cameras working at Times Square. All 4 of them are capturing still pictures and streaming video. Check out the new and improved Camera2 and Camera 3.

Awesome pics on 2 and 3 now Shaky...1 not working for me at the moment. Love the clarity! Very impressive, all we need is Beauty to stop by.. Thank you all who helped!

(http://rfalconcam.com/gallery/processed/Camera2_Thumbnail/20101023/Camera2_Thumbnail_20101023-162300.jpg) (http://rfalconcam.com/gallery/processed/Camera2/20101023/Camera2_20101023-162300.jpg)  (http://rfalconcam.com/gallery/processed/Camera3_Thumbnail/20101023/Camera3_Thumbnail_20101023-162300.jpg) (http://rfalconcam.com/gallery/processed/Camera3/20101023/Camera3_20101023-162300.jpg)

Hey Orville! Looking good! :clap:

Oh DUH....cam 4 is now Cam 1. I'll miss the Powers Cam but I'll get over it!

camera 1 and 4 are same pic for me  (camera 1 with the 10am time) Will we have outside one facing south again?   Good work!!!

Great Job !
I'm happy with the new cams.
Greetings Carla :heartspin: :thanks2:

Cam 1 will be back-either repaired or replaced.  I'm not sure of the timeline.

Pancam will return. 

Camera 1 is now showing its last picture taken back on October 17.


Powers Cam is now Camera 5. The View All Cameras (http://rfalconcam.com/rfc-main/cameras.php) page now shows all 6 cameras

Wow that's alot of cameras! We are very lucky to have them and all the people responsible for running them.   :bravo:

We replaced Camera 4 with a wide angle camera today.

Camera 1 will be reinstalled next weekend if it is ready.

I noticed an arc that appears in the upper right and upper left corners of the Cam 4 image at night.  It disappears in daylight.  Here's a movie from pre-dusk today that shows the effect:
(http://rfalconcam.com/gallery/processed/Camera4_Thumbnail/20101025/Camera4_Thumbnail_20101025-070000.jpg) (http://rfalconcam.com/rfc-main/archiveViewer/clipper.html?4cc563301e41) (movie)

My first thought was that this was an optical effect from the IR illuminators, either the ones in Camera 4 itself, or possibly one of the nestbox cameras reflecting IR light off the lens of Cam 4.  The problem with that theory is that the arc appears to move, not only in and out of the frame, but also toward and away from the camera.  It never appears to be sharply in focus, so I thought may be it was a spider web of some kind, but nothing of the sort appears in the daylight shots.

So, would anybody care to weigh in with their theory as to what we might be seeing here?

I noticed it also during the night hours and thought it was a cable/wire....guess not. Never thought to post it. Curious now!

I posted on another topic a close up of Camera 4 taken from Main Cam. I can't see any spider webs.

Obviously there are no wires or cables....hmmm

(http://rfalconcam.com/gallery/processed/MainCamera_Thumbnail/20101025/MainCamera_Thumbnail_20101025-083600.jpg) (http://rfalconcam.com/gallery/processed/MainCamera/20101025/MainCamera_20101025-083600.jpg)

A piece of Jim's hair that got caught on the camera lens and blew away by morning?? :2funny:

Maybe it has something to do with the lights on the Times Square bldg.

 :surprise:

Well, the effect on the upper left doesn't seem to move like the one on the right and it appears to then be a dark area upper left in the daylight.  I'm wondering if that is the cam visualizing the hood over the lens, catching the IR light at night.  Perhaps the one on the right is a reflection of the Times Square lights on the right side lens hood.

Kinda like the same effect as when you get a piece of glitter on your eyelash...you see the dancing orbs.

It looks like it's time for a science experiment. Head over to the streaming video page and watch Main Camera zoom in on Camera 4.

The results are in. It looks like a hair in front of the lens. Look between the red lines in the attached photo.

It was getting a little hairy there.  Thank goodness for maincam, super snooper.   :2funny:

Huh.  How about that.  I guess hair shows up brightly under IR illumination...

Guess we'll have to clean that up when we install PanCam.

I think we'll need to do a DNA test on it.   :laugh:

Send up the CSI team. I think their new headquarters is only a block away.

While they're up there they can fix the leaky roof.

FYI, the hair fell off Halloween night.

Well, it looks like we're finally ready to re-install Camera 1 tomorrow afternoon. There were so many broken parts on it that we had to replace the entire thing -- camera, motors, housing, fans, heaters, dome, cabling. Since it's a new model, it doesn't work the same way as the old one. Undoubtedly there will be some growing pains as we figure out how to integrate it into our site.

There will be intermittent camera outages during the installation.

 :clap:  Thanks Shaky! YAY everyone will hopefully get to see Beauty on camera again over at Mercury and other nearby places!!! :yahoo:

 :clap:

Me too with a YAY! :clap: Hope you all have a safe time.

Gee...  You guys sure picked a cold, snowy and windy weekend to be outdoors doing repairs on the Cam1...  Please be careful and, for pity's sake, wear too much in the way of warm clothing!!  You don't want to get frostbite and windburns!  And thanks a lot for all your hard work!
Anne in Toronto

Shaky and all involved in working on this :-)  Thank you so much for all you do in bringing our falcons to us and be careful out there in that cold and snow.  :notworthy: :clap:   :bravo:

 :chriscat:   :chrispup:

It's supposed to be above freezing Saturday afternoon. We might even get a bit of Sun.

Just a reminder that the cameras will be down this afternoon.

Oh man, we can't watch?

Good luck, everyone! And thanks for all you do.

We're back! All 6 cameras are working.

And we are streaming all 5 cameras at Times Square.

And the new & improved cam 1 is all set and waiting for Beauty to make her appearance!  :clap:

(http://rfalconcam.com/gallery/processed/Camera1_Thumbnail/20101211/Camera1_Thumbnail_20101211-180900.jpg) (http://rfalconcam.com/gallery/processed/Camera1/20101211/Camera1_20101211-180900.jpg)

Thanks everyone!

Ei

Looking good Shaky, thanks to you and whoever helped! So happy to have Pan Cam back.

And the Powers Cam!!  :clap: :thumbsup:

I still watch the cams on your viewer Shaky and there's no Cam 5 on it. At first I'm like, no, there are only 5 cams, not 6, then I opened the other viewer and thar she was! Guess I'll have to switch viewers. Hard to change a habit. Thanks again!

 :secret2: You're not alone-I still go there too.   :secret2:

Amazing!  Wonderful!  Thanks to all of you who worked hard to give this to us!  Know that you are appreciated!

Anne in Toronto

Thank you so much for all you do!  :clap:

GREAT JOB! :clap:

In case you haven't seen it, the new streaming video page is now featuring 2 video streams from the Times Square Building with a social stream (chat) directly below them. Main Camera is on stream 1, and Cameras 1-4 are on stream 2.

http://rfalconcam.com/rfc-main/streamView.php

:ditto:

Cameras at TS will be going down for about 1 hour around Noon today to add the finishing touches to Saturday's installation of Camera 1.

We're back again. The 20 minute delay for snapshots from Camera 1 has been fixed.

Yeah way to go!!! Yesterday, I thought I was (http://i210.photobucket.com/albums/bb252/Ronnies_Pets/smileys%20emoticons/008_110103_nuts_prv.gif)

That's cuz you are! :crazy: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

working on all the wiring for the cameras up in and around the nest box! :clap: :clap: :clap: :2thumbsup:

(Next time you do an outdoor maintenance project, I think most of us have a request for a non-toxic fix for the roof! Beauty did a fantastic job of protecting the precious cargo, but she must have a crick in her neck from shaking off all the water dropping on her head!)

The last two days have shown what a superior job you all did keeping everything else weatherproof! Lots and lots of rain and nasty winds, and yet we still are able to watch!  :2thumbsup:

You all are awesome!  :bow: :bow: :bow:

Yes, a safe waterproof roof would be nice on days like this. There are a few other carpentry projects that could be done too. Maybe we'll find a carpenter who can donate a day or two in October to work on them.

We are planning on doing maintenance on the cameras at the Times Square building this weekend starting early Saturday afternoon. The cameras will be turned off during this period. They should be on again later in the afternoon.

Additional work may need to be done on Sunday. We'll make that determination Saturday.

Aw man!  You're not gonna let us watch!  Bummer!  :crybaby:







But seriously...thank you for all you do!

Some day he'll let us! LOL   (SPY)  (http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y41/blackwelsh13/Smileys/emot_spy.gif)

We have volunteers who are camera shy. We don't want to scare them away, do we?

Shaky, that's never stopped us before :D

Shaky is the shy one.   :flash: :lookingat:

Aw shucks Shaky!  (http://i213.photobucket.com/albums/cc93/jontreichel/Smileys/Sofrayt%20Smileys/shy12.gif)

Looks like Carol is volunteering to be on camera.

Nuh uh!   :o

OY!

The day is shaping up to be a good one to go outside. We'll be heading out to work on the cameras at the Times Square building around 1 PM.

The cameras have been shut off. They will be turned on later this afternoon.

The cameras are up again.

We will need to take them down again Sunday morning for a few hours.

Thanks!!

To work on the lighting on the main cam?

20111105 1641 07 xvid (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6WOPYoRQw8E#)

So what happened up there in that nest box? Did you clean.....hang out.....sweep....watch Beauty watchin you.....was hoping to see a smiley face on Orville!  :silly:


TAKE PICS????  :flash:

 :hahaha: :hahaha: :hahaha: :hahaha: :hahaha: :hahaha: :hahaha: :hahaha:

Nope.

We replaced the IR camera on top of Main Camera to restore the ability to stream video from Main Camera's point of view at night.

We also did some cleaning.

Nice and  thanks again!

Nice work team, thanks!  :notworthy:

thank you to Shaky and all who keep this site, and cameras, and all the things that I don't even know about...up and running!  Thank you!   :thumbsup: :notworthy:

The team today consisted of Shaky, Kathy O, Dana, Lisa, June, Ravi, Carrie, Brian and I.  We got alot done ending the day with a visit from Beauty.  We ended our long day and will return tomorrow morning with other volunteers.  and I KNOW that MAK would have helped out if she could.   :happy:

Good work team.  Thank you!  You're the best!   :clap: :thumbsup: :2thumbsup: 

You got that right Carol! Next time for sure!!!!  ;)

We'll turn the cameras off around 9 am.

Just a reminder that the cameras will be turned off in about 2 hours.

Are you going to fix the leaky roof?

I'm the computer guy, not the roofer. I asked for volunteers in this thread back in May. No one  responded.

A month after I left! I'll do it next time I come!

The cameras are off. They should be on again this afternoon.

Ok, we're back in business again with clean lenses.

Today's team included Marcia, Larry, Joyce, Dana, Shaky and I.  We accomplished everything we needed to so we're good to go. 

Big thanks to all that came out and gave up some of their personal time on such a beautiful weekend. 

Now with a new camera and clean lenses, we'll be able to see more of our Rochester Peregrines.   :clap: :thumbsup: :2thumbsup:

Shaky said that no one volunteered to help.  ??? :confused:

Thanks everyone for all your hard work!  Now, inquiring minds want to know, have we met Ravi yet?  Don't seem to recall the name...

I think he was talking about a carpenter for the roof (I'd be there to do it in a heartbeat if I could fly!)

He said that no one volunteered to fix the roof of the nest box.

Me too! Next time Ei!! I told MAK I want to sit up there and dangle my feet over the edge and just look at the Falcon View!

Ravi is a member of the Rfalconcam team.  He is not as active as other members, but is happy to volunteer when work needs to be done.   :happy:

Hi Ravi!   :wave:

Is he on our forum? Hi Ravi and thanks!!

Oh, OK then-no carpenters in the bunch. Thanks for what was done though, everybody!

I'm not a roofer or carpenter, but I do have a partial roll of felt/tarpaper & some left over shingles to donate. You'd just need to find someone to do the job

No, he doesn't read the Forum.

We have to be careful of what materials we use and how they are applied. We don't want to cause harm to the falcons.

 :scared:  Yeah and I told her not me. I probably would have trouble just getting near to the edge.(fear of height) I'd sure love be there and see the look on Donnas' face as she scoped out the territory!  ;)

I've been pondering what would be the best solution for a while.  I think a piece of exterior grade plywood just slightly bigger than the current roof-I think a bit more of a front overhang would help too-screwed to the current roof would do the trick.  Wish I could be there to help :( 

I was thinking the same thing Ei! And maybe you could come to town next time too!  :wave:

I'm really sorry to say that dangling is not allowed.   :no:

We have to be very careful when we're up there and every precaution is taken.  We're only allowed to do this work at certain times.

While we were working above, Carrie and Brian were on sidewalk duty below making sure that no one walked below the nest box just in case something fell.  There was a "Women of Faith" conference going on at the Blue Cross Arena, so they were very busy.

Oh, I wouldn't actually do that Carol, just a figure of speech!! I would never!! (http://i554.photobucket.com/albums/jj417/Shar_dreamer/Scared%20Yet/362553.gif)

I know Donna!   ;)

The cameras at Times Square will be shut off at around 11 this morning to fix the fogging problem with Main Camera. They should be on again this afternoon.

The cameras are on again.