About :: Homepage :: Message Board :: Pictures :: Other Links :: E-Mail Link

This project is a small project I wanted to work on for a while now. There is a lot of work I still need to do with the site itself, but the project started recording on April 03, 2008 and I plan to record my creek for one year taking a time lapse every 5 minutes.

If all goes well, the plan I have for the Time Lapse should look somewhat cool. I found when looking around the Internet, no one has done what I have planned.

I still have a lot of work to do with this site and how it will all come togather, but the basic project setup is as follows:

• For this project I'm using a basic Webcam at 640x480 using Intel's Indeo 5.10 which I found will give me good video quality at around 15 MB per day.
• The Webcam I'm using is a Philips SPC600NC which I have taken completely apart and built a custom mount and holder to include the camera.
• To record the time lapse footage, I searched far and wide and found Willing Webcam was the best out there for what I was looking for.
• To work around some of the limitations of the software and to better manage the media I created a custom application that will both monitor Willing Webcam to make sure that it's recording at all times and manage the record times for the Time Lapse.

With the project not even being a week old, I have already planned out the videos that I am going to create and used good old Excel to figure out the details of each video and the length of each. As of this point I plan to make four videos. Below is the current videos I'm working on showing the current length of each:

• Full Footage: 12 Minutes 32 Seconds
• 1 Hour a day: 56.75 Seconds
• 30 Minutes a day: 30.83 Seconds
• 10 Minutes a day: 13.17 Seconds
• 5 Minutes a day: 4.40 Seconds
• Animal Life around the creek: 21.18 Seconds

Note: To view the above video, your system must have the DivX codec. To install click here to get the free codec at DivX download page.
Player Note: For now, you must have Microsoft Media player to view.

As this site is currently under construction, I admit that the over all layout doesn't look all that hot. If you have any questions or suggestions, please feel free to ask: jeffwm@uswest.net

Site Construction Static Blog:

Here I'll add all notes I have about what's going on with the site construction as the Webcam records a few more days.

04/11/2008

I've been working on the site's logo. I didn't like the first version I had, so I changed it from a boring static logo to a dynamic logo. To do this, I added some features to my custom application, WWCopy, which will create a new logo once a day from the last seven days of pictures taken. The code I written turned out very well, and was very happy with the mask I was able to use. I still need to work on the mask, since I really don't like the font I'm using.

As I was rapping up the logo, I thought about the idea of changing the background and font color of the site itself based on the logo created. Each day, the site's theme colors will change as well. To do this, I got the overall average color of the logo to use as the background color and for the font color inverted parts of the RGB colors.

Now that I'm done playing, I guess I should create the website itself.

04/13/2008

Reworked my WWCopy utility a bit to update the site to show all pictures taken to date. I added this page more so I could see the day to day change of site's theme.

Daily Photos -- This is just a temporary page.

04/16/2008

Most all work has still been working with the back end of this site. With the use of my WWCopy utility and with the help of the site's GD Graphics Library created a dynamic banner Ad:

As well, added the current video of the project. As of this point it's using the Windows Media Player Object and the DivX codec.

04/23/2008

Wtih most work still on the back end of the site, I'm trying to find a way to get a good color palate to use for the overall site's theme. I think I found the palate of 320 colors by cutting up the latest image of the day into 320 sections and then from each section getting the average color:

Until I find what colors I'm going to use, this site's theme colors may look a bit off. At the end, what this new color palete will give me is a way to give the site's theme a dynamic look each day with the theme changing day by day.

I have started updating the videos with a bit more selection. Each day if my utility finds new files, they will be updated.

05/14/2008

Most all my work still is on the back end of the website. I have added my web links page which I update dialy with any new links I find.

I have been working with what I can do with my images and ways that I can create new images from the use of a great utility I found called ImageMagicK which more or less lets me manipulate the graphics from the commandline. With the use of ImageMagicK, I have moved most of all my graphics routines from VB. I am still using VB to copy the files to the web site and collect the theme colors for the day.

The two main images that I have ImageMagicK create are the main logo of the site and a new animated gif:

There's a bit more I need to work on before I get to the heart of the site itself to make it look a bit more professional.

The over all project has been going well with little to no problems capturing the creek time lapse. I'm on the 43th day with a total of 630MB of footage captured.

[Page viewed: 661 times] [Page last viewed: Saturday May 17, 2008 11:45:39] [Total Pages Viewed: 1211]
[Copyright © 2008 Jeff Mathewson] [Page load time (sec.): 0.149]