Neil McGarry and his team have been hard at work making the North Side webcam more reliable. SenaWave installed an antenna pole near the new windsock mast (see photos) and buried conduit and cable between the new pole and the camera. Commercial power supplies a Power Over Ethernet (POE) device on the pole that in turn powers the camera, which then talks to the antenna so we can get a live feed of real-time conditions on the North Side.
The POE has proved to be a little finicky and Neil is working to get that up and running. Once we have a good feed to SenaWave, we can install the required viewer on the new website and voila, the NS webcam is back in service. If it were a simple matter of flipping a switch, we would have had a webcam up weeks ago. Thanks to Neil and everyone involved in moving this project forward!
A follow-up to my earlier post regarding the South Side webcam: SenaWave notified me today that "sometime in the spring" they will decommission and remove their solar panels and associated equipment on the South Side. UHGPGA will then have no source of power for a SS webcam.
We're still talking to the State Park about collaborating to get commercial power to the campground, and from there to the restroom area so we can install a new webcam system.
The State Park manager is optimistic that funds can be found and allocated to this project, reducing the costs to the club, but an additional wrinkle: we cannot bury conduit and cable across the parking lot until the State Historic Preservation Office (SHPO) has reviewed the site for the presence of archaeological artifacts—including, presumably, the remains of any early hang glider pilots who might have perished at the Point and picked out an unmarked grave in the parking lot as their final resting place.
It could take as long as a year for SHPO to examine the site and approve excavation for our power supply. In the mean time, the State Park manager says he might have funds to replace our ailing solar panels—a short-term solution while we wait for the archaeologists to give us the green light.