Written by Webcams are currently being installed in flood risk areas of Freuchie to provide a mechanism for the residents to check from anywhere in the world if flooding is putting their property at risk.
At the moment these are still images captured every 5 minutes. In the near future it will be possible to subscribe to a live feed at a small annual charge.
Freuchie Mill is the first area being covered by this new system. Other areas will be done as finances become available to do the work. If you are interested in sponsoring a camera and have mains power and a wired or wireless broadband network available then we’d be interested in hearing from you.
Checkout the Freuchie Webcam Network.
Its great to see the webcam idea being realised, although it seems to be offline for the moment (0032 Thurs).
I’d have volunteered my window for a camera to look out of but unfortunately the only window that I have that doesn’t look straight into the tall trees surrounding Freuchie Mill House, only looks over part of No.3 and the field at the back. You can just about see the top of the burn but thats it.
I noticed the new Freuchie Mill weather station also. Its great being able to see live data directly relating to outside. (having only trees for a view, I kinda feel isolated from whats happening outside!
).
I was wondering if you’d consider signing up to Weather Underground (www.wunderground.com) and letting some of the station’s data appear there.
That means the station would appear on useful maps like this (http://www.wunderground.com/wundermap/?lat=56.25098&lon=-3.33023&zoom=10&type=ter&units=metric&rad=0&wxsn=1&wxsn.mode=tw&svr=0&cams=0&sat=0&riv=0&mm=0&hur=0&fire=0&tor=0&ndfd=0&pix=0&dir=0) and also on Weather Undergound’s vista sidebar gadget.
It would always be another help in trying to predict if and when the next flood is likely to occur.
Keep up the good work! It’s much appreciated!
The webcam won’t be reliably online until I’ve got it mounted outside. Having it pointed out a window isn’t going to work as I found out last night when the darkness started to descend! It is going to be more technical challenging and expensive to mount the camera in the culvert entrance area, but this is the most vital one to get done.
It is amazing how much can be done with a cheapo consumer weather station! The Cumulus software that captures and posts the data onto the web is donationware! It was the use of Culmulus that made me decide upon the hardware we’d be using. There are still some tweaks and final installations steps to take and then we’ll be updating directly to APRS (not sure how that service works yet), PWS and Weather Underground – all are supported by Cumulus. It is amazing that it only took about 4 hours to get the hardware built and the software all configured and posting onto the website. None of this is rocket science!
IME: Anything about 4mm of rainfall per hour over a period of hours is going to cause us problems. 6mm an hour and the water will come up pretty fast. 10mm an hours and we’ll have a rerun of the 2008 flood.
Thankfully the heavy rainfall (6mm/hr) earlier this morning has eased off and we’re back at about 3mm/hr).
I’ve got CCTV camera warning signs to go up as well which is part of the legal requirements. Obviously all the at flood risk residents have no problems with webcams being deployed. In fact, they are looking forward to being able to keep tabs on what is happening when their away from Freuchie Mill. These measures wo’t prevent flooding but it does make the residents feel a bit more in control of events!
If its the old inside being reflected off the glass problem,a quick and dirty way around it is to ‘box’ the camera in to the window. Even putting books or dark card around it helps.
I tinkered with a webcam pointing out of the back window towards the end of last year. But the downstairs neighbour threatened legal action unless I take it down. She claimed I was invading her privacy despite it not looking anywhere near her flat, nor could it phsically. For a quiet life I abandoned it.
Perhaps, sadly, thats another thing to think about when positioning the webcams – make sure the neighbours have no objections.
I had to run Angela into work at Perth early this morning and the roads were pretty bad. The Bein Inn road had heavy floods across it but the worst areas were the Strathmiglo to Falkland road and from Falkland to New Inn. The river Eden at Strath was almost at bursting point.
I must admit I was getting worried on the way back to Freuchie. The condition of the roads were starting to resemble a few weeks ago when we had a brush with disaster.
Hopefully that will be the end of the heavy rain although I see that more is forecast for today. Fingers crossed the burn will cope!
I’ll be keeping an ear out for the air horn just in case though!