The webcams will be switched over to a subscription only service this weekend.

The weather station will follow in the next few weeks.

Use the Contact Us form if you haven’t already told us you would like to subscribe.

UPDATE:
Webcams are now a subscription only service.

The weather station system has been transferred over to a new server due to the previous computer occasionally hanging up. A business grade HP server hooked up to a UPS (Uninterruptible Power Supply) has been installed, from which allayit expects to see considerably less unscheduled downtime. To be fair to the old computer, the Acer Revo really wasn’t designed for 24x7x365 server operation.

Occasionally the weather station generates errant rainfall in a large erratic spike that plays havoc with the weather data. Cumulus, the weather station software, has been updated to the latest beta test build to access many new features and rainfall reading stability improvement. A decision has been made to reset the weather dataset as historic data is available from both Weather Underground and PWS Weather.

Over the next few weeks allayit will be investigating robust webcam solutions. This should improve the reliability of the web camera images, provide more information about the image captures and importantly create an image and video archive of the watercourse levels.

Shortly the “real-time” webcam images and weather information will be moved to a new subscription only service as previously announced on this blog.

FFAG must apologise for the Freuchie Mill weather station being down for the last few weeks. Unfortunately the engineer who looks after this system was unavailable to bring the system back online. Luckily there wasn’t too much call for the service during this period of downtime; Mother Nature was kind to us the last few weeks. The system has been updated and brought back online today.

This service will shortly be moving to new server infrastructure at which time it will become a subscription service for access to up to date weather data. More details to follow once the new system is ready.

The Freuchie Flood Action Group website has been moved onto a new more powerful server. Please let us know if you spot any issues.

We will be taking the weather station computer offline this morning to perform updates.

Apologies for any inconvenience this may cause.

Update: Weather Station update completed successfully.

The previous WordPress theme used on the FFAG blog had a file missing that very occasionally caused a confusing message to be displayed while visitors browsed and searched through blog posts. Unfortunately the development of this free theme appears to have ceased and it would take too much effort and time to fix the problems. As it was also looking a little tired, a new theme has been installed to give a problem free experience to visitors and to give us a fresh new look.

We hope you like it.

As so many people live in Facebook, Freuchie Flood Action Group now has a Facebook page for convenience and to be used as an aid in our ongoing campaign to prevent the future flooding of Freuchie.

You’ll find the Facebook fanbox at the top of the right hand sidebar on this blog.

Update
The eagle eyed amongst you may notice the Facebook fan count is one higher than the number of account avatars or there is a double avatar for one of the fans. This is a bug in the Facebook system. Discussions with another software developer has led us to conclude it would be nigh impossible to get Facebook to recognise and fix this bug! As this isn’t a show stopper we’ll not bother trying to report it to them for it to end up being ignored.

Update 2 
The Facebook fanbox widget was too problematic and was slowing down the blog webpage loading so it has been disabled. A "Find Us on FaceBook" button has been put in place instead. Please use this button to find our Facebook page and then click on the "Like" link.

Technorati Tags: Facebook, flood, flooding, Freuchie, Freuchie Flood Action Group

It has been a costly exercise to develop the services offered by allayit on this websites. Within the next few weeks the weather station and webcamera services currently offered for free will be switched to a subscription service – pricing information and T&Cs will be revealed soon.

The services will also be switched over to a dedicated website that will provide the infrastructure to bring the next generation of services online quickly. It will also allow us to monitor and log account activity to detect and deal with any account abuse.

Publishing of our weather data will also cease on Weather Underground and PWS Weather. The FFAGWSFM Twitter account will be switched to private and only subscribers will be able to follow the hourly weather station updates. Republishing of our weather data and webcamera images will be strictly prohibited and legally enforced.

These charges are being introduced to help pay for the costly infrastructure already installed and to provide funds to further enhance and develop the flood monitoring and warning system. It is also necessary to find a funding mechanism to pay for the energy costs associated with keeping all the computers and electronics running 24×7. The last few years have revealed there is an on-going need for maintenance and routine replacement of equipment which has to operate in an extreme environment.

There will be concessionary rates for people on low income. Free / low cost accounts will also be provided to our councillors, the flood professionals at Fife Council and named staff at Kingdom Housing Association. There will certainly be other people who will qualify for low cost or free accounts.  

Please indicate your interest to maintain access to these services by either talking to John Thomson at No 15 Freuchie Mill or by sending a message using the Contact Us form.

Technorati Tags: allayit, Fife Council, Kingdom Housing, PWS Weather, Weather Underground

BT Openreach is currently working on restoring the landline outage that has prevented the weatherstation and webcams from functioning. They have temporary traffic lights on the B936 between Freuchie and the Newton of Falkland while they work on the main cables at the side of the road.

Technorati Tags: BT Openreach, Freuchie, Newton of Falkland

The Freuchie Mill culvert webcam has been replaced and is now operational. An additional infra-red illuminator has been installed to improve image quality during the hours of darkness. Higher quality lenses with a shorter focal length (wider view) are on order for the webcams to improve the image quality further. The Freuchie Mill road camera will be operation when the new lens have arrive and been fitted to the replacement webcam.

It has been necessary to rig up a temporary access method while the software is being developed to handle not only the webcam images but also a water level monitoring, logging and flood warning alarm system. Hopefully this can all be done before the really nasty weather rolls in and people can go about their business knowing they can keep tabs on the culvert level and be warned when it is getting dangerously high.

Future posts will go into this in more detail as the flood alarm and monitoring system takes shape.

Technorati Tags: flood, Freuchie, Freuchie Mill, webcam