I have been looking for a similar project since.

Then, a little over a year ago, I got a request from Cousin Peter in Australia for a different sort of time-lapse film. Peter wanted to see the result of 1 shot at the same time each day from the Farm Cam, rather than a single day compressed into one video. A long term project, which I accepted.

Based on Peter’s request, I created a new action in EvoCam that would snap a photo at noon each day. That action would also collect all of those images together until I was ready to export them. And then I waited. [If you are interested in the details on how this on-going video project works, check the tutorial.]

Today I am ready to share the video, and I am pleased with the results. The final video is made up of 355 images, ten short of a year’s worth. This is due to power outages, or computer failures.

Note: All videos on this page contain music.

Noon All Year

Bonus Material

If you’re still here and want more, I also made videos of sunrise and sunset for one year, and set them to music as well. The clips that make up these time-lapses are shot at sunrise and sunset — set by my location — each day, collected in a file, and now I have exported them as short films.

A Year of Sunrises

A Year of Sunsets

Interview with Gage Hill Crafts

Check out my interview with Gage Hill Crafts on this project…

If all goes as planned (stop laughing!), this will be enough to help keep EvoCam running between restarts.  If not? Then the next step is increase the frequency of the reboots until I can set up the Mac Mini, and start all over on that machine.

Because, I am all out of options as far as out-of-the-box software after giving SecuritySpy a close look this weekend. The results, as always, were mixed.

Let me start off by saying SecuritySpy is a very sweet piece of software. It especially has great documentation and a responsive developer and forum community. Designed for monitoring property, it has many features that are appealing such as motion detection, a remote streaming service, and even an iOS app. However, when I tried to recreate all the actions I use for this website, I wasn’t able to accomplish everything.

I didn’t start off planning to give SecuritySpy (another) trial when I downloaded it on Saturday. I am doing some research for another camera-related project, and saw that the Ben Software product was listed as the only known Mac software that worked with the device I was investigating. The last thing I want is another project that I spend too much time fixing!

The pluses were that I was easily able to add my Hikvision camera, and that it was intuitive to have it upload a still image every 30 seconds. The minuses were that while it can save stills locally it doesn’t have a built-in method for stitching them together, and saving them as a video. Meaning that it can’t do time-lapse.  It does have the ability to change the playback rate of any continuous video it captures, which simulates time-lapse, but the resulting files are humongous by comparison to the current file sizes.

The other drawbacks SecuritySpy posed for me when it comes to recreating the FarmCam, is the scheduling feature. SecuritySpy doesn’t appear to have a way to schedule starting and stopping processes based on light sensors or location services to determine sunrise or sunset. Not to mention the inability to use any font I want as the overlay for the timestamp.

In other words, instead of dealing with a few crashes, I would have to write Automator applications with multiple steps and run cronjobs again.

I am very intrigued at the future use of SecuritySpy for my possible next project, but for now the search continues for macOS software that can do all the things EvoCam can.

A few days ago we had our first crash since the modifications I made were put in place, and I am realising that the likely issue is a software bug in EvoCam which is causing a kernel panic. For not the first time I recently looked at the iMac and EvoCam had crashed, and the computer had locked up. Hard rebooting results in seeing a computer shut down due to an error message each time. I’m not a computer surgeon, but that doesn’t seem right.

That makes my next step to get down to the minimum number of open applications running and see if the issue continues. That will be EvoCam and Airmail. The latter because I use it to filter spam to reduce the spam I see on my other devices.

After that, my options appear to be to automate a restart of the computer and see if that helps. The crashes aren’t so frequent that a weekly restart would likely do the trick. Or I could try running EvoCam on my (currently) unused Mac Mini, and allow it to run as the webcam’ dedicated computer.

For now, we do our best to take care of EvoCam.

Every time I make a change to EvoCam or to the Hikvision settings, something new occurs. Not necessarily good or bad, just new. And times like this I am simply baffled.

Again, it’s time to look under the hood.

I thought I had turned off the so-called night vision — there is no setting called night vision for my camera, but we’ll get to that — when I made adjustments to the white balance. I had assumed that when I adjusted the white balance from default (AWB1) to Nature Light, that the darker screen meant the feature was disabled. I also assumed that making this change made the green screens go away. It may have, but it could be other things. I recently did a fresh macOS install and I have made many changes to the EvoCam settings since I last had a green screen occur. Can’t assume anything at this point.

When I consolidated the tabs, I noticed that the night vision (just easier to say that, at this point in this narrative) returned; and no changes to the camera settings were made. I scratched by head, but it was time for bed. As long as there weren’t any green screen errors, I would be fine with this freaky change at least until I had time to sleep and think.

In the morning, I checked the footage for the 24-hour timelapse, and was please that not a single frame was green.  Win, I thought. Then I checked the daylight-only timelapse, and saw the problem.

With the night vision back on, there was enough light that EvoCam’s light sensor thought it was daylight. Therefore I had two identical timelapses, and would continue to have two unless something was done.

I played around with the Hikvision interface, and noticed it was the WDR options under Backlight Settings creating the night vision effect. I did a quick video search for my camera model and WDR and learned a bit more about the setting. I decided to leave it on and check the results for the daytime images the next day.

But not before creating a test Action in EvoCam to see if I could still recreate the daylight-only timelapse without the light sensor or disabling WDR.

There is an Action setting for “every day when it is daytime (or nighttime)” which uses location services in macOS to determine sunrise and sunset at the location. This means that the resulting timelapse will start exactly at sunrise and end exactly at sunset. However, unlike the conditions option in use for the sunset and sunrise images, there is no way to offset that time. Not ideal, but it appears to be my best option. I know at least one person — possibly my only viewer — who says she likes the daylight option. And I have plans for the daylight videos to be stitched together. So as of today this method will replace the old light sensor version of the daylight movie.

My opinion so far is that WDR handles shadows in a superior way to when it is turned off; especially around the barn and tree line. The colors appear a bit brighter to me, as well. Ergo, for now, more changes, tweaks, and experimenting… the way I like it.

If it ain’t broke, it ain’t fun, right?

Sigh.

I am not too busy at work, so I quickly go through all the usual steps to try and figure out why I can’t see the camera image in EvoCam. Including:

• Connect to the camera via it’s maker’s software. 
• Connect to the camera via the web interface. 
• Restarted EvoCam, the router, and the iMac. 

While logged into the AirPort Extreme via Airport Utility, I noticed that there weren’t many devices connected to it. This likely meant that it was a hardware or power issue. Since I could connect to the iMac via VPN that ruled out power.

Because of the snow storm, we were sent home to work remotely. But when I got home, I still did things the hard way. I looked at the switch and it looked to be working. Lights flashing on the appropriate ports. The PoE Injector was dangling a bit from the AC outlet, but the lights were on and it looked to be functioning.

So then I turned to cables. And naturaly I did this the wrong way as well. I started by unplugging the cable from the PoE to the switch. I changing the port. Then I decided to grab a new Ethernet cable. I was going to bypass the switch and go right to the router. I plugged the cable into the PoE and as I approached the router, I had a flash…

This morning, you moved the router to tuck the telephone line and power cable behind it. Did you…?

I reached behind the AirPort Extreme and pressed on the cable that leads to the switch.

Click.

Sigh.

That was it. I got in my own way (again) and created a problem for myself. This time because 2 small black cords were distracting to me. And then I kicked myself some more when I realized I didn’t even think of the most simple of checks by failing to turn on the AppleTV to see if it could connect.

Now the silver linings.

While I had been futzing with EvoCam from work in the morning, I noticed that the time-lapse movie was huge in file size. When I was home, I took a peek and noticed that I had 2 different processes writing to the same file name. This led to the movie being a combination of the last 3 days worth of video. I think I sorted that out, and I may not have noticed had I not screwed something else up!

Also, by doing all that hard work a few weeks ago organizing cables, and bypassing my wireless kluge, I freed up an old Airport Express. It sat on my desk for a few weeks, not unnoticed, as I discovered the grey of the Apple logo is the color I want to paint the upstairs bedroom/library/office/exercise room. The reason having the device was handy is that I was able to use it to plug the VoIP telephone from work in and be able to have it near the iMac which I use to screen share to the office so I can work from home. Much better than last time, when the phone was downstairs plugged into the AirPort Extreme and I had to put people on hold and run upstairs to look things up or troubleshoot.

So, I got that going for me.

I like to pretend that what I am creating with the FarmCam Project is like software development; each tweak or improvement a new version. Sometimes it feels that way as I wrestle with EvoCam to get the most out of the abandoned software, that has gone dark without explanation. I can’t just make a support request or post to a support forum. If there are diehard EvoCam enthusiasts, I have no idea where to find them.

These instructional entries are here for two reasons. One, I hope to help others who may have similar interests — or needs — to my own. Secondly, if I don’t write this stuff down somewhere, I am likely to break something and forget WTF I did. These are my own manuals in some sense. Hence, many entries with lots of guess work and promises to report back later. Most of the time I forget to do some things in advance, and I am left wondering if a change will make any difference at all. Other times, I’m not patient enough to test things before I write about them here. [This is another of those times!]

Tab-less With Benefits

Today I am going to discuss using fewer tabs in EvoCam, and stream-lining one session while naming EvoCam Actions to help organise the tasks. This task is not exclusively to make things pretty, but an effort to prevent EvoCam from crashing.

I assume that the idea behind EvoCam’s tab feature is to allow one to use the software to manage multiple video feeds. For the last year or so, I have been using them to manage other project tasks, but always from the same video feed. My theory is that doing so was using more system resources, and possibly causing the software to crash more frequently.

If you read this site, you may recall that I recently took great joy in wiping my 6-year-old iMac’s hard drive and doing a fresh install of macOS.  One of the reasons I did this was to try and isolate the FarmCam project, and reduce the number of other applications vying for system resources. There is very little else running on the iMac other than the necessary applications to power the project.  EvoCam to grab the images, save them, and upload them to the website, and very little else. I also took advantage of the clean install to organise the directory structure for the FarmCam project. Previously I had everything saved in a sub-directory of a sub directory of the Movies directory that comes with macOS … and I mean everything.

So recently when I noticed EvoCam crashing more frequently, with most other applications running fine, I looked for what I could do to reduce the resources being used by EvoCam.  Since it’s a clean install with so few things running there’s a chance it is a memory leak or something out of my control too. But I wanted to see if I could come up with an answer. I can’t give up on EvoCam. At least not until I can find something that can do all the things I need it to do, and I have been looking for over a year now.

Moment

Yesterday, while I was writing about my truck problems — still in the shop, thanks for asking — I was also clicking back and forth between the EvoCam tabs for each part of the project.

Each time I chose a tab, I typed ⌘K to view the settings for that tab, and the tab size would grow based on the window size of the previous tab. Being a bit of a neat freak when it comes to my desktops meant that I would then have to re-size EvoCam when I was done. This is my issue, and I own it, but my issue led me to a possible solution to the crashing challenge.

I had started these tabs as ways to try out new things, and then it just became a hassle to unwind the knot I had created.  I assume software developers have similar challenges — on a greater scale of complexity, natch.

One tab was named oncedaily, and it ran the Daily Sunrise, Daily Noon, and Daily Sunset features. The next one was named dailymovie and it ran the Daylight Timelapse process. The third, which was actually the original, was titled FarmCamNew, and it controlled the still image that is displayed every 30 seconds as well as the 24-hour Daily Timelapse.

Each of these tabs was displaying the exact same video feed from the exact same camera!

My solution was to take screen grabs of the settings for all of the EvoCam Actions across all three tabs. Then I recreated each Action from the extraneous tabs, and added them to the FarmCamNew session. After they were transferred, I renamed each Action and grouped them in the Set drop-down [see image] so they are easily discernible. When I was done, I closed the oncedaily and dailymovie tabs, running everything as FarmCamNew.

I typed ⌘S to save, and now I wait.

I said above that I often don’t plan these tests very well until they are in process or done completely. In this experiment, I neglected to check the Activity Monitor before I made all my changes and binned the old tabs. I had looked at the Activity Monitor last week, and I think I recall seeing constant %CPU readings in the mid-30s at least for EvoCam. I was surprised that EvoCam — and VTDecoderXPCService — were the 2 biggest CPU hogs.

However, as I typed this entry, I have closely watched the Activity Monitor, and EvoCam has averaged about 7.5% and VTDecoderXPCService at around 15%. EvoCam also appears to only use around 3% (or less) when it is in Hide and Leave Active mode. Every 30 seconds — time between still images for the FarmCam — the CPU usage goes up a few percentage points, which is understandable, but nothing that seems excessive.

I hope I am right about this, but I’d be lying if I didn’t say my first desire was for something that looked better on my desktop. Not crashing so often would be a huge bonus.

So I returned to Automator and created a three-step workflow to take the two movies created daily, rename them with their creation date as part of the file name, and then move those to another local directory.

Now I don’t know about you, but I am not a *nix guru.  Not even close.  But I can search, read, and follow directions. Plus, I am not trying to schedule something challenging. In this case, all I need to do is run my Automator application each day at five minutes after midnight. With a few keystrokes I was in Terminal.app and had my schedule:

5 0 * * * /Applications/FarmCamArchive.app

That translates to running my three-step Automator application every day at 12:05am (crontab.guru is a great cron deciphering tool). Plug in your own variables and it will instantly translate it to English.

All was well until I reformatted the iMac’s drive and did a fresh install of macOS. Suddenly my cron wasn’t working. I could run the Automator application, but it wasn’t running on its own anymore. I ran a few tests on the iMac with little success, and then decided to try a free graphical app I had called CronniX. This is a great app if you are a n00b to all this, and just need to automate a few things. I found my solution through a checkbox in the CronniX settings to “prepend /usr/bin/open”. YMMV.

Now I am inspired to try a few other scheduled tasks. The next one is a monthly archiving of the daily movies that are on my local drive. So I wrote an Automator workflow to take a month’s worth of timelapses (x2!), compress them to a ZIP, rename them with their creation date, and move the originals to the system trash.  The schedule for that job is:

10 0 1 * * /Applications/MonthlyArchive.app

The Automator was a little more confusing to get right, but that’s another story.

Anyway, it was great fun learning a new thing, and finding a free tool to make things a little bit easier for novice like me.

What to CronniX next?

* sorry, I couldn’t help myself with the title. I was going for the straight-up weed references, but this is kinda a twofer.

My experiments in the last few days have resulted in mixed — but encouraging — results, and as promised I am sharing them with you.

Good Things I Learned

EvoCam export action settings

First, a few of things I like about EvoCam’s time lapse export feature:

• The process is self-contained. EvoCam acts as the file converter and the FTP client. I already use the FTP settings in the software to upload the still images, so when the time lapse movie is created by EvoCam, it easily uploads it to this website without having to use a third party FTP client.
• Control over the frames per second (FPS) settings.  With the current process, I have no control over the frames per second, meaning that the speed of the daily video is going to be 30fps.  With the EvoCam settings I can decide just how fast the individual frames are displayed in the finished product. I have been experimenting with frame rates as low as 5, and as high as 15. The results are pleasing.

Minor Downsides

Some downsides do exist, but EvoCam helps minimize some of the impacts:

• By slowing the video down, I make for a longer watching experience. This wouldn’t be an issue if most of the videos — especially in winter! — weren’t complete darkness; however, since making the adjustments to the white balance settings, that is the case. The solution to this, so far, has been to use EvoCam’s light detection feature. Each video starts just around daybreak, and ends just after sunset. The drawback, is that any celestial movements such as the moon or bright stars are missed.
  

  EvoCam light detection settings

• File size concerns. I would love to include the night time hours for the reasons above. Slowing down the time between images in the video means the video’s file size may get to the point where I lose a portion of my (already very small) audience.  The experiments with daytime-only videos are resulting in videos that are of a manageable size, but that is also a result of using stills taken 60 seconds apart as opposed to the 30 second intervals I currently use. More images, and slowing things down could mean a much more bloated final video. I have the bandwidth thanks to my awesome ISP (also my employer), but many of my neighbors either have slow DSL or services such as satellite with bandwidth caps.

Further Questions to be Answered

One the most frustrating thing about all this is that EvoCam’s developer disappeared without a trace over a year ago, and I worry about the future of my little hobby. I have been unable to find similar software that does half of the things that I want, nay, need for my projects. For the time being the software is stable, but I wish that someone would be willing and able to take it over if the former developer is done with it. If you know how this can be accomplished, please do hit me up.

For now, my experiments continue.  I still have a few things I need to investigate. For example, I am not sure how to control archiving or names of the files. I am fine if the local files are simply sequential (i.e., daily-1.mp4, daily-2.mp4) because I will have the creation dates to let me know the date of the footage. I like to review the videos to see if they contain anything funny, unusual, or unique.

But, I need the uploaded file to always be the same (daily.mp4) so that I don’t have to adjust the HTML. Based on the results when the “delete movie …” setting is enabled, I assume this will be the case; however, as usual, I just thought of this whilst I was typing the paragraph above.

Parting Thoughts

As I said in the opening of this entry, there are some benefits and drawbacks to both methods. The great news is I don’t really have to choose. The current method is hacked together, but it is working (knock wood). And I can continue to run my experiments without them getting in the way of the other method.

Right now it is looking promising that I can stop running the previous method, and do all of the things above within EvoCam. If I do, you’ll be the first to know.

UPDATE: 7 January, 2018

Found out that if one does not check “delete movie…” EvoCam saves only one instance of the resulting video, overwriting the previous day.  This is far from a setback; my quick solution was to create a three-step Automator workflow to rename the video file each day, and move the file to a local archive directory. However, if this is to be a viable replacement from my hacked method, I will need to figure out what time to stop the EvoCam video, and what time to run the cronjob for the archiving workflow. This isn’t an issue with my test model as I am only recording during daylight hours.  But if I want the video to run from as close to 00:00:00 to 23:59:59 as possible, then I need to time things properly. EvoCam needs to export the video to the local folder, upload the file via its built-in FTP. Then the cronjob needs to run an upload the resulting video before the new video is created.

Never mind, the above is all wrong! The way EvoCam works is it hold the images for the new day’s video until it is time to make the video.  Therefore, it I don’t need to time when I run the cronjob. I feel silly now.

I knew this would be easily accomplished with EvoCam by adding a new action set; so I set up a test, and let it run from 17 October through the last day of 2017. I used EvoCam to manually export the video to MP4 at 5 FPS. Below is the result. [edit: file is missing to history]

During this experiment I learned a few things:

• EvoCam software has location abilities, so I am able to have it do things at sunrise and sunset for my location. Therefore, in addition to the Daily Noon image, I have added a Daily Sunrise and Daily Sunset. These are still photos uploaded daily, and can be viewed with the other stills and videos on the FarmCam page. I will make time lapses from the images, but not sure if they will be seasonal or yearly.
• EvoCam may be able to allow me to cut out my buggy Automator cron job. Right now the encoding from the EvoCam MOV to an M4V is done via default settings in Automator. Then I use the Automator app to convert the M4V to MP4 and upload the file via FTP.  I am running tests now to see if EvoCam can export the final video as an MP4 rather than a MOV. It has a feature for uploading the resulting video to the web server, which is a good thing.
• If EvoCam can export as an MP4 then I can control the frames per second for playback as well. This allows me to slow down the final daily time lapse video, therefore making it more enjoyable viewing. Things that currently flash past, like animals, birds, cars, sheep, llamas, dogs, etc, will be visible.  The downside is that the video itself will be longer.  That may mean I will need to take stills once every 60 seconds instead of every 30 in order to reduce the final run time for the rustling time lapses.

I should have the answers to the experiment by tomorrow, and I can then make decisions.  Updates will follow.

Fingers crossed.

I had planned to debut the new webcam on New Year’s Day, but I didn’t so much get bogged down with the adding of the new camera to the mix as much as with the details of the look of the website and the automation process.  I wanted to get it as close to right as I could, and each time I would start to write something about some part of the process I would come up with a way to improve it.  For the past week or so, I have been playing with the look of the site, checking that the Automator process is functioning as it should, and making sure the place is nice and tidy for any new visitors. It certainly isn’t perfect.  Like everything else on this site it is “always a work in progress.”

A Bit of History

This post is going to serve as my return to the webcam world even though I have never really left it.  I started playing with webcams in the early 90s, using Logitech ball cameras. In 1996 I bought a VHS-C camera (yes, I still have it) and pointed out the window of my flat in Washington, DC. I had to come up with a way to transmit the image wirelessly across the room to where the Internet lived and my clunky old Pentium computer was tethered so I used RF wireless transmitters, and it worked.

I took short breaks from anything updating regularly until we moved to Vermont.  First a small cam pointing at the local fire department across the street from our tiny flat in Montpelier, and then from the window of our upstairs spare room — which we can the library — at our current home in Tunbridge, Vermont.

For nearly 7 years the webcam was powered by a Canon digital camcorder, which I hacked to run continuously simply by leaving a tape out of the unit. It was mounted on a big tripod which was precariously balanced on a 15-year-old flat pack shelf and an old portable case for carrying 45rpm records in the 70s.  Seriously. Due to the constant glare I had a black bath towel pinned to the window casing and draped over the camera like an old hooded camera from the 1800s.  The setup needed a firewire cable connected to a firewire-to-lightning adapter, and had to be physically connected to the iMac in my office.

The New Stuff

Since the start of 2016 the webcam is powered by a 4MP high-definition CCTV-quality security camera made by HikVision. I had originally asked Santa for a Foscam, but when I played with it shortly after its unboxing I was disappointed in it’s image quality when pointed out the window and it’s cheap plastic casing.  It was a glorified baby monitor, and I wanted more. So I did some more research and decided to forgo the pan/tilt/zoom feature I thought I craved in exchange for the high-definition camera that would showcase the amazing view we have here at our farm. I think I made the right choice.

The HikVision is mounted outside on a post on our front porch under the roof eave.  It is protected from the elements, but doesn’t need to be coddled. It is well-made of metal and fits in my hand.  It is a Network Camera which can be accessed via IP, but it is not wireless, so I ran CAT-5 from the camera, down the post, under the front porch and through the wall to the basement. In the basement the CAT-5 connects to a PoE injector and then to an Apple Airport Express where the signal is sent to the network.  I left some slack in the CAT-5 as I may eventually plug it directly into the main router. In addition to being configurable (on a Mac no less!) via an application — iVMS 4200 — it can also be configured via a web browser or the free iOS app — iVMS 4500 lite.

If, like me, you are a Mac user then iVMS 4200 is invaluable.  When I first started reading about the camera I eventually purchased, there was plenty of information about configuring the camera via Windows, but I wasn’t finding any OS X information at all.  Even the manual that came with the camera doesn’t mention that there is Mac software available on the camera maker’s site.  So I spent some time before the camera arrived instilling Parallels assuming I would need a little extra help configuring the camera. iVMS 4200 and a web browser were all I really needed, and that is a relief.

I am not going to go into all of the features of the DS-2CD2042WD-I (aka 2042), but some of my favorites are the 4MP image, the HD features, the complete control over the camera’s settings, and the infrared night vision.  The latter was actually an unexpected bonus, and has shown some interesting visitors to the property, but mostly deer.  The IR works really well with almost any light in the frame, and allowed me to even see the movement of the clouds at night when the lights on the barn (~500 feet away) on.  With the barn lights off, I can see cars going up and down the road, snow machines on Killington, and even stars moving across the sky.  Cool stuff.  I may have to put some solar powered lights in the yard for dark night’s when the barn lights aren’t on.

That’s it for this post.  In the near future I plan to write about the other software that makes the webcam possible, and the Automator script I wrote to automatically update the Daily Time-lapse feature.