Because I am Still Grateful

 Work will continue on the Lantern Room project today. A vendor will take a look this morning. 

I spent a good part of the day yesterday trying to figure out ways to relight some of the web cams. 

The funds that were donated to buy those cameras came in large part from the Stahr family and I do not take that for granted. I would like to see as many back on as I can rig without being in the way of the priority project which is first shoring up the lantern room in anticipation of the winter, then moving to a more long lasting rebuild of the structure with new frames and copper cover. I remain very grateful for their donations and want to see those donations realized and not set aside.

This look is what I came up with yesterday.

This is a rafters view of the runway between the Cottage and the Tower. I will be cleaning up those rafters later in the day and this could be slightly adjusted as a result. For now it is another way for guests to the blog to see what is happening during a tour. There are panels with different stories of the history here, along with several tablets running video and digital slide shows.

There are now four shots missing from what was here before: the Minot camera, The Jetty camera, the Looking North Camera, and the Looking South camera. 

Bringing back a shot of Minot would be a challenge. I have an outside chance of doing it.

Bringing back the others is not as much of a priority as some of the cameras in place cover the angles with a twist.

What I will work on is finding other shots. The ideal would be to somehow cover the front of the Tower and I give those odds to be 50/50. That could happen.  Keep coming back to see.

Four Looks Back Online (and One Improved)

Four of the cameras have been pulled out of their brief hibernation. I have brought the Seawall camera and the South Jetty camera back on line with some razzle dazzle with the wiring. I have just finished figuring out how to bring back a shot of the harbor and the camera inside the light.

It is a good dry day for being on a ladder and dancing with Cat5 cables. 

This last view is a new angle for the Looking East camera. I had long thought I could get more of a storm if I could find the right angle for this and today I think I landed there.

Getting Ready with A Step Back

The cameras that were based in the lantern room have gone into hibernation in order that the Trustees can evaluate the room in order to restore it to full health. 

The only source of power in the Tower is in the Lantern room. I had tried to bring in a source lower down but that effort can be considered a casualty of the pandemic. With the Tower off limits for so long our electrician moved on to other jobs. 

There were evaluators here yesterday and I recognized, (even if they were too polite to say it) that the power strip and the other wires used to bring the cameras to life were obstacles to what they were trying to do. This morning it got cleaned up but in the process 8 of the cameras went off line. 

The Jetty, the Harbor, the South Jetty, the Inside, the Looking North, the Looking South, Minot, and the Seawall were all based off a router found at the top of the second stair. This network was the son of a town project to bring wifi to the parking lot and to the boats on moorings. When that initiative was pulled out by the Town I used the wiring to build the wider network of cameras.

So lets hope that this is only temporary. Perhaps a more clean way of installing the links will be part of the renovation process. There are still 7 cameras covering a lot of the angles. I will be working on turning the Looking East camera so that it pans along the seawall. That is a shot that is really valuable in a storm and I will do my best to bring it back. 

I also have cameras that shared through the blog that pan that way and also cover along the Jetty. Those are down as well but I am going to figure out a way to bring them back up and at least have those photographs and short videos to share.