It was a sad day. On Thursday, 14 May of this year, the Wambooli PorchCam died.
Well, it didn’t die, but it became unserviceable. Like a fool, I installed an update to the camera’s firmware. Because the camera stupidly uses the awful ActiveX web interface, I was unable to access the camera’s administrative pages from any modern web browser. I effectively lost control over the device, so I had to retire it.
Not only that, but the weather service I’d been using discontinued its RSS feed, so the web page’s current weather information was no longer available.
The replacement camera I purchased also used ActiveX, so I returned it (after great struggle). Since May of this year, the Wambooli website has been without a PorchCam. Still, I have archived a few images since before its demise. Here is the Gallery:
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- January 14. This was the extent of the snow we received last winter.
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- February 13. The past winter was amazingly light. Wildflowers started popping up here in February.
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- April 6. And early morning rain shower, but not for long!
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- April 6. The rain turns into snow.
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- April 13. That’s kitty Annabelle guarding the house.
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- May 14. The final image. See how the size is much larger and the text is misplaced? I couldn’t correct that without access to the Admin page.
I’m still on the lookout for a new webcam. It would be a fun project to set up another one! I refuse to do so, however, until the webcam manufacturers (and it’s probably just one manufacturer over in Asia because all the webcams are essentially identical) update their web server software so that it does not use ActiveX.
