Yamacam Goes Live

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Yup power is brutal, it worked great last wk with all the sun up top.:d and it will work better with longer days and better weather.
We put a timer on it to conserve power and every time power goes off now it offsets timer and the view. I have to move it every morning or find a friend who can. Then try and find someone going up who can reset the system.
Having people staying late into the evening and running the lights till power is dead doesn`t help.
Found one of the lights in cabin it`s timer wasn`t working.
Sometimes the sattelite is a problem. A vicious circle some days. It has been a huge learning curve, good thing my hair is gray. lol and a good thing I still have friends who will answer my calls still and work with me.
We are looking at having the camera have it`s own power system with solar panels and forklift batteries, again thanks to friends. But this will happen next season.
So not trying to make excuses just letting you know what is up.
On average the Yamacam gets 500 hits a day and more when there is snow in the forecast. So a lot of you are using it and it does work great to increase traffic to the club`s website.
It will get better, just gotta work out the bugs. Trying!!!!
 

TylerG

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thanks for your continued effort & experimentation on this project Kathy!
 

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YamaCam | Revelstoke Snowmobile Club

Yes it was working and is down again due to no power. Ran the genny last Wed and camera ran till Sun with 2560 views without system fully charged and this is an improvement. The page describes the changes we have made to conserve power. We need to run generator 3 days to fully charge system, no solar in forecast to collect. We will try to get back up on Fri. to run genny, now is the challenge to try and get up in the 6x6 and get stuck in snow and mud or be able to drive a truck far enough up to unload your sled and run on not enough snow and either way we need to haul fuel. There is no rd and there is an elevation closure to wheeled vehicles. The club can only travel up to do maintenance at cabin. Until we have groomers running up on a regular basis to run generator camera transmission will be intermittent due to access and power.
Snow dancing is recommended and lots of it so we can truck groomers up to the snowline to start the grooming program.
We are trying.
 

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Hey have you guys considered a sensor inside for the lights? No activity after 5mins and lights turn off? Also maybe decrease your camera update rate?
Just a thought I'm sure you guys thought of these already! As always thanks for your hard work!
 

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What kind of geny are you running. Is there no way to do auto start on low battery? It's pretty simple depending on your generator. What kind of communication are you running to town to get the signal down. Is it just done over regular cellular? You might be able to add some I/O to do some remote start/stop stuff. We do it out in the patch all the time.
 

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Hi guys, yes we do have timers on lights in cabin and we have changed the camera update rate, have it hosted on another site and changed run time. Last time we charged the generator for 2 days and camera ran for us for 7 days.
Still need to run them 3 days to fully charge system.
The system is run off a satellite, thing is we still need someone to haul up fuel and fill generators if we had an auto start. When grooming program starts we have the operators run them on a regular basis.
Lots of people checking camera, close to 600 yesterday.
As soon as we find a volunteer to go up and run system I will let you know.
I hope it is soon too.
It has been raining hard in town and cooler temps so should be snow at cabin elevation not rain like last wk.
 

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Would you not consider extending the picture intervals to conserve power? Not sure it's necessary to have a pic taken every 15min? Or sizing a proper battery bank for the demand.
 

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Hi guys, yes we do have timers on lights in cabin and we have changed the camera update rate, have it hosted on another site and changed run time. Last time we charged the generator for 2 days and camera ran for us for 7 days.
Still need to run them 3 days to fully charge system.
The system is run off a satellite, thing is we still need someone to haul up fuel and fill generators if we had an auto start. When grooming program starts we have the operators run them on a regular basis.
Lots of people checking camera, close to 600 yesterday.
As soon as we find a volunteer to go up and run system I will let you know.
I hope it is soon too.
It has been raining hard in town and cooler temps so should be snow at cabin elevation not rain like last wk.


Just a question, last year I went up the cabin at least 10 times and coming down late.. I never been able to turn on the lights in the cabin. Is there a special procedure? Nobody there seemed to know either at the time
 

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Kanedog 2015-2019, thanks for the good times S&M!
What kind of geny are you running. Is there no way to do auto start on low battery? It's pretty simple depending on your generator. What kind of communication are you running to town to get the signal down. Is it just done over regular cellular? You might be able to add some I/O to do some remote start/stop stuff. We do it out in the patch all the time.

Feel free to pack up an autostart gen system and install it if its that easy. I mean, if its done in the oil patch then it should be easy peasy for ya. Take some gas too if ya got some extra room on yer sled. Thx for your time refurbing the cam system.
 
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kimrick

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Just a question, last year I went up the cabin at least 10 times and coming down late.. I never been able to turn on the lights in the cabin. Is there a special procedure? Nobody there seemed to know either at the time
All that has to be done is turn on the timer,

Without the generator running the batteries drain down with Yamacam and folks using the lights during the day.

Unfortunately, people do not understand the we are not plugged into the local "Cedar Tree Power".

We are generally still late on the hill and have good LED compact flashlights and headlamps to have a little light to chop some wood and warm up before heading down.

Lights are a nice thing but one has to remember that with the heavy usage of one of the most presitageous cabins for a snowmobile area. The club is providing some fantastic facilities.

On bright and sunny days this is not an issue with the solar recharging, but snowy overcast days do not provide the power for the available demand.....

Good question and thank you for asking.....

The club is continually imroving things to reduce these issues...

Cheers and happy sledding
 
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team dirt

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Feel free to pack up an autostart gen system and install it if its that easy. I mean, if its done in the oil patch then it should be easy peasy for ya. Take some gas too if ya got some extra room on yer sled. Thx for your time refurbing the cam system.
Thanks for being a huge d!ck. It’s greatly appreciated. I actually could do it real simple and real cheap. Also there’s such things as larger fuel tanks that would last all season. Fill it in the fall last all winter. Just trying to help and put some ideas out there. It’s stupid pr!cks like you that just add to the problem. I am actually on the executive in a small club not far from revelstoke and work my a$s off to make people’s Sledding just a little bit better with little respect from some people so thanks for your stupid unthought out reply
 

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Are the generators Inverter type or square wave output?

Huge charging capacity difference between the cheap 3600 rpm square wave AC output generators and a pure AC sine wave inverter.

Speaking from personal experience....the difference between my first $400 3000 watt gen set and my second $2500 3000 watt Honda inverter was amazing. The square wave AC outputs of the cheap gensets do not charge efficiently. The square wave generators run at full RPM and take forever to charge batteries...the Honda sine wave inverter I had would run at idle and charge at least 4 times faster.
 
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