SANParks.org Forums

carried away. no .
it was great
there is no such thing as “carried away”. And it does have that "i wish i could be there felling"

Agreed 100% Matthys Thanks Dani, you are much appreciated i assure you. I tend to lurk in this area rather than post, but I'm very well aware of all the hard work that goes into maintaining the cams and I just love it when you zoom in! Oh and BTW I caught the lions last might!

It looks like Orpen Webcam experienced some power problems with the wet weather around causing the cam to go down... online again!

Danie, could that have applied for Satara as well? I found the cam there a bit dodgy as well over the last week or so when the rain occured.

Hi Lionspoon!

No, the problem at Satara is not power but limited bandwidth. The "Please check back soon" green slide is displayed when the webserver can't 'see' the webcam (the webserver fetches the images directly from the webcam).

If it can't get the image due to line down/camera not available, the "please check back soon" green slide is displayed to our viewers automatically. The data line to Satara is very slow and over utilised and the telecom company can't give us more bandwidth! During certain times of the day (depending on the other data traffic on the same data line), the cam might not be 'reachable' due to congestion on the data line as we give preference to our business traffic first (our physical guests at Satara checking in, paying per credit card, making reservations, etc.)

There is light at the end of the tunnel as we are moving to a new data comms system in KNP in the near future which will have enough bandwidth - the initial planning is looking good!

So we have to live this happening now and then at the moment as there is no other viable option (apart from putting the webcam at Satara via satellite on its own which is quite expensive!)

I hope this looooong explanation helps!

Thanks Matthys, at least we know that our favourite pasttime is being worked on,,, nice to quickly open the cams and check what is going on in the park, missing Orpen sightings. Might be dumb question, can the cam still record while this problem occurs?

Not a dumb question at all, Ladyhawke !
I think that the cam still records, but will have to get confirmation from Danie

Thanks for the update on Orpen, Danie !

I may be wrong, but I do believe no. The cam is not on its own server sitting with it there at any of these waterholes. It is just another device on the internet, with photos being streamed back from it at 30-second intervals. Or rather, if I remember a previous posting of Danie's correctly, the server fetches the photo from the cam every 30 seconds. So the cam is still on, but nothing is taking the photo, so we won't see what there was once it comes back online again.

Ladyhawke, I don't think I've welcomed you before. Welcome, and trust you enjoy it as much as the rest of us, or even more. BTW, interesting name - did you ever see the movie? Can't quite remember now - Jane Seymore?

Hi Guys, anybody know what is happening with cam at Satara? Is the power off again?

I meant to say ORPEN, NOT SATARA..... Please just shooot me

The problem at Orpen is the wireless access point (WAP) sitting in a portion of the reception building at Orpen where power problems are being experienced at the moment. The electrician was on site today but the problem has not yet been resolved.

While he was there, he cleaned the perspex cover of the outdoor housing and replaced a circuit breaker at the webcam itself which has given problems before as well. So the webcam itself is fine but the receiver in the camp (about 100m away) is not able to receive the signal to relay to webcam server in the USA because of the power problem.

To confirm: yes, all 3 webcams are linked to the same webcam server.

Hi there, Danie! Is there any info about why Nossob is down at the moment?

Hi Lionspoon

Apologies for the late reply. It is going rather hectic around here!

I am not 100% why it was down. (I see it is online again at the moment). Will keep an eye on it.

The satellite link to Nossob was up all the time from what I can see from this side. Could have been a problem with the wireless link from the hide (webcam) to the camp.

Thanks for reporting it!

Any reason why Satara has been down since 7pm last night?

Thanks JJ

Satara is down at the moment due to some backup satellite communication equipment being installed for our normal operations at the reception office.

We might add the webcam to that as well depending on the bandwidth availability via satellite at Satara. Our main aim is to ensure our booking and checking in operations are running smoothly even during data line outages that we get frequently at Satara.

Unfortunately we can't link the whole of Satara (all the users) via satellite - it is too expensive and it will be too slow!

Our ICT outsource company engineer is currently on site at Satara to make this all happen automatically in case of an outage. The webcam link is unfortunately affected by this as well - please bear with us!