University installs two new Web cameras
One of the most popular features of the Utah State University Web site will be growing next week.
The webcam on top of the Merrill Library, which is often the second or third most popular part of the usu.edu Web site, will be joined by two new webcams next Friday, current webcam caretaker and FACT Supervisor Kevin Reeve said.
The National Weather Service had three webcams located at different locations in Cache Valley, but was no longer able to use them, Reeve said. A USU alumni heard that the webcams were going out of service, and contacted Reeve to try and get them for USU.
“He put me in touch with a guy at the National Weather Service,” Reeve said. “I e-mailed the guy and said ‘yeah, we’ll take them.'”
It was a year-long process, but Reeve received the cameras and set out to find someone who could take care of them.
“I started going to talk to people on campus, campus planning, network and computing services, trying to figure out – could we? Would they let us [install them?]”
Reeve said he found a caretaker in Technical Support Services, where Chief Engineer Rick Hughes and Engineer Dale Willis said they would install the cameras.
“It would require not a lot of money, but someone who could have power and conduit ran,” Reeve said.
During the past weeks, Willis has been on top of Business Building often, mounting two of the Sanyo-brand cameras to the top of the building inside a container to protect the cameras from the weather. Electrical conduit and connection wires run from the cameras into the eighth floor of the building where they connect to a server that can eventually handle four cameras, Willis said.
The two cameras that have been installed will hopefully be online next Friday, Willis said. One camera will probably be pointed toward the southwest and the other to the northwest. The third camera USU received needs repairs and may never be operational again.
If the third camera is eventually installed, Willis said he would like to see it put on a tower on top of the building and pointed to the east, toward Mount Logan.
When the new webcams are activated, links to them will be available from the current Merrill Library webcam site at www.usu.edu/webcam. Another camera is also available with views of the new library construction. That camera is operated by Facilities.
While webcams are a popular thing at USU, Reeve said, it has not always been that way.
“It’s been an interesting animal, it wasn’t all that popular until all of a sudden I put the weather information on there,” Reeve said. “It’s been five or six years ago, we had this huge snowstorm and all of a sudden the hits went through the roof.”
Reeve said he has received hundreds of e-mails from people all over the world that use the webcam every day.
“They all want more webcams,” Reeve said.
And if all goes well for Hughes and Willis’ installation, next Friday, webcam fanatics will get what they want.-str@cc.usu.edu
(Photo by John Zsiray)