Sciencemadness Discussion Board

Timelapse from tall tower?

SupFanat - 29-5-2015 at 04:21

Is it thinkable to mount several cameras on the top of some tall tower and create timelapse every day from 00:00 to 23:59. I mean timelapse of weather in the city.

I'm fearing extremely strict privacy regulations in Europe which are said to be so strict as if it were the only sense of life. They don't have "public space" at all. I hope the view from tall tower has nothing to do with "privacy".

Sulaiman - 29-5-2015 at 04:38

In UK we have cctv cameras all over the place with no warnings/notices.
The default condition is to assume that you are being watched.
Go ahead with the project and worst case if someone contacts you to object then you will have to 'censor' the video.

I think that access to the tower will be your primary problem.

SupFanat - 29-5-2015 at 05:05

I want avoid labeling weather camera as CCTV in the first place. CCTV are "evil" because they're contributing to "mass surveillance" and I don't want my ideas to be evil, I prefer not to be evil.

EarthTV does have access to some towers worldwide.
http://www.earthtv.com/en/

And I don't want to do it myself. I know it's annoying task.
I prefer this task to be done by some company. Since it makes difficult task very easy (just download the file instead of creating it) it deserves some payment.

phlogiston - 29-5-2015 at 13:57

If the tower is really tall and you are filming the weather, there won't be any recognisable people, right?
Do you own the tower? (If it is your property or whoever owns it gave you permission, who can prevent you from filming out of your own window?)




aga - 29-5-2015 at 14:16

Whimsey

Zombie - 30-5-2015 at 00:21

These cameras are all over the planet, and free to monitor on your device.

I watch Times square fairly often. Kind of alleviates the home sick

http://www.earthcam.com/network/?country=us&page=NY

SupFanat - 30-5-2015 at 00:34

I prefer timelapse. In theory the timelapse can be made even spherical (if the viewing point shows 360 degrees of not obscured sky).

Zombie - 30-5-2015 at 00:45

Edit it!

Set you whatever to record for months if you like, and edit it.

SupFanat - 30-5-2015 at 00:51

Quote: Originally posted by Zombie  
Edit it!

Set you whatever to record for months if you like, and edit it.

Thank you for your tip.
But I'm not willing to manually stay 24 hours on a top of some tower, rotate with the tripod to get spherical view and...still have 364 days gap per year. Why? Because there are better ideas what to do manually - such tasks are too boring to be done manually and should be done automatically.

SupFanat - 3-6-2015 at 00:49

EarthTV managed to cooperate with such towers.
So in theory the cooperation should be possible?

SupFanat - 4-6-2015 at 01:17

Explanation of every point for those who don't understand.

Why timelapse? Because the normal speed is boring. Human perception is faster than the most weather phenomena.
earthcam.com shows normal speed, it's mostly too slow.
For example, this two-minute long video is much more interesting than the original 24-hours rotation of Earth.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AncjE1D1aWM

Why sphere? Because the sky is sphere and if you want to make virtual reality you'd want to use sphere as well.

Why every day? Because even if the video contains every day it's still cheap (at least the resulting timelapses are cheap). In fact, even few BD-R disks can contain entire year. A video of a year would last for about 12 hours (from 12:10 to 12:12), it's too long. But 365 2-minutes videos aren't boring.

Why at all? Just like all our weather monitoring systems. But with better visualization.

What about privacy concerns? I personally don't care. The risk of being found from such altitude is almost zero. There are other risks (not related with my idea) which seem to be real and which I do care.

"Recognizable people" isn't a good theme. While it's unrelated with timelapse of weather, it endangers such projects as Street View. What would it mean? A bad thing: my own trip experience doesn't belong to me but to passers on my way instead! So why travel at all?

SupFanat - 30-6-2015 at 09:11

This question is still up-to-date for me.
The best thing I can do is sending feedback to companies which could do it.

unionised - 30-6-2015 at 12:13

Where did you get the idea that there are " extremely strict privacy regulations in Europe which are said to be so strict as if it were the only sense of life. They don't have "public space" at all."?


SupFanat - 30-6-2015 at 15:56

This idea came because of some other disappointing case. :(

SupFanat - 9-9-2015 at 03:00

The question is still valid.
There are lots of weather conditions and manual filming it all isn't funny. Only the final result is.
Meanwhile such idea is now implemented in Seattle (unfortunately not perfect)
http://www.spaceneedle.com/webcam/
If they want to be better, they'd need some improvement.
1. Most important improvement - 24 hours a day, not only the daytime. It's not something very difficult - if even GoPro has now nightlapse function, it's not difficult at all. Better some motion blur of clouds that complete darkness.
2. Maybe smaller step than 10 minutes (if it's going to be timelapse video)
3. Maybe somewhat better vertical field of view
Let's hope it's going to be improved.