TrafficCam

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TrafficCam

Gear to record video of the pedestrian crossing and the speed of Eastbound traffic in front of Earlham on National Road West.

Research

Shopping

Current wifi card

Current battery and charge controller

Possible technologies

  • Technologic Systems single-board computer
  • WiFi interface with directional antenna
  • DRS1000 Delta speed sensor
  • Axis weatherproof camera - Consider the AXIS 211
  • POE injector - homebrew with e.g. Linksys vs one with native 12VDC input capability
  • Weatherproof case - Consider the AXIS ACH13HB, the datasheet is available at the same URL as the AXIS 211 camera (above) or the AXIS 290B
  • Mounting pole
  • Step ladder
  • Rope
  • Power Source
  • Large IDE HDD (750GB / 1TB)

Tasks

  • upgrade Stewie's HDD
  • stop webcam cron jobs
  • unmount weather cam from roof
  • prepare green pelican case
  • prepare pmp1
  • prepare wifi antenna
  • mount cam in enclosure on Dennis roof
  • update cacti hdd monitoring
  • configure stewie BIOS
  • disconnect cam in closet
  • rename new HDD on stewie
  • ask for the pmp1's EC WiFi IP to be available from off-campus
  • log power up for pmp and cam using cron
  • control wifi up/down on boot
  • camouflage / paint bright colored gear
  • port forwarding using router
  • change camera power cable
  • capture an MPG-4 / MJPEG @ 15 FPS and stream to stewie via pmp1 port 80 / 554
  • turn off one antenna on router
  • install speed sensor
  • redo camera interface to be customized for this project
  • make a custom 20 ft serial cable
  • measure power consumption of complete unit
  • deploy functional traffic cam unit

Image volume calculation

  • 60 seconds/minute x 60 minutes/hour x 24 hours/day x 7 days/week x 4.5 weeks/month x 12 months/year = 32,659,200 seconds/year
  • 1 frame/second x 20 KB/frame x 32,659,200 seconds/year = 653,184,000 KB/year or 637,875 MB/year or 623 GB/year

Software architecture:

  • Cache 2 minutes locally
  • Use infobomb stack to transfer and append to current day's movie
  • 4a-3:59a movies, sync with infobomb and roll-over, simple trac or fancydir listing by year-month

Questions for Doug

  • Interface - 1 second frames, manual video review, automated video review, speed/video correlation,
  • Overall duration, 1 year?
  • Better density

Documentation

Written By: Maduna (madunnh)

Images

Main Hardware

  • Pelican Case

Model: 1510 Pelican Case

The case houses most of the hardware of the unit. It contains the battery, power supply, charge controller, router and the single board computer. The components of the case were carefully attached using materials such as velrco, wire-ties and bolts and nuts. The case was initially used for another project (Keck Water Monitoring Project), so some of the components i.e. the battery and charge controller were already installed. The position of the charge controller was changed to a 'vertical mount' in order to make room for a secondary battery (if required) and to bring it closer to the power supply unit.

The pelican case is strong, weatherproof, durable, portable and fully customizable. One outstanding feature that it has is the pressure valve, which controls the air pressure in the case, providing a safe charging environment for the battery and prevents the case from shrinking / expanding at varying pressure levels, i.e. during a flight.

  • Battery

Model: EP2812 B.B. Battery

The battery is a 12V, 12Ah Lead-Acid rechargeable battery. It was chosen for its dimensions, capacity, operation temperature range and independent operational orientation (charges and discharges in any position). Even though the battery was not specially chosen for this project, its capacity was calculated to be sufficient for this project's hardware. The battery powers all the components of the unit.

  • Charge Controller

Model: Phocos CML10-2

This is a 10A, 12/24V charge controller specially chosen for its compatibility with the battery and ability to charge the battery using a solar panel. Due to the high power demand of the components and the significance this project, solar power was tested to be unreliable, especially at the deployment site where there are a lot of tall trees. Instead of a solar panel, a power supply was used. The charge controller regulates the battery charge, and safely powers the components at the same time.

  • Power Supply

Model: Mean Well SP-150-15

The power supply takes normal 115V AC and outputs 15V, 0~10A which is in the range of the output of a solar power panel compatible with our charge controller and battery. The deployment site is far from any buildings with a continuous supply of AC power, but luckily, there is a streetlight near by. Because the street lights use regulated power and only turn on at nighttime, the power supply charges the battery at night and then the battery powers the unit during daytime.

  • Router

Model: Linksys WRT54G The router acts as a wireless adapter for the unit. It's firmware was upgraded to DD-WRT and it was configured to run in client mode. The router is connected to the directional wireless antenna and does port forwading to the single board computer (ports 22 [ssh] and 23 [telnet]) and the video camera (ports 80 [http] and 554 [mms]). The router was configured to connect to our local wireless network assign IP addresses to the camera and computer using static dhcp.

  • Single Board Computer

Model: TS-7260 Arm SBC

This board was chosen for most of its outstanding features, especially its wide input voltage range and robustness. Also, it is the same board being used by the water monitoring project mentioned above. The TS-7260 was nicknamed PMP6; meaning Portable Monitoring Platform #6. The pmp6 retrieves speed data from the radar and archives it in its flash memory. At regular time intervals, the pmp6 sends the data to a Host machine where it is processed and synchronized with the camera's video recording. The pmp6 uses a software stack described in detail under the client software section below.

  • Directional Antenna
  • Video Camera
  • Camera Case
  • Doppler Radar

Software

  • Host
  • Client
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