Knights surf cam not working

Seems to be a power issue as our rebooter is not working. Always a difficult time of year to get a response out of anyone (and most of the Swellnet office is away too right now) but we're trying to get it back online ASAP. Sorry for the inconvenience.

Hi. I dont know about other people but when waching the knights cam I hate when it zooms in, panning isnt too bad cos u can still see half the wedge when it has panned to look at the bay, but when it zooms it cuts out a lot of view just to look at a mosltly useless part of the beach. Please change if it is easy enough.

That's a fair call.. I just wasn't sure if the wide view was a little too wide. We're actually going to put in a new cam there that'll be locked in with a wide view, because it's a waste to have an expensive pan/tilt/zoom camera that's not actually panning, tilting or zooming!

Also, as per the notes on the Knights surfcam page (right now) - Telstra finally paid a visit to the Knights surfcam earlier this week (after months of investigative work and replacing surfcam hardware at our end).

They have advised that the cause of our ongoing connection problem actually lies in the street cabling, which they are now going to replace! Once this is fixed we should have a much more reliable internet connection with faster speeds (which will allow for a better quality stream, ie no more jerkiness).

I just got a message from Telstra a short time ago giving an ETA of May 30th (more than three weeks away!). But to be fair they've gotta book in the trench digger and a team of burly foremen.

Thats prolly a good idea. Would the current cam be installed elsewhere? Like maybe boomer/bullies area?

Trench digger? I thought they could just pull new cables thru the conduit?

Nah, at the exact same spot - it'll look identical to what we have now.

A surfcam at Boomer or Bullies would get much less traffic because there are less surfable days compared to Knights. Same too with a surfcam at The Dump. So it doesn't make economic sense to have one at either of those spots.

We've considered Chiton, but being such an average/random wave (ie no real defined take off spot, and often of low/variable quality anyway), I'm not sure that a surfcam would be of much benefit there either (hardly anyone I know uses the CW surfcam which is installed at the surf club). 

We previously had the Knights surfcam located a little further west but it was harder to see the sets approaching - however, it looked straight into the barrel, which was really good. I'm pretty happy with the current location though. 

TrikeAddict wrote:

Trench digger? I thought they could just pull new cables thru the conduit?

Actually, I made that up.. they said they'd have to 'replace the cabling in the entire street' but I'm not sure how they do it (I assume some trenching work would be required, but maybe not). I've seen the inside of some street pits before and it'd be a bloody hard job pulling cable through the existing pipes, especially if they're corroded and caving in as I suspect these ones may be. The Telstra guy I spoke to said the cabling was in really bad condition - the result of 'many people doing small fixes over the years' - so I think they'll just bite the bullet and replace the whole lot in one go (which means they won't have to touch it for a long time).

Yeah deffinatly keep it where it is. What I meant is after removing the PTZ cam to replace it with a fixed cam, would that old cam be installed at another spot. But what you said makes sence.. not economical. Unless maybe you had 2 cams at knights. One looking at knights and the other looking at boomer. Sharing the same connection. Lol

Yeah fair enough much better to get new cabling in.

The 'old' cam will be installed somewhere else but not at Victor! Two surfcams there is enough for now.