Fun with webcams

[Guest]

Here's what those marina millionaires should be doing with all that loot they collect from renting out berths. A nice webcam, pointed at your marina. Then, you can check up on it. What an excellent idea.

Of course, most of the webcams reviewed by your intrepid insomniac reporter this evening have been live. Hence, anywhere useful is dark. Hmm. Another near miss by the internet?

Anyhow, a staring point is the marinas section of allcam.com where there's loads of webcams, all live, so all a teensy bit boring, and american.

Anybody know of any interesting ones of UK/Europe marinas, where we can all watch our boats getting broken into or stolen? They'll have to be very large burglars, in contrasting overalls.

I'm not sure if this has any chance of being too useful for weather watching, except to check if a harbour wall has been swept away, or maybe others have much more up-to-date knowledge? No rude sites thankyou, we don't want everbody whizzing off to Nakednews.com - oops darnit they've all gone now.

 

[Guest]

What a sound idea. I'm sure that for all the money I pay MDL, they could provide a webcam for each pontoon and link it to their web site. We could all log on and be reminded of why we are all paying such high fee's!

We may also catch a glimse of that rare species, the Night Dock Master.....

 

[Guest]

Excellent idea, something I suggested to MDL last year.

However I do use the www.boatastic.com web cams to check the sea conditions. They are placed at Cowes, worthing, lee-on-solent, portland etc.

RM.

 

[Guest]

I will go for the Web cam thing as well, in fact I looked at the MDL site for the first time tutherday, and was disapointed not to see a web cam.

Then again, we had quite a few good weekends over since last July when very few people were out due to crap weather everywere in the uk except at Brixham, so maybe it wouldnt be such a good thing for people to be able to give a quick look at the weather on location after all.

As well as webcams, how about good phone lines on the pontoons at MDL marinas, I have mentioned this a couple of times, but no repsonse. This does seem to be a bit victorian nowadays not to have them. I have set up the business now so I can run her via our web site, but even with the newer 28k access on my nokia its still slow slow slow. Surely NTL or someone would wire the place up for free in return for the internet use alone?

Cheers

 

[Guest]

Re: 28k mobile

Doug I must have had my eye off the ball and missed the 28k mobile. Are you getting 28k now over the UK GSM network? If yes which model phone and which network? Thanks. JM

PS I use the boatastic webcam at Cowes. The chap with the dragon on the swinging mooring can check his boat, but the rest of us paying big marina fees can't. I agree Matt, it's so irritating when people don't install this easy cheap technology. Could Lakeview offer it as a new turnkey product and do the whole MDL network (plus Berthon too, please) for, well er let me see, a million quid?.

 

[Guest]

Re: 28k mobile

We are using the Orange network, there are two ways to get their relativley new 28k service, 1)DAta card phone- This goes into the PCMCIA slot and is a integral phone modem strictly for data use- I understand that the current cost of this is £200, made by Nokia. 2)Nokia 6210 phone; I use this phone and connect to my Compaq armada using the IRDA option, however a cable is available for connection via the rs 232 port,and we have also sourced a usb-Gsm connection for use withour new IBM notepads. Using windows 98 I can cruise the net,, upload via ftp, direct site to site transfer data, or use my email facility.

Whilst you can get 28k connect on a mac, we were unable to get the right protocols working on the mac platform to allow ppp protocal and internet work on the mac platform. (This using a g3 500 with system 9.) So, the mac can site to site transfer at 28k, but not at this time ppp. (Apparently they are all aware of this problem, but no one wants to talk about it!)

Windows 2000me and pro on the laptops also are not keen on the 28k, especially site to site, and we can not seem to ftp off of these OS's successfully either,(There is a lot of problems with the various different softwares out their, so different software may produce various results, but 2000 me or pro seems to be pants. ) however 98 works great, and I find that I get better connectivity than on the land modem.

In a nutshell though, steer clear of the macs, as they are just not up to high speed yet, versus the PC's seem to be on the button.

If their is anything else I can help you with, give us a email, we have spent a load of time and energy getting what should be fairly simple solutions to work, but as per usual none of this is as straightforward as Orange/Nokia would have you believe!

Apparently Vodaphone will be launching their GPRS service in the fall, versus Orange who apparently are struggling getting theirs to work properly (they can get, so I have heard, GPRS speeds to dowload, but not upload, or so I have heard.)

So it may be worth while hanging on another 6 months, as GPRS will be something like 190k, which will make 28 seem like a cludge.

cheers

Doug

 

[Guest]

Rob,,you ever thought that MDL might install web cams using your money, then charge you more of "your" money to logon,,please dont give then to many ideas on how to screw us some more???

 

[Guest]

Re: 28k mobile

Thanks for the info Doug. I think I'll wait for the GPRS system.

Does this stuff drive you nuts too? The prob with all this is the need to chop and change hardware. I have one SIM card and I use a motorola timeport because it works in US, and a motorola v3688 because it talks to the SatNav computer in my car. These work fine at 9600 obviously and they share the same driver on my laptop and even the same mains charger. To get extra Nokia features I would need to get a Nokia too, with different driver and charger, and it still wont talk to the BMW computer....

I have an armada laptop too, corporately we're just switching from W95 to 2000, but you find W98 best for this purpose. And my cellular service is Vodafone, but orange has some advantages. Drives me nuts. I just want one gadget that gives fastest data transfer and talks to my car computer and can keep my current mobile #.......arghhhhhhh!!

 

[Guest]

Re: 28k mobile

When we got involved in the 28k/ upgrade project here I thought, great, this should be a doddle.

Basically all of these high tech companies are so keen to be rolling out new products, that in fact they are bringing these products out before the technology is mature and reliable, and we pay for it.

Latest update, Our Nokia 6210 phones apparently have a fault with the software that causes them to freeze up during data use. I call Orange, (Who sold us the product) and they tell me to call Nokia, I have to take the phone over to themin my own time and at my own cost to correct a problem that the vendor was aware of when he sold us the product. Orange has sold us phones that are deffective, and not consequently of merchantable quality, and they refuse to correct this problem and pass the buck to us to correct under the warranty offered by Nokia. Now if I know anything about consumer law, Orange is fully responsible for correcting this problem at their own expense, as they sold us the product. But try getting them to deal with it.

Secondly, you can only get the 28k service under certain talk plans, we have been trying to get our phones under one talk plan that would allow this for 4 months, and they still havnet done this. So we can only use the 28k on about half the handsets, and orange tell us everytime, it will be changed on the next bill date, next date comes along, no change, back to orange, oh yes sir I will put this thru, (after an hour on 150 spent cooking my head) and then you can use this after the next bill date, etc etc etc.

The whole thing is a big scam to screw us all out of the maximum bucks, and we have no choice but to go along because all the software/hardware/drivers/ etc are tied together and dont work on older phones/laptops. etc etc etc. And none of it works as advertised. Is it any wonder that the recent mannisman share offer for orange, as well as recent share prices in Ericson, (and it looks like Nokia as well) have taken a dive?

I have a timeport as well, and am on my 4th handset after they just packed up!

The shame is if we can get this stuff working It will allow people like myself to manage my entire business from my boat!(Our IT system is fully integrated into the internet) And that would lead to a great improvment of our quality of life, something that I think we all are desperate to have, and need. I have on several occaisions asked MDL if we could get hard phone lines to the berth, and they dont seem keen to do this, but that would solve all these stupid GSM problems for me as well!

 

[Guest]

Re: £1m very reasonable. Kerching! (nm)

.

 

[Guest]

Re: 28k mobile

but then you would want to run your business from that quaint anchorage round the coast and not your berth because the marina was full of people running their business from their berths.........

that said I couldn't agree more with all you have said, and thanks for sharing it. we are doing a similar exercise with BT.....news as it unfolds (but probably not from the boat)