Remote Monitoring Image and Video Capture

Unidata has received many requests for enhanced remote monitoring with images for remote measurement sites. These requests are driven by the need to see what is happening on the sites in order to confirm measurement instrument readings. The need for images will only increase as health and safety regulations are now mandating many operational requirements for visits to remote sites. These new requirements are making it harder and more costly to send maintenance teams into the field to check remote equipment. Effective high resolution images and some video reduce the need to visit remote sites. Reduced site visits represent significant cost savings.

Application Detail

Unidata has both low resolution and high resolution Neon Camera systems. Low resolution camera systems provide cost effective low resolution images of monitored sites with a very small image resolution and a very small bandwidth load on the transmission system. With the availability of the higher capacity communication networks, higher resolution, on demand service is now practical and reasonably priced. The Neon Applications Software includes support for different camera types. The low resolution camera is very cost effective, and the high resolution camera can be configured with different resolutions as required. For remote image / remote video capture, a higher bandwidth telemetry system is needed. This is more likely to be a satellite telemetry system as cellular coverage is limited in remote areas. Also, as the bandwidth demands are high, and requiring an always on service, a low earth orbit satellite system or an older 2G cell phone system would not be adequate.

The Neon camera telemetry system also supports video. It has the ability to capture an immediate or scheduled high resolution image or an immediate video capture. The System allows for the length of the video capture to be specified in advance, for example 1 to 5. For most applications a slower frame rate of 5 frames per second, similar to security camera frame rates will provide a reasonable video performance reducing the bandwidth requirements.

The Neon Applications Software maintains the high resolution images and video files in the SQL database and these can be viewed on the web interface and / or reported out of the neon system in the same way data logging files are reported out. For example by ftp, email or by direct SQL database access. The screen shots (pictured) show how the Unidata Neon High Resolution Satellite Telemetry Cameras are added to Neon via the Cameras tab on the Loggers tab, and how the resolution, frame rate and encoding can be selected via the web interface at a central location, while the equipment is located at the very remote location.

Multiple camera buttons may be added so that different resolution images and videos may be captured from the same camera without the need to reconfigure the camera. Simply press the appropriate capture button to take a photograph or video at the required resolution or frame rate. Photographs and captured videos may be viewed on the photographs tab. An historical list of photographs is presented. Photographs and videos may be previewed on screen or downloaded for viewing at full resolution.