Author Archives: fred

Llamacam “One” Rest in Peace

Posted on by January 17, 2008

After being in continuous operation for nearly 10 years, our first llamacam died after a power surge last Sunday.  Llamacam “One” was used to keep track of the llamas on the barn porch. 

I have a soft spot in my heart for Llamacam “One” because I had built it myself from an old computer, a broken camcorder and pieces of string, bubble gum and other odds and ends.  It faithfully served us for 10 years under very extreme conditions.  Llamacam One was the camera which was featured on TechTv, the Discovery Channel, Indianapolis Magazine and our local CBS TV station. 

Hopefully I will figure out a replacement option this weekend.  I’ll will try to get a new camera in operation within the next couple of weeks, because I realize there are hundreds of visitors each day that will miss seeing the antics of the llamas and their keepers as they go about their daily routine!  Of course you can still tune in and see the llamas on the other 4 cameras which are still fully operational.

Llamacam One Rest in Peace.

Fred

Update on our move to Hughes Net Internet

Posted on by January 17, 2008

Unfortunately our installation was delayed by bad weather , but we finally got the new Hughes Net System installed last Saturday.  After the installation was completed I had to re-configure our router and the rest of our farm network.  Our farm network is fairly complex because of wireless links between our barns and the house (spaning more than a quarter mile), which are used to feed security camera video to the house and the webcam images to our website.  Those of you that watch the llamacam have probably noticed that the cameras have been up and down a few times over the past week as I’ve been trying to work out a few kinks in the network.  We have also been plagued with a number of hardware failures that have taken the cameras down.  Hopefully, I can get most of these issues resolved this weekend if the weather cooperates.

So far I have been pleased with the speed and stability of the HughesNet Satellite internet.  It has been operational for about six days.  I have only had two brief outages of about 5 minutes each, caused by heavy snow and some ice build up on the dish.  Since we still have our ISDN line, our new router can detect the outage and outomatically switch to the ISDN line if the satellite feed is interupted.

I am getting download speeds of between 1200 and 1500 kbs (kilobits per second) and updload speeds of 500-600 kbs.  These speed are about 10 times faster than our ISDN connection.  It is certainly nice to be able to click on a video on CNN or YouTube and not have to wait 45 minutes for it to download.  In most cases streaming video starts within a few seconds and the download feed stays ahead of the playback.  I’ll keep you posted if my satisfaction changes. 

According to our installers, the key to sucess is the quality of the installation.  Our installers were fantastic and took considerable care in locating the dish and making sure it was securely mounted and properly aimed. 

Fred  😛

Eric Sloane’s An Age of Barns

Posted on by January 8, 2008

[amtap book:isbn=0896585654]This is a re-issue of Sloane’s classic folksy history of barn folklore, architecture, and history, which has been out of print for twenty years. “Eric Sloane’s An Age of Barns” is filled with fabulous black-and-white illustrations from this great American artist. Covering all types of American and Canadian barns and everything associated with them-implements and tools, hex signs, silos, out buildings, hinges, barn raising, and more-“Eric Sloane’s An Age of Barns” is a spectacular album tribute to this important facet of our architecture and agriculture. This book is sure to once again become a collector’s item.