The Networked Bird Observatory Blog

I can log into the CONE Welder site, but clicking the power button on the camera never turns it on. I also can’t see any users (including myself) showing up in the left pane of the chat window. My guess is that this means we’ve got a problem at or near the camera, or at least something toward the lowest, “camera” layer of the stack of components that makes up the system.

The last image in the gallery was timestamped 12:31 a.m. So the problem apparently occurred some time after that.

Update: Bryce sent me the following via email a few minutes ago:

Hi John,

I just saw your blog post. There were thunderstorms around the camera site last night and we believe something happened to the camera connection there. We are looking into it as I write this and I’ll keep you updated. Thanks!

-Bryce

Later update: Bryce emails again to say the camera is back up again.

The latest post on Craig Newmark’s personal blog: My black-headed grosbeaks are back!

kryptonkay also pointed out this item he posted the other day: Butterball the hawk is back!

We don’t get as many shots from Craig’s deck these days, but the ones we get are really nice. In a way, it’s like we never really lost CONE Sutro Forest. We just got a dramatic upgrade in the camera’s command-and-control subsystem.

As the late-night crew on “owl patrol” no doubt noticed, the camera went down last night. Here’s a brief update I received via email from Bryce:

Hi John,

I’m not sure if you’ve noticed yet but CONE has been experiencing some issues tonight. In particular our camera connection seems to be dropping constantly. Unfortunately it’s too late in the night to get in touch with anyone in Texas, but we will start repair work first thing in the morning. Sorry about the current situation - please rest assured we are working as hard as possible to get CONE back up!

In the meantime, I’ve been clicking around at the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department’s Birding in Texas sites. Some neat information is available, including a Quick Reference Guide to Texas Hummingbirds (PDF file).

Update: The camera is back up! Hooray!

Bryce Lee (the main developer of the CONE Welder web interface) is leaving the project soon (because he’s graduating), and he mentioned in the game’s chatroom today that any suggestions or feature requests should be sent via email to support.cone.welder@gmail.com, since that’s what the new development team will be monitoring.

Here are a few suggestions I’ll be sending:

1. It would be nice if the in-game chat was logged somewhere, and had timestamps associated with it, so we could read what people said without needing to stay logged in all the time.

2. It would be nice if the gallery photos could be referenced by ID number, or by URL, as was the case with the old interface at CONE SF. It would make it easier for us to refer to particular photos in chat, or here in the blog.

3. It would be nice if we had the ability to jump to a particular page of thumbnails in the gallery. As it is, the only way to navigate through the gallery is to go click-click-click through the “next” and “prev” buttons, which can become tiresome after a while. Maybe a textbox could be added to give a “Jump to gallery page __” functionality?

4. It would be nice if we could draw a bounding box on the live camera view to zoom in. What I mean is, it would be nice if a box drawn on the live camera view could be interpreted by the system as meaning the same thing as a box drawn in a corresponding location on the panorama. That might make it easier to zoom in quickly on something, as opposed to having to look at the live frame, then mentally translate that into the rectangle you want to draw on the panorama.

That’s what I’ve thought of for now. Feel free to add your own ideas by entering a comment on this item. Thanks.

So, I have a confession to make: A little over a week ago, in response to near-constant pestering, the good people at the CONE project invited me to participate in the alpha test they were doing of the new camera. They asked me to keep it quiet for the time being, so I haven’t been talking about it here (which was kind of hard for me to do, as you can probably imagine).

But this evening I got official word from Bryce Lee that the public beta test is now open! Yay! It’s finally here!

The following notice appears now on the beta site:

CONE-Welder: Beta Testing, 28 April - 5 May, 2008

CONE-Welder is now open for beta testing.

Please email support.cone.welder@gmail.com with problems/suggestions/etc. (please note which browser version and operating system you are using)

After this pre-release we will clean the data and zero points so that everyone starts at the same point on the launch date.

Bryce told me it was okay for me to let the other players know, so I’m officially letting you know: The system is open for beta testing. You can reach it by visiting the following URL:

http://cone-dev.berkeley.edu/

You’ll need to sign up for an account, and verify your email address using the instructions that will be mailed to you. And then you’ll be in!

What will you find? Well, there’s a very cool new interface. The camera and pointing work pretty much like CONE SF did, only it’s a little more intuitive. There’s an in-game chat feature that I love. And there’s the ability to define “zones” within an image, and enter zone-specific comments and IDs. No more need to coordinate as to which bird you want people to identify — you can identify them all. And there are a lot of new scoring features, with exploding pie charts and line graphs and the ability to compete both on a daily basis and overall.

All of which isn’t the most important part. What you really want to know, probably, is what can you see with the thing? What does the camera show? And what about the birds?

Well, there’s a lot to see. The Welder folks have put up a bunch of feeders of many different types, an elevated birdbath, and a sunken pool. There’s a grassy expanse in the foreground, and a fringe of brush and trees around the perimeter. You can browse back through the photos that the alpha testers have been taking over the past week or so, including:

• Non-birds: A squirrel that is the spitting image of Roscoe, a raccoon I caught pulling the stopper out of a hummingbird feeder so he (she?) could drink the nectar, and a large assortment of pigs (at least two species, I think) in various sizes. And Bryce got a very cool image of a spider hanging out right in front of the camera.
• Icterids: There are a lot of Red-winged Blackbirds, a fair number of Brown-headed Cowbirds, and some big grackles that I’m calling Great-tailed, though I suppose they could be Boat-tailed. I’m interested in what some of you other obsessives think about that question.
• There have been a few Inca Doves walking around in the grass.
• One of the most exciting birds for me, since I don’t get to see them normally where I live and they’re just so gorgeous, are the Northern Cardinals. There are a bunch of them.
• Of the species of interest mentioned in the pieces I’ve read about John Rappole’s work, there have been a few Green Jays, and Buff-bellied Hummingbirds (pretty sure, though it’s hard to get a good shot of them; I need kryptonkay’s legendary patience and closeup ability to get some better shots). There are also some other hummingbirds that I’m calling Ruby-throated, though again I’m not positive.

Here are a few shots to whet your appetite, but don’t wait around here; get yourself over there and get in the game! See you there!

The new cam isn’t available yet, but the CONE folks posted an update to the CONE Welder site yesterday that included a preliminary panorama image from the new camera. Here it is:

Here’s the note that accompanies the new image:

Update(4/17/2008): Great News! We have deployed the camera in Welder, Texas! The above panorama was generated from the new viewpoint. We will be launching the new Flash-based interface by April 28. We are very sorry for this delay; the wireless connection was slower than expected. We are currently working hard on improving the camera’s wireless connectivity to deliver a better video signal. In the meantime, we would like to prepare you for your upcoming birding adventure with these pictures from the Welder area. See you in Welder soon!

There are also some new images (not from the birdcam) from the Welder Wildlife Refuge; definitely worth checking out.

I haven’t been able to figure out from the panorama where the camera is actually located, though there are some spots in the Google Maps aerial view of the main refuge complex that seem like good possibilities. Poke around and see if you can match up the brush to a particular location:

View Larger Map

I’m guessing that, like CONE Sutro Forest, the new setup is facing more or less north. (Update: Um, no. What was I thinking? CONE-SF faced mostly south, not north. Sorry about that.) We can see a dirt road with a parked car on the far right side of the panorama, a pair of vertical posts on either side, and that very interesting shadow extending away from the camera on the lefthand side. I’m guessing that shows an antenna or pole of some sort extending upwards from the area of the camera itself. And then there’s that complicated-looking circular object near the center of the field of view. What is that thing? A feeder station? I really want to zoom in on it to get a better idea.

All in all, very exciting stuff.

So, I couldn’t help myself. Since it is now officially “mid-April” I thought I’d send an email to the CONE folks asking if they could provide any information about the status of the camera. About 5 minutes after sending it I received a reply from Professor Goldberg:

Dez is going to the site on Wed to install a bi-directional wireless system that we hope will increase camera framerate, and we have been finalizing the interface.

In a subsequent email, he wrote:

We’ll send more info by the end of this week and please tell those on the blog that we’re working hard on this and apologize for the delay!

So there you have it: We’re not quite ready to go yet, but it sounds like we’re definitely getting closer. Apparently the wireless networking hardware connecting the camera to the Internet has bandwidth issues, such that the camera’s frame rate is unacceptably low. That makes me wonder about the location of the camera. Maybe it’s not right in the main Welder complex that I posted the link to earlier, but is some distance away in the refuge? Wouldn’t it be neat if it it were in a location where we had a view of some wetlands, like the Aransas River?

At it’s closest approach, the river appears to be about 2,000 feet away from the complex:

Also, at least some aspects of the user interface are still being worked on. Given how much fun I had with the old interface, I’m really looking forward to seeing what improvements they’ve come up with for the new system.

The CONE Welder birdcam isn’t live yet, but it’s never to soon to start obsessing, right? Here are some interesting items I’ve come across lately:

• Birds’ patterns changing in face of global warming - This is a really interesting article from MySanAntonio.com that profiles the work of research scientist John Rappole. Rappole has wondered if certain bird species have been shifting their breeding ranges north in southern Texas in response to climate change. As the CONE Welder info page explains, the new birdcam is intended to help answer that question.
• Cimate change hits home - A short video that follows John Rappole as he observes birds at the Welder Wildlife Refuge.
• Out of bounds - Click the “birds” link on this page for a multimedia feature from MySanAntonio.com that shows eight different bird species suspected of shifting their breeding ranges northward: Great Kiskadee, Green Jay, Cave Swallow, Buff-bellied Hummingbird, Couch’s Kingbird, Audubon’s Oriole, and White-tipped Dove. If you hover your mouse over the bird images, or click on them, you can play audio clips of the birds’ vocalizations. You probably won’t be surprised to know that the first thing this made me think was: Oh please, let there be a microphone included with the new installation. (Hey, a guy can dream, right?)
• Tailoring Rangelands to Enhance Wildlife Habitat: The Welder Wildlife Refuge Experience - An article from 1997 describing the history of brush management at Welder.
• Welder Wildlife Foundation Celebrates 50th Anniversary - A 2004 article from Texas Parks and Wildlife describing the history of the refuge itself.
• Welder Wildlife Foundation - The refuge’s official web site.
• Effects of Landscape Pattern on the Distribution of Feral Honey Bee Colonies in South Texas - A study of wild honeybee colonies’ distribution at Welder. (I said I was obsessing.)
• Google Maps aerial view of Welder - I’m pretty sure this shows the main complex at Welder, which I’m guessing (without any real evidence) might be near where the birdcam is being set up.

Okay. I’m ready. I’m more than ready.

An update appeared today on the Project Announcement page at the CONE Welder site:

Due to delays in obtaining wireless hardware, we anticipate a beta release in early April and the full release of CONE Welder in late April. Stay tuned for updates!

So, a little bit longer to wait. But it’s still exciting to see signs of the work that is going on with the system. In the meantime, brush up on those south Texas birds!

I haven’t heard anything about the Texas implementation of the CONE system, but we’re now in the March 2008 window that was previously mentioned as the time for its debut, so I’m hoping we might hear something soon.

In the meantime, here’s an image of a Great Kiskadee from the Welder Wildlife Refuge’s web site. How cool would it be to see one of those with the birdcam?