It is now looking like December 30th. We very much appreciate Verizon partnering with us on the den cam and waiving fees, but nothing will work until they assign a static IP address and they haven’t done that yet. The whole installation team had built their work plans and airline reservations around the install date of December 18 (tomorrow), which now won’t work. The next possible date is December 30th. A major disappointment and loss of data. Thank you for your encouragement and offers to help.
This afternoon, part of the team was here at the Research Center assembling the solar panels and planning out how to connect them to the den shed. Tomorrow, we’ll snowmobile the ‘PLEASE HANDLE WITH CARE’ panels and batteries to the site and take pictures of them in place. We’ll get everything ready that we can, but the den cams themselves and installation of the transmission equipment will have to wait until the 30th. Cross your fingers.
On the plus side, Bill Powers of PixController updated the power consumption information on the system and it is lower than previously thought. This could mean our power supply plans will work better than expected. We thank Todd at Wholesale Solar for their discount on the solar equipment and batteries and for donating overnight shipping to get it here for the scheduled installation tomorrow. Others partnering with us are PixController of Pennsylvania, White Wolf Entertainment of Minneapolis, WildEarth.TV of South Africa, Digi International of Minneapolis, and Ritron, Inc., of Indianapolis.
We are anxiously waiting for 4G cell phone coverage to give enough bandwidth for two cameras (inside and outside the den) in high definition. We hope that will be available next winter. We were thinking about the history of all this and how fortunate we were to know the right people to get in on cutting edge technology. We did a den cam ten years ago when Whiteheart denned a few hundred feet from a house. The best we could do then was pictures that updated every 30 seconds. Last winter, we had DSL and power at a house 200 feet from the den. This winter we have the best technology available for a remote camera in the woods. Next winter, we’ll probably be able to see more and learn more.
Fox 21 News in Duluth did a short piece on the den cam this evening at 6 and 9 PM.
Thank you for all you are doing.
—Lynn Rogers and Sue Mansfield, Biologists, Wildlife Research Institute and North American Bear Center