44 degrees F Raining Wind 3mph ENE
Sunrise 6:07 am CDT Sunset 8:14 pm CDT
The nest is in the water!
And hopefully the camera will be able to go live soon.
Remember, the ice went out of the lake on Wednesday. It is hard to believe that it was only a week before that we had about 18 inches of snow!
As soon as the snow melted so that I could get to the nest, I had most of it ready. I mounted the camera on the nest and fired it up. Not knowing what to expect after it being idle for almost a year. Surprisingly it worked immediately.
However the night vision infrared light did not work.
After some extended trouble shooting, I finally got the infrared light working as well.
It looked like all was ready to finish nest preparation and put the nest in the lake on Thursday.
Small problem.
On Thursday morning, the camera was not working at ALL!
We worked and worked on it Thursday and Friday. To no avail!
It seems that heavy rain overnight had shorted the camera out and possibly fried it completely.
So the good folks at BroadbandMN made the long trek halfway across the state to bring out a new camera. As we went through everything, it turned out that it was one of the connectors, NOT the camera itself, that had fried. When we replaced that connector, the camera fortunately started working.
But then last night, the infrared light was not working again.
So after midnight when it was dark enough to see if it was working or not, it was back down to the lake and rewiring everything. And now the infrared is once again working.
Why am I telling you all this?
For sympathy?
No.
But it is just one more reminder - or several reminders - of how many things that must work together perfectly to bring you the LoonCam.
And if only one of those goes down, we are not able to watch our loons.
So say a few extra prayers that everything continues to work well. We can get complacent and just think that things will always work. But there are many things that are totally out of our control.
A perfect example of that is last year when the loons did not even nest!
So hopefully it will be very soon that I can tell you that the LoonCam is LIVE!
If you have any comments or questions, or want to be notified of when we are live, send them to LoonCam@yahoo.com.
Copyright 2014 Larry R. Backlund