Tag Archives: Beta Site

Security cam planning

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So, my plan is to have the gametrail cams (and for the sake of brevity we shall just call them trailcams from here on in) positioned at a few strategic points around the Beta Site for when I’m not there. Problem is, they rely on periodic battery swaps or recharging, and require a cell signal to send me updates and info. Now, I’m good with this for the time being. I picked up the solar panel and lithium battery pack to try out and I’ll be setting that up on my next trip up there. The ultimate plan, however, is, once something gets built, to put in a multicam DVR system like I have here in town. The drawback, of course, is going to be the power requirements. I currently run nine cameras here at the house. Each camera has its own 12v power requirement. Additionally, the DVR runs on AC power as does the computer monitor I use to watch the feeds. The ideal is to have a camera setup that goes to StarLink so I can monitor things remotely, including one camera pointed at a screen full of metrics like temperature, battery charge, etc, so I can make sure things are running smoothly when Im not there. Thing is, there is no power up there. Zero. So any system has to run on whatever power can be made available.

My understanding is that things will be more efficient if I can run everything natively on DC. (“Natively”, in this context, means that the devices were originally made to run on DC rather than AC devices that are running on AC that is coming from a DC transformer. Such arrangements, as I understand it, are not efficient.)

The cameras are DC, which means they can be run off of a battery system. And I can run a laptop monitor off of DC as well. (More on that in a few paragraphs.) StarLink, also, can be run on DC. So that leaves the one holdout being the DVR itself. I have to go hunt down if such things are available. But I also need to do some math and calculate what kind of power draw running, say, nine cameras 24/7, a DVR, a monitor, and StarLink will accrue. Then I need to imagine a battery system capable of running that type of thing and factoring how long it can run before the  batteries get to , say, 50% charge. And then its a matter of calculating what kind of power input from a solar panel system is required and than scaling that to the anticipated need.

Perusing the internet has shown that many people are using PoE (power over ethernet) systems. It appears, though, that these require 48v and since power will be at a bit of a premium it may mean that a less modern 12v system of cameras and DVR will have to be the way to go.

On the bright side, I think I may have figured out one part of the equation. I was wondering about powering a computer monitor and I remembered that portable laptop monitors were a thing. I picked one up and and figured that since they were designed for use with a laptop, which is a portable DC device, perhaps I could have it simply run off a laptop-type battery.

Turns out, the particular one I picked up, runs off USB-C and mini-HDMI. Googled the specs on it and it says that it uses 9.4 watts of power. Asking Google what size battery would be required to run a 9.4 watt device for 24 hours gave me the answer that “To run a 9.4-watt device for 24 hours, you need a battery with at least 225.6 watt-hours (Wh) of capacity ( ). For practical usage, accounting for efficiency losses, you should use a 12V 20Ah Lithium (LiFePO4) battery or a 12V 40Ah Lead-Acid battery.”

Hmm. Well, a while back I picked up a large lithium power pack to charge my phones and radios. Specifically, this guy. The listing says 288watt-hours. So, in theory, one 24-hour cycle of use would reduce the battery by about 78%. Thats fine, I’ll worry about capacity later, right now I want to see if this will work as-is without any weird messing around with things.

Well, yeah, of course I dithered out the images from the security cams. What are you, new here?

So, I unplugged the HDMI-HDMI cable from my DVR and plugged in the HDMI-miniHDMI cable that came with the laptop monitor. Then I grabbed a USB-C-to-USB-C cable and plugged one end into the monitor and one end into the battery pack. And it worked.So thats one part of the equation that I at least have a handle on.

Muddy

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A friend of mine said that they felt a little bad for me because the last few times I tried to get up to the Beta Site I had to bail due to road conditions. I replied that I wasn’t feeling bad about it at all. Each trip out there, even though it failed, gave me tons of information for later use. This weekend was more of the same…try and fail.

The amount of mud that was on the road was epic. I actually slid of the road and into a muddy borrow pit. Fortunately I was able to get back onto the fudge sundae that was the road without too much difficulty but it was a white-knuckler there for a while.

As the elevation increased, the mud decreased until we were back on snowy/slushy roads. Ok, so far so good. The big problem is this steep, sloping switchback. Last time it was a sheet of ice that very nearly punched my ticket to Sto’Vo’Kor. This time, I got out at the bottom of this treacherous stretch and walked it first to see what I was in for. The road surface was slushy ice, which was, in my opinion, traversible, with a set of chains. Fortunately, I had brought a set….the product of previous lessons learned. What I did not have, however, was time. By the time I would have chained up and gotten on my way it would have been too late in the afternoon to get anything done without risking having to come back in the half-light or dark. So…again…not this trip.

But, lessons are learned. I’m learning the conditions of the road, where the trouble spots are, what can and cannot be expected to work, etc, etc. Next trip will involve the side-by-side. I’ll bring along chains for it, as well as my unstuck gear, and we’ll see hwat happens.

Most people I relate this tale to tell me that clearly I need to expect to simply not be able to get to this property in the winter. I nod politely and agree, because I really don’t feel like explaining to them that I need to be able to access my property at any time of year under any circumstance. Heck, thats why I bought the side-by-side and thats probably why I’ll wind up with a snowmobile as well.

I’ve also mapped out the areas to start from if I want to walk in. For example, I know that it is exactly 1.75 miles in a straight line from that switchback to my property. And I  know it’s exactly two miles from a different, easily accessed point. This summer one of my projects is walk those routes to I know what to expect.

Why haven’t I taken the side-by-side up there yet? Well, there’s a bottleneck. The side-by-side gets to the general region of the Beta Site on a trailer. That trailer needs a place to be safely stowed when Im not using it…and that would be my fenced yard. But I can’t put it in the yard until I get my fence guy to come in and put a gate into my fence so I can secure the trailer and side-by-side when Im not using them. So…I need the gate so I can get the trailer so I can get the side-by-side to the general region of the property.

The fence guy came today and says he’ll have some ideas and pricing for me by the end of the week. We’ll see. In the meantime, to err on the side of caution, I’m off looking for a good set of chains for the side-by-side as well as investigating the options and pricing for a replacement set of wheels with studded tires.

So, lessons learned and I’m better prepared for next time.

Math

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33

I was toying with the idea of a small A-frame cabin-like structure up at the Beta Site. The simplicity appeals to me but the inefficient use of space does not. Obviously, your head room diminishes as you approach the sloped walls. So, what if you wanted, say, eight feet of headroom for a space, say, ten feet wide. How wide would the base of the structure have to be, and how tall would it have to be? Welcome to math.

It’s been a million years since I needed to do trigonometry. Fortunately the internet provides. Threw this into AI, “How wide is the base of a right triangle with a height of eight feet and base angle of 60 degrees“. According to the interwebs, 4.6188 feet for the base of that triangle. Okay, so to get a ten foot wide space that has eight feet of headroom, I’d go 4.6188′ for the left side, add ten feet of space for the middle, and then add 4.6188′ for the right side. Add that up and you get an isoceles triangle with a base of 19.2376′. Lets be grown ups and call it 19.25. Okay, so with an angle of 60* how tall would the triangle be? Back to the interwebs.The answer, it seems, is 16.67 feet.

A bit of a problem there…boards are available at16′ lengths, but they get expensive after that. So, realistically, slightly less than 16′ would be the way to go, yes? That means either the desire for ten foot width, or the desire for an eight foot headroom, will have to be adjusted slightly.

At the moment, I’m contemplating a small A-frame structure that can accommodate a cot, some gear, and a bit of room, so I can have a place to throw out a sleeping bag while I’m working on a larger accommodation and the infrastructure that goes with it…something not too far from this:

Its justa thought for now…another avenue I’m exploring….but it does seem to offer some advantages in terms of ease of construction. More research is called for. And math.

Game cameras

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Somebody asked about the game cams that I have for the Beta Site. I guess I never went into any detail about them, so lets clear that up.

Most game cams, like the ones you get at , say, CostCo, are of the type that take pictures or video and store it on a card for retrieval later. They have their advantages, certainly, such as being cheaper in the long run since there’s no expense involved for transmitting those images. You just roll up there every so often, pop out the card, down load into your device, and reset. Easy peasy.

Unfortunately, I wanted something a bit more than that and that means increased expense.

A friend of mine won a game camera in a drawing or something and since they had no real use for it, gifted it to me. Specifically, this guiy: Moultrie Edge 2 Cellular Trail Camera. The selling point for me was that, in theory, I could simply get online to the website, or the app on my phone, and request a picture or video on demand. Additionally, I could set it to send me a picture or video on a schedule. For example, it takes a ‘proof of life’ picture everyday around 1216p and sends it to me.

I say ‘in theory’ because cel phone signal out at the Beta Site is exactly ‘zero bars’. Thus, I had significant doubts this thing would work. But I went up there, set it up, and to my surprise I got a proof of life photo the next day, and then every day thereafter. I also was able to request pictures on demand. I was quite pleasantly surprised. Im guessing that pictures use far less data bandwidth than voice, so perhaps there’s just enough signal for simple communications like that but not enough for voice. Or perhaps the gamecam is utilizing a network that is different from the one my phone uses. Either way, I’m getting pictures.

The gamecam requires 16 AA-batts to run it. Since CostCo was selling lithium batts, and lithiums are less likely to puke their guts out and are also good choices for extreme weather conditions, I went with those. The gamecam app shows me a ‘health check’ of the camera and I can check remaining battery life. Since I only have it communicate once a day with its proof of life photo, and then again only when something triggers a picture, the batteries seem to be still going strong after a couple weeks.

Battery management was a big concern for me because a) lithium AA-batts arent exactly cheap, even if I stock up on them at CostCo and b) its never a certainty when I’ll get up there again to change batteries. You can change the settings on the gamecam, remotely, to juggle various features to enhance battery life. So far, at the rate of power consumption so far, I’m guessing there’s another month at least before I need to start thinking about battery changes.

But, being me, I think about them anyway. Since lithium AA-batts aren’t cheap, I investigated and purchased lithium battery packs for the gamecams. Not cheap, but after the fifth battery change of AA-lithiums it will have paid for itself. Not satisfied, I also picked up one solar panel to add into one of the cams as an experiment to see how long a duty life I can get out of one charge.

Since the cameras require a cellphone connection, you have to purchase a subscription for the connection. Once you have that, there’s an additional fee for each camera on the account. At this moment, I have three on the account although only one is set up. I’ll be setting up the other two on my next trip up there. Averaging out the cost, it comes in at about a dollar a day for the subscription. When you say ‘a dollar a day’ that doesn’t sound like much but it means coming up with $365~ up front, which seems like a lot until you break it down to a dollar a day.

To me, it’s worth a buck a day to get three different angles of pictures every day from the Beta Site. Plus the infrequent picture when something stumbles into range of the camera. But here’s the selling point for me – the cameras cover the two most likely approaches into the Beta Site and let me know if someone comes into the property. Additionally, the cameras cover sections of the public road so I can see if the neighbors have been coming or going. To me, this is information that is vital. When I get something built up there, the plan is to have a deeper camera setup that uses StarLink to keep me informed remotely. But I’ll probably also add another trail cam pointed at whatever I build just to keep an eye on that too.

So, thus far, I’ve been pleased with these gamecams. There’s a bit of a hit to your wallet to get things set up but once its set up it seems to be doing exaclty what it promises. To me, and thats the important condition there, its worth the ongoing cost of about a buck a day to keep an eye on my property, see what the weather is like before I go up there, and get temperature data. I find it to be a worthwhile value.

When I get StarLink set up there the security camera situation will be greatly enhanced, but for now I really like these cameras and have been pleasantly surprised with the performance. YMMV, but I’m pleased so far.

Not this weekend

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Wound up not getting up to the Beta Site Sunday either. Stepped out my door, all ready to go, and…flat tire. And since I wasnt going anywhere without a spare, I had to dismount the dead tire, put on the spare, and then take the offending tire off to repair.

Well, turns out it was a fatal flat and the tire could not be repaired…had to be replaced. And a buncha money later we were back to where we started.

But, Im slightly superstitious and chalked this up to the universe trying to tell me “Not this weekend, kiddo”.

And, of course, Sunday dumped 4-6″ of snow up there, so next trip, in two weeks, will involve the chained up side-by-side. We’ll see how that goes.

The locals

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The game cameras I put in are doing their job. THis guy decided to visit the Beta Site around eight this morning:

This is the second visitor that the game camera has caught. First one was a squirrel yesterday. Im not posting that, ’cause its pretty boring. This guy, though…a surprise. The area is also home to some rather larger denizens as well:

If they leave me alone, I’ll leave them alone. But if they wanna challenge me in a game of Food Chain Promotion/Demotion…..well…may the best mammal win.

And being a mildly intelligent animal, I know when to take risks and when not to. Today was a day not to. Tried to head up to the Beta Site but the snowmelt in the shaded draws had turned some twisty turns of road in to sheet ice. How bad? When I came to a stop I started sliding down hill…backwards. Fate smiled and I didnt go off the side of the road but I was in a not-great situation. Pulled a shovel from the back of the truck and spent an hour dumping dirt and gravel all along the road….not to get me to where I was going, but to allow me to leave in one piece. Managed to pull it off and headed straight to the tire store for a set of chains. Will also update the gear in the back to include a spud bar for breaking ice and least one bag of sand and salt.

So, todays trip up there was a bust. But I fully intend to be there tomorrow if the weather holds up.

 

“Whats up, birches!?!?!”

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Thats pretty much what I said when I visited the Beta Site today…the first time I’ve been up there since it changed hands. Specifically, into my hands. I could not help myself but to say “See that tree over there? Mine. That one? Mine. That rock? Mine.” I also scolded a bird for trespassing. I have a bit of a territorial streak in me.

I wanted to head up there for more than just childish selfish reasons…I wanted to see what the roads were like, and more importantly, to see how much humanity was up there. This is an are that is well past ten miles from electricity. The number of year-round residents isn’t going to be huge…though they are there. My concern was my two closest neighbors on the two properties that were kittycorner from me. Neither property showed signs of their roads being used. At least, not terribly recently.

Of course, the road to my property (and , wow, it takes some getting used to saying ‘my property’) was equally unused. The only prints remaining in the snow were from the local wildlife and the cattle that roam the area.

A few trees had decided theyd give their lives to block the road into the Beta Site and they will get removed in the spring when the snow melts. In the meantime, they do yeoman service deterring any trespassers.

 

And once you get to the top of the hill, you can see down into the proposed building area.

The remaining snow was very patchy in the timber and there were plenty of places in the pines where the ground was nothing but beds of pine needles on dirt. Sat there for a while and listened to the blissful silence of…nothing. No cars, no trains, no people, nothin’…just the way I like it. It was probably about 50 degrees and sunny at that point so it was pretty dang nice to be out there. A light pullover and ballcap were plenty.

One of the reasons I wanted to get up there was because I wanted to see where along the route would be the optimal place to unload the side-by-side and continue the journey. Later this month I’ll be picking up a trailer to haul the side-by-side out there. I need to find a spot along the route where I can safely and securely park the trailer and my truck while continuing on the side-by-side. The road to the Beta Site is an easy enough, though bumpy and twisty, ride in the non-snowy season. However, once the snow sets in theres some parts that are definitely sphincter-clenchingly treacherous. Certainly, throwing some chains on the tires of my small truck wold go a long way but there will come a point where the snow or other conditions call for something a bit more dedicated to crappy terrain. So..side-by-side.

There were portions of the property that were knee deep in snow and portions that were completely bare. I definitely should have brought along my snowshoes, as well as some gaiters and yaktrax.

And, one other reason for the trip – remote game cameras. I received a couple remote game cameras for Christmas and deiced to try setting one up to keep an eye on things. I don’t necessarily expect to see much in the way of trespassers at the moment, but I would like to get the familiarity with the system and process so that when summer gets here I can set up a network of cameras at the most likely access points.

So…long day. My plan is to pick up the trailer in three weeks and haul the side-by-side out there and get some miles and experience on it. I will also be dragging up a loaded Monovault with some essentials so that theres at least some resources up there in case I do actually have to hide out up there before I get the place built up.

But, I gotta say, it was a very novel feeling to know that everything I looked at belonged to me (for as long as I pay the $50 annual property taxes, anyway.)

Oh, and the road that you see in the pictures above? It’s steep. One of the other things I wanted to do while I was up there was make sure the realtor had removed their signs. They had not. But, as it turns out, those For Sale signs are made out of a corrugated plastic that was perfect for sitting my butt on and roaring downhill at breakneck speed before tumbling out into the snow. That was fun.