WeatherOLA Server Donations
Hi there and welcome.
Do you enjoy the weather information, images and videos you see from the WeatherOLA web cam? A lot of people do.
WeatherOLA's UltraCam and WeatherOLA website have been producing images and videos of Indianola and publishing weather data since 2011. Since we began, the WeatherOLA UltraCam has produced over 8 million images of Indianola's changing weather and published thousands of time-lapse videos. Along the way, we've moved nearly 9 terabytes and each year we adding another terabyte of images and videos for everyone to enjoy. Behind the scenes, we're also providing HiRes images and HiDef videos directly to the weather computers of our local Seattle area TV station's weather meterologists at KING, KIRO and KOMO that regularly use them in their broadcasts.
Building and running WeatherOLA is labor of love. I'm a weather geek, what can I say? However, maintaining the site and and equipment is time consuming and a bit expensive. With the heavy 24/7 workload, uploads taking place every 5 seconds, the dedicated hardware wears out over time. The resources necessary to share WeatherOLA with Indianola and West Sound residents are considerable. Besides the ongoing online service costs, there's also a lot of wear and tear on the equipment. For example, the well-worn high-resoltuion Olympus camera (over 3+ million photos) that captures the incoming weather and Indianola dock views was replaced with a newer one in 2017. In the summer of 2020, it too will have captured 3-4 million images. I'll then replace the second with a third camera.
Running WeatherOLA also requires two dedicated servers. One to collect and publish weather information from my Davis Vantage Pro2 weather station and other weather services from all over the world, plus a remotely located server to capture and manage images and produce time-lapse videos. The server near the camera's location that processes the images, creates the videos and uploads them was replaced in 2017. Time marches on and sometime in 2020 my main weather server will need to be replaced.
To be added this year will be two new cameras and another server at a new location to capture views to the south along the channel toward Mt. Rainier and one pointing west to capture the Olympics and sunsets.
Any donation will go to support my coffee habit and help ensure that WeatherOLA will continue long into the future. Pass this link along to others you think that might be interested in contributing to WeatherOLA.
All contributions, even $5, $10, $20 or whatever, are always appreciated.
Special thanks to everyone who've contributed: Jeff, Glenn, Chris, Ellen, Brent, Lee, Greg, Jack, Kay, Sam, Brenda, Mary, John, Rebecca, Dave, Bobbie, Dean, Passiko, Colleen, Lauren, Pat, and Anonymous.
Thanks again!
Tim
