Remote Live Video Streaming and Tethering From The Beach
The other night was the Celebration of Light 2009 Team China fireworks display in Vancouver, Canada. For the last little while I’ve been running the KitsKam webcam and I’ve been live video streaming the fireworks online. For the the previous few nights we went up on the roof and I manually controlled the cameras and the equipment in person. The other night was different. We decided we wanted watch the fireworks from the beach. The problem was I still wanted to stream it live.
What to do….?! I setup all the gear, laptop, still camera, video camera, and 2 tripods a couple hours before the show and started the live video stream. Then we cruised down to the beach on our bikes to watch the fireworks. Of course technology being what it is, the laptop on the roof kept crashing and the live stream kept flaking out. I figured this would happen so I brought a separate laptop down to the beach as well. I then remotely logged into the laptop back at home on the roof by tethering my laptop over bluetooth with the iPhone 3G. By using an application called Log Me In I had complete control of the laptop on the roof back at home. So I was able to monitor the live stream and stills completely remotely. I could even reboot it if need be. It was pretty fun to be in the chat room.
So now you know why it was so hard for me to troubleshoot the feed at the time given the tethering etc.
It was surely the geekiest thing I’ve ever done. Oh and I was taking still photographs down at the beach while this was all going on which you can see here.
Comments
Wow! Fantastic pics of the Celebration of Light. Your project was way to geekie for me but keep it up. I enjoy viewing your work.
Hi Duncan,
Kudos for all your efforts to bring us the fireworks. Too bad shore 104s live stream wasn’t working Saturday but your video was great and the chat room was lotsa fun. Your photos on flickr are amazing. I would so love to visit Vancouver and I’m really enjoying the shots you uploaded today. Again, thank you.
I wish I had found your site before the celebration of light came and went. I have bookmarked you so i’ll drop by next year… if I dont manage to make the 5000 mile trip there!