David's Images of the Day Photoblog
Views of science and technology from around the world
Small Owl caught on Infrared Video hunting for mice in the yard.
Daily Electric Energy Used (37.3 kWh) from Sense. Daily Solar Electric Energy Produced (37.4 kWh) from Sense and SolSystems. Sunny with clouds in the afternoon. A surplus of 0.1 kWh.
Weekly Electric Energy Used (273 kWh) from Sense. Weekly Solar Electric Energy Produced (228 kWh) from Sense and SolSystems. A deficit of 45 kWh.
Morning at the Birdfeeders: Mourning Dove, Red-bellied Woodpecker, Blue Jay, Black-capped Chickadee, Tufted Titmouse, Gray Catbird, House Finch, Song Sparrow, Northern Cardinal, and Rose-breasted Grosbeak.
Morning at the Birdfeeders. Individual images in the slideshow are available in my PhotoShelter Gallery.
Contact me if you are interested in a Time-lapse Video of the Morning session at the Birdfeeders. My setup for the birdfeeder images is a Nikon D850 camera and 200 mm f/2 VR lens set to take one image every 5 seconds over a 5 hour period (~3600 images). The new time-lapse video format is 720p (1080 x 720 pixels) and 1 frame/second. The length of the video is about 1 hour in a 1 GB MP4 file. The previous time-lapse videos of the birdfeeders were at 12 frames/second, and to be honest were too fast to identify the birds.
Out on the patio, I planted some Garlic for next spring and watered the Grow Towers. Theta Z1 Camera set to record images using program auto mode (shutter, aperture, white-balance, JPG + RAW (DNG) every 10 seconds. Camera mounted on a tripod just above head level. The camera collected ~ 360 images (~ 1 hour) before running out of internal storage space. The DNG dual fisheye images were processed with Capture One Pro, saved in TIF format. Then converted to 360 degree equirectangular pano images with PTGUI (batch process). The Little Planet time-lapse video was created using PhotoShop CC (image converted to 1:1 format (7430 x 7430), rotated 180 degrees, converted to polar coordinates, then exported as a MP4 video (1920 x 1920, 10p). Rotation to the video was added using Premiere Pro.
Daily Electric Energy Used (48.6 kWh) from Sense. Daily Solar Electric Energy Produced (51.5 kWh) from Sense and SolSystems. Lots of clouds. A surplus of 2.9 kWh.
The immature Baltimore Oriole is willing to stand up to a gang of Blue Jay’s.
Morning at the Birdfeeders: Mourning Dove, Red-bellied Woodpecker, Blue Jay, Black-capped Chickadee, Tufted Titmouse, Gray Catbird, House Finch, Song Sparrow, Baltimore Oriole, and Northern Cardinal.
Morning at the Birdfeeders. Individual images in the slideshow are available in my PhotoShelter Gallery.
Contact me if you are interested in a Time-lapse Video of the Morning at the Birdfeeders. My setup for the birdfeeder images is a Nikon D850 camera and 200 mm f/2 VR lens set to take one image every 5 seconds over a 5 hour period (~3600 images). The new time-lapse video format is 720p (1080 x 720 pixels) and 1 frame/second. The length of the video is about 1 hour in a 1 GB MP4 file. The previous time-lapse videos of the birdfeeders were at 12 frames/second, and to be honest were too fast to identify the birds.
I went out with the DR Power Brush Mower to mow the wildflower meadows. Not much is blooming anymore, and the weeds including the invasive “mile-a-minute” vine are starting to take over. I attempted to capture the exercise with a Garmin VIRB-360 camera both on a fixed tripod, and a tripod I carried over my head. While mowing the sections I kept finding adult Praying Mantis which I tried to move away from the mower. The Praying Mantis are “good” bugs.
Saving the Praying Mantis. Individual images in the slideshow are available in my PhotoShelter Gallery.
The fawns still have dots. While cooking dinner I saw these two in one of the wildflower meadow sections that I didn’t mow. You can see that the weeds have taken over. The deer seem to be immune to the electric fence.
Fawns with Spots inside the electric fence. Individual images in the slideshow are available in my PhotoShelter Gallery.
Daily Electric Energy Used (51.2 kWh) from Sense. Daily Solar Electric Energy Produced (32.5 kWh) from Sense and SolSystems. Lots of clouds. A deficit of 18.7 kWh.
The Theta Z1 camera has Dual 3 mm fisheye lenses and uses two back to back 1.0-inch back illuminated CMOS image sensors with an output size of approximately 23MP (6720×3360). The camera can be programed to collect images in JPG or Raw (as DNG) format. The JPG images are transformed in the camera from two 360 degree fisheye images to a single 360 degree equirectangular format (6720×3360 pixels). The DNG images are the two individual 360 degree fisheye images (6720×3360 pixels). In order for the DNG images to be used the two 360 degree fisheye images need to be transformed to a single equirectangular image. Ricoh provides the Theta program (runs on Windows 10) that can be used to view and rotate the 360 degree images. No save or output capabilities. They also provide Ricoh Theta stitcher plugin for Lightroom that can be used to transform the dual fisheye images into an equirectangular image. You have to export the file to the Theta stitcher to do the transformation (one at at time), no obvious batch transform capability. I found that I could do batch transformations with the PTGUI.exe
Daily Electric Energy Used (41.3 kWh) from Sense. Daily Solar Electric Energy Produced (32.0 kWh) from Sense and SolSystems. Lots of clouds. A deficit of 9.7 kWh.
I slept in a dark house for the second night with the windows open. The house was getting hot inside. Several PSE&G crews spent the morning and afternoon examining the downed power lines. It must have been considered a complex repair since there were often more supervisors than actual line workers. Power was restored at 17:21. My house and next door neighbor were lucky in that we could be restored before everyone else further down the line. That is a good thing since the last outage report on the PSE&G website indicated power to the house wouldn’t be restored until Sunday. Once the power was restored the priority was making sure that the Geothermal HVAC system came online an started cooling the house, and the LG fridge/freezer was on and cooling. I ended up throwing out the food in the fridge, and then cleaning it with dilute bleach. The food in the freezer was still cold, so only lost a few things that melted. This shows that the insulation for the freezer is pretty good. The water on the floor must have been external condensation or a unplanned defrosting that helped keep the food cold. The network, servers, and computers all restarted without any problems.
Daily Electric Energy Used (26.7 kWh) from Sense. Daily Solar Electric Energy Produced (2.8 kWh) from Sense and SolSystems. Not much sun left after the power was restored. Geothermal HVAC busy. A deficit of 23.9 kWh.
