Ok, I see that now.
Just like my department… IT said “we have these great upgrades. It’s going to do all this amazing stuff” if only we could log in or find the main normal operating items… lol
3 Likes
I just looked at both their FB and Twitter feeds, they have stated that there is a big announcement coming soon, but that all of the cameras will continue to operate normally. It is possible that they are using this weather change to test the new features on the platform before we head into Diablo and Santa Ana wind events. I agree with @norcalscan that there are some pretty cool features with looking at specific cams on the https://www.alertca.live platform but I really do hope they are correct in their statement that the production cameras will continue to operate normally. They provide a valuable source of information not just for us but also for the public of the specific region in which an incident may be occurring in. My personal opinion, for what’s that worth, is that the majority of the public will get lost in search through the entire CA camera network to find what they are looking for.
5 Likes
Looks like this change may be here to stay based off this tweet. I for one love the new interface, it is geo-aware, if you give it access to your location it zooms in on the cameras in your area. The regions were always clunky, trying to remember which region has what cameras was annoying.
3 Likes
Hmm, I’m trying the new interface and find it rather less than useful – for instance, how does one zoom in on the image using the new UI?
2 Likes
I’ve been using the new beta site for 4-5 months for operational need and I can tell you that the company that is making the changes have done some great things. They are moving the california camera network in to the future. The site has become more of intelligence gathering site rather than primarily a viewing site. Once things are figured out for the public site im sure most of you will be very pleased. It’s just like anything else that new, takes a little getting used to then will very beneficial.
4 Likes
I like that they added access to archive images for each camera, just click the time icon.
4 Likes
The Alert Wildfire cameras in ATAK that are located in CA are currently showing an image from yesterday.
At some point yesterday the cameras that are in CA were moved to a new system hosted at https://alertcalifornia.org/
Cameras outside CA still work in ATAK.
We are working on a solution now for TAK users.
3 Likes
The archive access is useful, but overall the new UI leaves a lot to be desired compared to the previous site.
Basic functions like zooming in on an image are missing now, as is the ability to turn on and off targets and viewsheds for individual cameras in the map view.
The new 360d view is potentially quite useful, but the mechanics of it are rather clunky currently, especially when using the scroll wheel, which fails to update other UI components like direction indicator on the map view until you move the cursor.
There are a lot of interesting features which the new site concept would be well suited for, but I think there is a lot of testing, feedback, and functional review needed before migration to the new platform is complete – at the very least a help/FAQ page and means of contact are needed ASAP!
Worse, is the fact that currently portion of the cameras are now only visible from ALERTWildfire while the others are only visible on ALERTCalifornia, which makes it impossible to get an accurate cross between cameras on the different networks – hopefully this is something that will be resolved soon.
3 Likes
So as best I can tell from what is publicly available at the moment, there has been some type of separation in the consortium. Quoted from AlertCalifornia Twitter: “Formerly part of the ALERTWildfire university consortium.” What that all truly means, I don’t know and am not going to speculate, but let’s give this some time to sort out and the dust to settle before we get too critical of things. Change is never easy but we will adapt to whatever tools are going to be available. In the meantime, let’s continue to learn how their current platform operates. From the time I have spent with it, there are some very cool attributes that are actually improvements from what we are used to. And keep in mind, that based upon the original premise, they could not be identical to the Alert Wildfire network. This site is the same way, it could not mirror or function the same as the original site. Try and stay positive about things and let’s see what happens as this evolves.
8 Likes
I’m thinking the ongoing tweaks and platform adjustments will greatly enhance the mobile GUI. Seems like the desire is to give the end user the ability to quickly bring up cams based upon their geolocation. That will be sweet.
I do hope they retain some of the “old school” functionality in some way so that we can continue to view by region with cams sorted by name vs closest cam to a point on the map.
I agree with @Dozer_Keith (and others) about giving this time to shake out before we get our knickers in a knot. The system has grown well beyond anything I could have ever hoped for since it’s introduction back in the day. Let’s give them time to work their magic and see what happens.
Kudos to the team behind the scenes. This truly is a fantastic tool. I remember discovering HPWREN and SWFRS cams and thinking they were the the bomb. Look where we are now… Pretty cool stuff…
5 Likes
Is there a point of contact for ALERTCalifornia to address inquiries to that you’re aware of perhaps?
I can find absolutely nothing on their site about who to contact for feedback or how to report issues with the site, which is a large part of my frustration I suppose.
I’ve been trying to learn the new interface, but have been unable to figure out how to do the simplest things (like zoom, which used to work as expected by rotating the scroll wheel), and have experienced numerous browser crashes due to all cameras’ thumbnails displaying on a single page if you haven’t zoomed to tighter region on the map before attempting to scroll upon first loading the site.
As a developer for many years, I understand the growing pains and hassles with migration, but without feedback on regressions, it’s even more difficult to achieve good results in my experience.
I don’t have any contact information for them. I would expect there will be more information about things soon, but there is always a lag in these types of situations. Clearly their primary focus needs to be on the people who need the tool the most so patience and self learning is what we have for right now.
Image zoom will be added shortly.
What browser type and version are you using that is crashing?
What other bugs are you seeing?
7 Likes
Glad to hear zoom will be returning soon! 
Follow up with details on my system sent by PM.
Thank you!
2 Likes
If I missed it,sorry. Does anyone know why many of the alertwildfire cameras have been removed?
1 Like
Does anyone know why Ramona AAB is no longer on hpwren?
1 Like
For those that use the AlertWildfire Cams in TAK (or the new Alert CA cameras) service should be restored. Everything is the same, except for the following:
- You can now grab cams for just your state (e.g., https://joeaustin.net/wildfire/cams/ca_cams.zip will download just ca_cams, just replace ca with your two letter state code). NOTE: the old path https://tinyurl.com/alertfire (https://joeaustin.net/wildfire/cams/current_cams.zip) remains intact and will give you ALL cams everywhere just like before.
- CA is currently a bit interesting. Some cams are on Alert Wildfire and some are on the new site. If you download
current_cams, orca_cams, you will get ALL cams in CA across both services. The video links will be the same and grab from the right location.
As always, please reach out if you notice anything wonky. Joe threw this all together fairly quickly over the weekend and was playing pokemon battles, craft maker, and CAD designer for his kids most of the day, so he was less than 100% focused. That said, thank you for your understanding and please let me know if anything is broken so I can let Joe know. I want to publicly thank Joe Austin of ninehilltech.com for doing this for free on his own time for our community.
8 Likes