Camera: Extreme CCTV EX-10
In the early days of the Mt. Erebus crater camera system, the ExtremeCCTV EX-10 camera was temporarily mounted on an ice axe on the crater rim. The small, infrared-sensitive EX-10 camera has no moving parts, and can operate without auxiliary heaters to temperatures of -60° C and lower.
Once the concept of a more permanent crater camera proved possible, a tripod was installed on the crater rim. The tripod is bolted to steel spikes set into a lava outcrop on the north rim of the crater. The tripod is constructed of heavy steel and aluminum, with the hope of surviving direct volcanic bomb impacts, which are common on the crater rim of Mt. Erebus in this area.
A 2.4 Ghz transmitter is mounted in a protected position beneath the tripod. There is no line-of-sight to McMurdo station, so the video signal must be relayed by a reciever/transmitter at the "Truncated Cones" seismic station, some 2 km from the camera site.
The camera has been in operation since mid-December, 2000. However, the camera system has yet to last through a brutal Mt. Erebus winter. Failures have been caused by power station failure and wind damage to the camera mount and transmitter/reciever antennas.
Telemetry: Videocomm 2.4 GHz
A seismic (and power) station located at a site called "Truncated Cones" provides an ideal location for the video relay station as it has line-of-sight access to both the crater rim and McMurdo Station (approx. 40 km distance). The 2.4 GHz signal from the crater rim is transmitted to Truncated Cones where it is redirected to McMurdo station.
In McMurdo station, the video signal is received and, once again, relayed to the Mt. Erebus Volcano Observatory laboratory by a fiber optic line. The video is captured by two computers for archiving and dissemination to the rest of the world.
Power:
The crater rim camera installation and Truncated Cones relay site are each powered by combined battery, solar, and wind power. The photo at right shows one of the old power stations that used to power the camera site. Two 30 watt solar panels in the foreground are connected to gel-cell batteries housed in wooden boxes, providing a total capacity of 1000 amp-hours. The 500 watt wind generator is critical for operation during the long months of Antarctic winter darkness.
The power station site and the slope above are littered with volcanic bombs, many erupted during an unusually active period in 1984.
Software:
Two Apple Macintosh computers in McMurdo station handle the video capture and dissemination. The streaming video is captured and relayed to New Mexico Tech by Apple's QuickTime Broadcaster. A computer at New Mexico Tech runs Apple's QuickTime Streaming Server software to replicate the stream to client computers that visit the Mt. Erebus Volcano Observatory LIVE Video web page. The relatively low quality video stream is saved at New Mexico Tech for referencing purposes.
The second Macintosh computer runs SecuritySpy© video capture software and a MEVO-developed automated shell script video archiving package. High resolution video snippets known to show eruptions are identified by an automated trigger system (determined from infrasonic signals) at New Mexico Tech and archived. Video that does not contain eruption information is archived at a low resolution to save disk space.
The web server at the NMBMMR has Apple's Darwin Streaming Server installed on it. DSS receives the single video stream from McMurdo Station and replicates it for any user logged into the Mt. Erebus Volcano Observatory Multimedia website. QuickTime, installed on your browser, allows you to see the LIVE video from the summit of Mt. Erebus, Antarctica.