Third Avenue Kiteboarding/Sailboarding Camera Site
Welcome to 3rd Avenue, a kiteboarding/sailboarding site on the San Francisco bay. You should be able
to tell from the various "signs" whether or not to get yourself over to 3rd, one of the best
kiteboarding sites anywhere.
Visit the home of our new permanent webcam host, EFI, by selecting the image at the top of this page.
EFI is a market leader in printing technology. The company provides products, services and support
to handle all businesses’ printing needs. Headquartered in Foster City, CA, with 23 worldwide offices,
EFI’s award-winning, innovative technologies increase the productivity and profitability of commercial
and enterprise printing.
Zoom Network Camera Thumbnails - Please Do Not Fly Kites From Or Over The Bike Path
Hours of Operation: The network camera image is currently being updated (8 images) every 3 minutes
from 9 am until 8 pm. Below are the most recent images collected. Select an image to see an enlarged
version. To get current images please use reload on your browser. Otherwise timestamp may be out of
date with images!
The images below were last gathered at:
Location
The 3rd Ave site is north-west of Highway 101 and the San Mateo Bridge (highway 92). We now
have a Virtual Earth map to show you exactly what it looks
like from a birds-eye point of view (not sure when this was taken).
Camera and Positions
Above are eight images showing the conditions across the street from EFI. The images are taken by our
Sony SNC-RZ30N, a camera paid for by the local community of sailboarders and kiteboarders, and maintained
now by EFI. Currently the camera is taking 8 pictures in sequence and uploading them all at once.
Below is a panoramic image that is created by taking 33 independent/different images and stitching them
using ImageMagick. It isn't the prettiest stitch because we aren't overlapping the images, which would
require more images and slower refresh time, not to mention more effort. The reason our update
times have dropped to once every 3 minutes is to gather these panoramic images.
Panoramic View
Links
Third Ave iPhone Applications
I have written two iPhone applications to support our servers. One monitors the weather instrument/server and
is called ThirdAveWind. Version 2.0 is on the iTunes App Store. The second one monitors the webcam/server
and is called ThirdAveView. Version 1.0.3 is on the iTunes App Store. I am able to provide these applications
to kiters/sailboarders w/o fee but it is kind of a process one must go through. I put a price on the App Store
apps to discourage non-kiters/sailboarders from using our bandwidth, but only for that reason.
3rd Ave Weather Instrument
EFI has graciously agreed to support a weather instrument on their roof. The permanent link is below. This
is a Flash site and the readings are updated approximately every 15 seconds. There have been several questions
about how gusts are determined for the purposes of this display. According to the research I have performed,
gusts are typically defined thusly: 'Standard' gust speeds are measured over a 3 second running mean period."
Our instrument is a Davis Vantage Pro 2 and samples every 2.5 seconds, which is close to the standard
definition, so our gust readings are probably using the standard even though we are only uploading that data
every 15 seconds. I will seek greater clarification but wanted to provide as much illumination now as possible.
Weather instrument display (Flash)
Another public site is also available through WeatherUnderground at the following URL. This site will update
information every 5 minutes. The GUI is not kiter/sailor oriented but the information is valid.
Weather instrument display (Weather Underground)
Here is an phone-centric link to the Weather Underground site:
WML WirelessWebcamURL
An HTML/non-WML wireless version of this website is available at the following URL. It has
been tested on PPC 6700 and iPhone. It has also undergone some improvement since it was first
released. Please use and report to me directly. Thanks.
HTML WirelessWebcamURL
Send questions, comments, suggestions, and notifications about cameras, image server, or weather server malfunctioning to:
Jack Hodges @ ARBOR-STUDIOS
