Edmonton Arena Timelapse

Synopsis

A shiny new arena to revitalize the downtown core by 2016, you say?

Obviously the only right thing to do in this scenario is to point a mediocre webcam through your office window and snap a picture like the one below:

Tweet

Maybe do it again... and again... Hell... Do it every 10 minutes... Maybe until you have 150,000 - 200,000 copies of (more or less) this same photo... Or until a completed arena appears. Whichever comes first, I guess?

You've been meaning to do something cool with this Raspberry Pi you've had idling in your basement for well over a year... and what else are you going to fill this MicroSD card with?

When it's done you could make a wicked timelapse video...

Well, that's the idea... The stage is set... Now I just have to... wait...

Daily Render

The fun so far...

• 2016-05-16

  Greyhound sign came down... What... Are they going to re-use it on their new location?

• 2015-05-25

  Fixed some sadness, new Pi power supply... Fixed 'latest' image linking woes.

• 2015-01-02

  Happy new year! Fixed a frame sorting bug and regenerated the video...

• 2014-10-01

  Hey, look! Parking lot is closed... Bring on Stantec tower. :)

• 2014-09-10

  Raspberry Pi's SD card crapped out... Rebuilt using a fresh 10 GB card. Rewrote the scripts to upload new images without writing to the card. Should be more stable.

• 2014-05-12

  There goes Staples... That was easy.

• 2014-03-03

  Construction begins today!

• 2013-09-04

  Gave the Pi the rpi-update (firmware) treatment. Maybe this will improve stability?

• 2013-09-01

  Power cycled at 16:50, welcome back!

• 2013-08-31

  Where did you go Pi? Dispeared after 19:40...

• 2013-08-26

  Try to lock the focus to infinite...

• 2013-08-23

  Camera stopped responding, lost a couple hours worth of frames... Had to unplug and reconnect. Lame. Hopefully not a recurring thing.

• 2013-08-22

  Added daily video render... Added a layer of black construction paper to the inside box. Hopefully that takes care of the last of the glare. Camera shifted a bit with that last tweak but it shouldn't matter "much" in the grand scheme of things.

• 2013-08-21

  Changed camera to a slightly better LifeCam Studio, capable of 1080p... Josh and I Setup cardboard box to reduce glare. Starting fresh and discarding any existing images.

• 2013-08-20

  First render with ffmpeg at 24 fps. Needed to exclude all early morning and evening / night shots as they're simply the reflection of my office's innards.

• 2013-08-19

  Bring Raspberry Pi to work. Project code-name "Pi in the Sky" begins. After some experimentation, we settle on fswebcam as the utility of choice.

• 2013-07-24

  Ordered a cheap web cam, Microsoft LifeCam HD-5000 Webcam.

• 2013-07-22

  First signs for arena construction goes up... Better get cracking...