Weather camera issues

You might have noticed that the K6LCM Weather Camera has been offline quite a bit recently.  I have been having some difficulty keeping a connection to the Wunderground FTP webcam server with the DCS-920 WiFi camera.  Out of the box, the camera has an FTP client that can be configured to automatically send still images periodically to an FTP server.

I had originally configured this client to send images every 90 seconds to Wunderground.  This would work for 2-3 hours and then quit, giving me an error that it could no longer connect to the server.  Only restarting the camera would allow it to reconnect.  I thought that there might be something wrong with my aging LAN router so I replaced that.  No dice!  After exchanging the camera for a new one I am still experiencing the problem.  One thing that has me suspicious is that the DCS-920’s FTP client doesn’t seem to have a problem with any other FTP server except webcam.wunderground.com.  I have no problem uploading images for days without interruption to my own FreeBSD-based maaia.com server.

If anyone out there in Blogland has any suggestions, I am open to them.  Right now I have reduced the number of image uploads to once every 360 seconds.  Maybe I was overloading the system (shot in the dark).

Updates to follow …

UPDATE November 5, 2010: While the DCS-920’s internal FTP client seems to be unreliable when set to the Weather Underground FTP server, the FTP client built into the software package EvoCam 3.6.9 ($30) is able to maintain a reliable image upload schedule.  After two weeks of using the wireless DCS-920 with EvoCam I have had good results.  EvoCam gives you many additional options including the ability to save time-lapse movies, add time and date stamps as well as record video when motion is detected.  View live video from my camera at the K6LCM weather page.