Web camera orbs & artefacts

From publications

overview

Strange orb-like artefacts have been recorded for a few mornings now over a few weeks, ever since the camera was installed.

The artefacts are about the same size and support the hypothesis that they are caused by back reflections of something walking across the flat face of the camera lens. One could suspect that they may be water droplets on the lens but it doesn't happen on the other camera on the garage, just the back-door camera which is mounted underneath the eaves. They seem to appear when there is little discernible wind, except for media:2021-08-04T02-18-19.mp4, which was quite bright and reversed course making it unlikely to be wind blowing a droplet on the lens.

I was thinking they are close to the camera lens because they are fairly large, a relatively constant size, and translucent being out of focus, however, they do not seem to be flying insects as there appears to be no movement internally in the artefact and they move way too slow and gracefully as though they are floating, walking or sliding along the flat glass covering the lens.

I have taken to periodically reviewing the camera and saving interesting footage:

2022-04-22

A big spider in the tree caused the camera to move off target - lol media:tree-2022-04-22T04-40-56.mp4

2021-09-22

2021-09-22

Victoria had an ML5.8 earthquake this morning (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richter_magnitude_scale), which was felt all the way to Gosford, so I decided to check the cameras.

22/09/2021 09:15:54

The noise on the house camera appeared at 09h 28m 40s => 34120 S since midnight. The earthquake occurred at 09h 15m 54s => 33355 S since midnight.

Delay is 766 S => 12 m 46 S Distance is 300 km approx. Propagation is 0.39 kms / second. (S-waves travel at 760m / S; so this is too slow to be an S-wave).

There was no visible shaking caught on any camera in the time-frame between the event and the last recording. The recon camera was not triggered.

My camera times are syncrhonized with my teir-0 GPS NTP servers.

2021-09-20

2021-09-14

Power failure:

The transformer service fuses for the entire branch lines, including our street blew with such a bright flash, followed with a pile of ash floating in the air and was sensed by motion detection making some great footage.

All three fuses were dangling off the wires going to the input of the transformer that is mounted on a post on the other side of our fence.

My wife came screaming asking "what was that"?

Because I have experience this several times in my life at various places I said it was the service fuses blowing and I was right.

Note that my UPS kept my network and security processors working when the power was cut-off by the three phase 11 kV service fuses blowing!

We were without mains power for about 3 hours.

My wife and I were watching 'Internet TV' in the dark on a PED since all our IT essential infrastructure is on a UPS, and the Transact network super-node power has backup, and was supplying us with VDSL.

Our UPS now has over 9 hours of standby power because I upgraded it since this incident, but my power reserves are declining because I put more servers online and poked more disk drives into my NAS (admittedly the last two drives could probably be taken out of service).

2021-09-09

2021-09-08

2021-08-29

Check out this little orb

2021-08-20

Check out the backscatter artefacts from the spider web flapping in the breeze. It is time to clean the camera lens again.

note the spider web spanning from the cover outwards in the field of view. There are periodic back-scattering positions on the thread. Note sizes of the back-scatter artefacts as your eye travels along the thread!

2021-08-19

  • media:2021-08-19T02-11-27.mp4 this orb first appears near the laundry window and additional internal reflections are visible as it leaves on the top left of the frame.
internal reflection is visible near this orb at it exits the field of view at the top left of the video
very thin spider webs mm from the lens on the other camera.

2021-08-18

2021-08-17

2021-08-16

This was not the typical orb as seen other mornings. It looks more like an insect artefact.

frame-1 (56.9s) (frame before sighting)
frame 0 (57.0s) (each frame 0.1 second 10fps)
frame +1 (57.1s) this thing moved so far in one frame
frame +2 (57.2s) (the next frame)
frame +3 (57.3s) (last artefacts)

Estimated distance traveled 2m in 0.2 seconds which is 10 m/s or 36 kph ! Even if we say it flew 1m in 0.2 seconds we get 18 kph. A swallow flies at 38.6 kph, and a typical bat max of 38.6 kph, and the fastest bat (Brazil) 159 kph - refer to https://www.squirrelsatthefeeder.com/how-fast-and-high-do-bats-fly/

insect top-speed

refer to https://top5ofanything.com/list/928c1786/Fastest-Flying-Insects-on-Earth

It appears to have wings because it's got characteristics of the "rods" that people photograph. It appears to have performed 6 beats in 0.1 seconds or 60bps.

insects speed versus beats per minute

refer to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insect_flight

So who knows what is was?

2021-08-15

The orbs are still occurring, though not as frequently; so I have to put it down to a spider?

The only definitive way to isolate this is to probably place another camera that can see the cover-plate of the house web-cam and take a snapshot when the house camera is triggered.

note the insect streak trailing in the midfield and the orb near the bottom glass panel of the door.
the insect was travelling faster.

2021-08-14

We lost power tonight due to linesman repairing a link to the service fuse which had a hot joint that was just sitting in the connector. Just maybe this was causing the "light" source that was hitting the lens cover of the web-cam and generating infra-red back-reflection over these past mornings? We will see if there are any more orbs after this repair.

No, we still have an incident but only one. Note I cleaned all the spider webs off the eaves and the camera lens. Now the artefact that used to appear in a static position in the bottom left corner is gone:

Note: I cannot see a reflection of this orb in the window when it goes past the railing, further confirming that it is back-scatter from something close to the lens, if not actually on the flat cover plate covering the lens.

I wonder if this is plasma or heat being launched from the 11 kV power transformer - who knows?

2012-08-13

2021-08-12

2021-08-11

2021-08-10

2021-08-09

2021-08-05

2021-08-04

light on eaves

explanation

Since the artefacts are always the same size, this supports my hypothesis that they are caused by back-scatter of something that is walking the lens face. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backscatter_(photography)

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