For the moment it is housed in a waterproof' ish container - a thing called a 'Globe Lantern' designed for bolting onto the side of your house. See top picture. These can be purchased at most DIY stores for around twenty quid. The unit has been in place for over a year, and the camera has not yet got wet, so it seems to do the job.
The cam does however suffer from condensation, so a 12v fan from a PC Power supply has been added to the unit. See lower picture. This is connected to a seperate power supply and can be switched on seperately to the PC to try and remove the condensation.
The camera is pointing down through the lower half of the lantern, primarily because it has to, but this will also be the area that gets least covered in rain drops.
The standard camera has about six feet of connecting cable, so it was extended using CAT 5 STP cable (computer network cable, shielded twisted pair). Rather than taking the camera apart and fitting a new piece of cable, the existing cable was cut in half and 9 way 'D' connectors were fitted to it. The additional length of cable is then fitted with 'D' connectors to extend it. If you do this yourself, you do so at your own risk! The datarate is very high, so make sure that your connections are good and don't leave too much cable unscreened and untwisted. Make sure that it works over your given length before committing anything.
Software is the next requirement of any webcam and there is plenty to choose from. The hard part is finding something that works. It needs to have FTP software built in so that the webcam images can be uploaded automatically. I have tried various software, but the one that I am currently using is called 'ChillCAM'. This has the required built in FTP features, has a secondary action, various image filtering effects such as sharpen that can be applied to the image. The software will automatically dial your ISP and upload the currrent image at any preset time interval. Hopefully!
The 'Daily Weather Report' is a simple password protected database application, which allows me to quickly upload the real weather conditions simply by filling in a form in the web browser. As the date alters at midnight the current message will be replaced with a 'No Weather Report' message, so the message will always be applicable for the day. In the future, I hope to set up some wind monitoring equipment and have that uploading the current temperature and wind speed conditions.
To go back to the webcam image use the browser back button or select webcam again from the main menu.