DIY Friday: Slingbox Traffic Webcam!
Earlier this month we wrote about an innovative blogger using Slingbox and Tivo to deliver Tivo to a mobile phone.
Now, Slingbox is making its second appearance in a month in our DIY Friday series with your very own DIY Traffic Webcam!
A TV news station in San Francisco figured it out:
The news operations director at CBS 5, Don Sharp, devised a way to replace more than 20 of its cameras affixed to the tops of local bridges, freeways and buildings that use microwave technology to relay video back to the station with smaller cameras combined with a Slingbox Pro and a high-speed wireless EVDO card, at 800 kilobits per second.
Normally, news stations have to pay $25,000 for cameras to monitor traffic and weather, in addition to the cost of maintaining the units and renting the space for them. Compare that to a smaller camera for $500, a $300 Slingbox and $60 per month for each data card and it could potentially change the way broadcast TV news does business. That’s especially true if someday all live shots were done with a small portable camera and Slingbox, since that could eliminate the need for gas-guzzling microwave trucks normally needed to broadcast breaking events.
Be sure to check out the great webcam shots of San Fran, transmitted via Slingbox, here.
So what do you think? Could this really send these guys the way of the dinosaurs?
