Yeah we had major throughoutput issues beforehand, but the lightning strike seemed to knock everything out completely. We had intermittent line sync for a few days, then it all went blank.

NBN said they visited the site and "got line sync" - except my newly replaced modem still didn't work (after multiple power-cycling too). And they won't send someone down again until I "try (yet) another modem".

So I treked down yesterday with yet another modem, and guess what! Nothing changed.. both still can't get sync. I reckon they never visited in the first place - wouldn't be the first time this has happened either.

So now we're back on the waiting list. 

Surf Cam replays don't seem to be working for Qld cams.

Not sure why they're offline.. but we're looking into it (most of our tech support contacts are away for the Xmas break.. always a bad time for things to go down). 

Scarborough (Perth) is back online. Thanks for your patience everywhere.. what a mission! Massive thanks to Tully, Howard & Josh at Engie Services for their amazing assistance.

Any update with the Bondi cam? Last update was almost a year ago saying it was getting sorted soon

Unfortunately, Bondi has taken way longer than expected - for a bunch of reasons I won't go into here - but we're almost there. Getting technicians sorted now to finalise the install ('tis a tricky one, requiring custom build mounting frames). 

Kings Beach NBN is slated to be activated mid-late next week. Fingers crossed (as we've lost the previous ADSL service.. came back last week for a day, then it went again).

G'day Ben, any reason the Cronulla Point cam looks like its covered in vaseline?
cheers

It's had focus issues for a while. I've got brand new cams for the Point, Island and Beaches here, just trying to schedule a time to get 'em done.

nice, cheers!

Lorne is back! And we've got a second cam too, looking at the beach. Thanks for your patience everyone.

any word on how long the narra cam will be out of action? (another surf website’s closely located cam seemed to go down at the same time).

also, any update on the bondi cam? last word on 31 may 2019 was ‘soon’

Narra is down for a few weeks while they do some maintenance on the building. Bondi was meant to be installed a few months ago (along with an upgrade of many other sites) but we've had travel/access issues. Hoping to get down there in the next month or so.

thanks for the fast response ben. especially on a sunday morning

The crowds immediately dropped here when the Narra cams on both sites went down and that was during school holidays too.

Find that very hard to believe knowing the diminutive traffic the cam saw - also the angle of the camera in relation to NN - compared to the overwhelming numbers in the water since COVID.

Might this hiatus in east coast activity be used to install the mythical Bondi cam?

Actually, Covid-19 is making our planned surfcam upgrades/installs very tricky, as my guys are unable to travel to Covid-19 "hotspots" (we're based in Northern NSW, and are doing quite a bit of work on the Gold Coast at the moment - so travelling outside of the bubble here means a 14 day isolation etc).

But, I'm working on an alternative solution. 

Hi Ben. Fairhaven reportedly had whale sightings early this morning - 6.30 - 7.00 am. Checked the cam around 8.00, but it was down for a while. Any chance it was functioning early and there are recordings?

No replays for Fairhaven at the moment, sorry.

No worries.

hey ben. 3 months now for narra and years for bondi. any actual time lines? (i understand covid but still ...)

re the crowds at narra, there have been two cams on that for years (3 including southy) and almost never any crowds. as soon as the banks got good earlier this year it's been crowded whenever it's working regardless of the cams

Major NBN issues at Narrabeen. Despite having an ADSL service here for more than 15 years, NBN won't recognise the location nor allow me to create a new location ID (been through this many times before, just takes a long time to sort). 

Both of our Coffs surfcams have been offline since 1pm yesterday - turns out someone cut the main backhaul fibre link near Mayfield (i.e. shutting down the internet across vast areas of the Coffs region, apparently). No ETA from our wholesaler at this point in time. 

Argh. Lots of network issues this morning. 

Coffs - both cams came back yesterday arvo once the regional fibre service was restored, but Park Beach went back offline around 12:20am. Not sure why, we are investigating.

Also, almost all of our Gold Coast surfcam network is offline this morning.

Unfortunately, all of our Goldy cams - except Narrowneck and Kirra, which are still streaming - are on a different ISP to the rest of our national network, and this ISP seems to have experienced a major outage around 4am (all of our gear is fine). There wasn't any storm related activity overnight, so I'm not sure what the issue is. Currently looking into it as a prriority.

Good news on D'Bah though, the scaffolding came down yesterday so once the network is restored, we'll have a clear view of the southern end of the beach. Apparently they have a little more work to do in late Jan but until then it'll be clear.

All back now.

And now they're down again. Argh.

Over two years to put a camera up at Bondi now

Ain't as easy as it might appear. Fortunately, we now have access to Sydney (tis no longer a Covid hotpot) so the backlog of upgrades/installations are about to kick off.

any actual dates on when these cams will be back up? Bondi cam (down for years). Narra cam (down for months). Avoca cam (getting on to a month now). of the four cams that I actually use regularly, 3 are down - 2 seemingly permanently which doesn't give me much optimism for the 3rd. I know plenty of people in IT and AV companies in the greater sydney region and they're all working and have been all through covid

Avoca has only been down since Friday (not "a month"). NBN visit scheduled for tomorrow.

Other Sydney sites will be reactivated once we I can schedule our new IT team (based in northern NSW) for a Sydney trip. The on-again, off-again Covid situation makes it very difficult, because we have an enormous amount of Qld based work, and can't afford to have to be banned from entering the state from 14 days because we've been to Sydney.

But rest assured, we're trying as hard as we can to find solutions for this. 

thanks for the update ben. the avoca cam went down right around xmas day and came back up briefly a few days back before going back down again

Ahh, fun and games with offline surfcams at the moment.

A few days ago Torquay experienced an internet outage. We immediately lodged a fault with NBN; they sent around a technician who replaced the lead-in (main cable from the street to the property), which was in poor condition owing to heavy corrosion, apparently. FWIW, this is actually pretty common in coastal areas.

However, the service never came back online, and NBN have now handballed it back to us - saying the technical problem 'must be inside the building'.

So now I have to send an electrician around to the Surf Club to investigate, though with the Surf Coast currently in lockdown (as of Sunday night) this may be a little difficult to find at short notice.

Anyway, we're working as hard as we can to get the surfcam back. Thanks for everyone's patience.

Oh, and just on 13th Beach - the Surf Club is undergoing some major renovations (they're adding another storey!) and so the surfcam is down until the building works are completed.

Hi, perhaps some kind of refund or extension of subscriptions for those who have paid for the premium service?

monkeypig wrote:

Hi, perhaps some kind of refund or extension of subscriptions for those who have paid for the premium service?

More than happy to have a conversation around refunds etc, but I think I'll start another thread for that. I'll try to do that today.

However, re: Torquay and 13th Beach cams being offline - it's worth pointing out that (1) they are free cams (you don't need to sub to view), though subscribers get the added benefit of not seeing any ads, and have longer timeouts etc, and (2) Torquay and 13th Beach cams are down due to factors outside our control.. i.e. it's not our equipment at fault.

I'll elaborate on Torquay in a little more detail in a sec, to outline what's gone on so far.

OK! Here's where we're at with the TQ surfcam being offline. It's a lengthy read, but worth me putting on the record (this is a good example of the kinds of things that goes on quietly behind the scenes at Swellnet, day in and day out).

Last Friday, our monitoring system detected a drop in speeds at Torquay - the camera is at the SLSC - and a deterioration of our internet service. I lodged a fault with our ISP, we did some (remote) tests and they escalated the fault to NBN, who said they'd rock up Monday arvo (1pm onwards) to take a look.

The service remained poor Friday and Saturday but improved Sunday and early Monday.

On Sunday night, the Vic Govt announced a 7 day lockdown for the Surf Coast, starting Monday morning (this is important).

Around 11am Monday, the Torquay surfcam connection dropped right out. I thought NBN may have rocked up early to begin checking the service, however what was unusual was that they hadn't called me to get the building open. And, because there's no way to contact NBN directly, I wasn't abe to follow up... just had to wait until the job was done. Perhaps they hadn't rocked up, due to the lockdown? Communications are considered essential services but NBN often employs local contractors, who may have decided in their own best interests. I've had plenty of NBN no-shows for previous outages, during non-pandemic times.

Anyway, there was no way to know.

The service didn't come back by Tuesday morning (and I received no further contact from NBN), so I contacted my ISP to work out what was going on.

One email (Tuesday morning) and two lengthy telephone conversations later (Tuesday afternoon), they advised me that NBN had been on site, and fixed the 'lead-in' from the street pillar, which was heavily corroded. They also advised that there was an open circuit somewhere inside the building (on our line) and that was the cause of the internet not reconnecting. So, it was now my problem to fix.

Odd, I thought - why did my internal cabling choose to fail at the same time the NBN tech was out there?

Anyway, I then went through the process of finding a licensed technician who could visit the surf club pronto, to take a look. Because of the lockdown, our usual sparky (who doesn't live in TQ) was unavailable. Other sparkies - I tracked down nine in total - couldn't get to the job "for four or five weeks" etc. I have three technicians up here in Northern NSW that I would have happily flown down to get the job done, but they would have had to quarantine at both ends for 14 days, which is obviously impractical.

Eventually I found Liam (what a legend! thanks mate) who popped over straight away (Wednesday afternoon), and then tried to unravel the internal cabling of the Surf Club - a tough job when you didn't do the installation, and haven't been to the building before. And, the Surf Club has their own internal cabling too, so it's a mission to work out what's what.

Nevertheless, after quite a bit of time, and with some assistance from another technician Brad (thanks fella!), they were able to confirm that there was nothing wrong with Swellnet's line from the building's MDF to our data connection.

Interestingly, they couldn't see where the NBN had repaired the lead-in. And, it's unknown how this could have been done, if they couldn't get internal access to the building either.

Furthermore, their fancy monitoring equipment detected a break in the line outside the surf club, between the building and the street pillar. This is on NBN's side of the boundary point. Essentially, there's a 10-pair coming into the building from the street (five pairs are in use, one of which is mine, five pairs are unused) and it just so happened that my pair is broken - probably the result of corrosion.

Remember - NBN acquired all of Telstra's old copper cabling back in 2014, which connects the majority of properties around the country to the internet (via FTTN). So, for coastal locations - especially those right on the beach! - corroded cables are a common cause of internet outages.

Fortunately, the five unused pairs (inside the 10-pair) were tested as being in perfect working order back to the street pillar.

So! After receiving a detailed report with photos late Wednesday night, I sent this off to my ISP, who then (Thursday morning) forwarded it back to NBN. This clearly shows that the problem is at NBN's end, and not Swellnet's. I followed up with my ISP Thursday lunchtime to make sure they had sent on the information (remember, I can't contact NBN direct). However by Thursday evening I hadn't received a response from NBN.

How can it be fixed? Easiest way will be for a tech to swap over our pair. Alternatively, NBN may choose to replace the lead-in from the street pillar, as the other lines are at risk of failing at some point down the track too. However, that's a 350m underground cable replacement that would be several days' trenching work for a couple of contractors, I presume. So, way more expensive.

And so, here we are. Waiting for NBN to fix the service at Torquay.

In the meantime, I'll continue to politely reply to the backlog of angry emails about "why is your fucken Torquay surfcam offline".

So, who wants to know the latest at Margaret River? NBN tech was out there yesterday (took bloody weeks to get a booking).. and guess what? The problem isn't with our gear. In fact, the connection to the property is also fine too. It's an upstream issue inside NBN's infrastructure, and they're "looking into it".

I won't bore you all with the technical details though.

Thanks Ben, NBN "looking into it" does not sound promising though :)

A response from the NBN re: Torquay - next available appointment time is Monday.

Patiently waiting for NBN to call this morning, and begin fixing the cable.

And no, to the several people who sent irate emails over the weekend, the surfcam hasn't been down for 'months', it's been six and a half days. Yes, I'm still having to personally respond - obviously some people can't see the link on the surfcam page outlining the status, and haven't seen this thread either.

There has been issues in margs for a couple weeks with internet on mobile phones also. Interestingly the surf has been noticeably quieter since the cam has been down ,there has been several days that the wind forecast was more onshore than it actually turned out so bonus surfs for those who check it

thermalben wrote:

Patiently waiting for NBN to call this morning, and begin fixing the cable.

And no, to the several people who sent irate emails over the weekend, the surfcam hasn't been down for 'months', it's been six and a half days. Yes, I'm still having to personally respond - obviously some people can't see the link on the surfcam page outlining the status, and haven't seen this thread either.

You get irate emails when the cams are down? Sad.

And we're back!

thermalben wrote:

Ahh, fun and games with offline surfcams at the moment.

A few days ago Torquay experienced an internet outage. We immediately lodged a fault with NBN; they sent around a technician who replaced the lead-in (main cable from the street to the property), which was in poor condition owing to heavy corrosion, apparently. FWIW, this is actually pretty common in coastal areas.

However, the service never came back online, and NBN have now handballed it back to us - saying the technical problem 'must be inside the building'.

So now I have to send an electrician around to the Surf Club to investigate, though with the Surf Coast currently in lockdown (as of Sunday night) this may be a little difficult to find at short notice.

Anyway, we're working as hard as we can to get the surfcam back. Thanks for everyone's patience.

Oh, and just on 13th Beach - the Surf Club is undergoing some major renovations (they're adding another storey!) and so the surfcam is down until the building works are completed.

Thanks for the update Ben, good that you take the initiative to keep us in the loop :)

And.. the service has been off and on for the last few hours. Looks like the techs are still sorting out the issue.

Back now... fingers crossed.

Looks like we've fixed the problem at Margaret River.. fingers crossed it stays up.

Caloundra/Kings cams fixed last week too.

Currently trying to rectify a problem at Coffs Harbour (was a power outage.. but the gear hasn't come back).

And now NSW's Covid restrictions have eased somewhat (well, soon to be the case for regional travel), we can finalise our Sydney upgrades!

Mark another year passed without a Bondi cam

Bondi needs an artificial pointbreak made out off that northern headland...offshore in NE winds,, gets plenty of swell and would become an even better tourist attraction...that northern corner is offshore in NE winds but ive never seen waves there. Tought my ex gf (whos now left the country and was only here for two years) how to surf at bondi..she was smokin hot so everyone was encouraging her to get waves while it was crowded.no body dropped in on her or gave her shit...but she thought it was rude people yelling at her to GO! ("ill go when i feel like it")