BAMChase.net: Interactive weather monitoring
It seems like no matter where you look, weather cams are being streamed on TV or online. The fact of the matter is that people don’t like to be surprised about the weather and most are fascinated with watching extreme weather or storms move in. BAMChase.net is bringing this into people’s homes one live stream at a time.
Storm chasers turned meteorologists and streaming experts, the founders of BAMChase.net are trying to shape how Hoosiers access and plan for the weather. They saw a need for weather consulting and monitoring after a large, unexpected tornado touched down in Henryville, Indiana. Founder Bryan Kilgore, who has a background with IP cameras, took it upon himself to start putting together the tools needed for live weather streaming and also other hardware (such as lightning monitoring devices) that would arm companies, golf courses, stadiums, and residences alike for unknown weather conditions.
BAMChase.net is a fully interactive weather site that gives in-depth forecasts and satellite images of Indiana. These weather updates are ran by in-house meteorologist Michael Clark. The live streams are housed on the BAMCAM Network and allow for easy viewing on computers or second screen devices.
In the early days of BAMChase.net they ran multiple programs to get their streams running and distributed. This soon became too cumbersome and they switched to a systems integrator that was running Wowza Streaming Engine software under the hood. After getting a taste of the functionality that Wowza Streaming Engine had, Kilgore and team wanted to take control of all the features that the media server software had to offer, so the BAMCHASE team deployed a server locally and push streams out through Works With Wowza partner, JW Player.
Kilgore expressed that “Wowza Streaming Engine has the features that appeal to us while still being affordable.” The BAMChase network is currently running about ten IP cameras providing unique vantage points.
These cameras only provide live feeds within Indiana, but local news affiliates are planning to use these cameras streams as their only weather cam. National news outlets have also picked up these streams to share to the rest of the country. Future plans for the BAMChase team include expanding into other locations, including New York later this year, and also breaking into security (CCTV) and storm chasing.
Do you stream your weather updates? Tell us about your experiences in the comments below.