What you get when there is no picture.
The last good frame, the minute it was taken, and the reason the feed stopped. Not a spinner, not a black rectangle, and never a stock photograph of a different farm.
This camera is not live at the moment.
The last good frame was taken eleven minutes ago. The 4G bridge to the field cameras is congested, which happens most afternoons in August and clears on its own. Nothing is broken and nobody needs to be told.
Why a still is better than a spinner.
A loading spinner is a website telling you it does not know what is happening. A black rectangle is a website telling you nothing at all. Both leave you refreshing a page that may never change.
A stamped still tells you three things at once: what the camera can see, when it last saw it, and why it has stopped. From that you can decide whether to wait four minutes or come back in April, which is the only decision you were trying to make.
On the hedgerow camera the difference between the still and the live feed is, most of the time, genuinely undetectable. We are aware of the joke and we are not going to stop making it.
Every reason a feed stops, and what the page says.
| Reason | How often | What we tell you |
|---|---|---|
| 4G congestion | Most August afternoons, briefly | "Congested. It clears on its own." |
| Solar shortfall | December, most days | "The panel is behind. Back when the light is." |
| Camera offline | A few times a year | "This camera is off. Somebody has been told." |
| Planned maintenance | Quarterly | The window, announced beforehand |
| Out of season | By design | The date it comes back on |
| Estate-wide outage | Twice since launch | A note on every camera page, and this one |
The offline contract.
What always happens
- Last good frame
- Always servedNever a placeholder, never another camera.
- Timestamp
- Always shownTo the minute, in the farm’s own time.
- Reason
- Always namedIn plain words, not a status code.
- Estimate
- Where we have oneAnd a plain "we do not know" where we do not.
What never happens
- A spinner
- Never
- A stock photograph
- NeverNot of this farm, and certainly not of another one.
- A silent swap to a different camera
- Never
- A refresh loop
- NeverThe page settles and tells you to come back.
The same contract applies to embedded cameras on other people’s websites.
Which cameras drop out, and when.
These four are the ones that go quiet. Three of them run on a solar panel, and a solar panel in the last week of December is very close to decorative.
Last frame
Fixed · low · 2.4 m
The Hop Yard
Last frame
Fixed · 35 mm
The Hedgerow
Last frame
Fixed · 50 mm · elevated
The Big Field
Last frame
Fixed · 28 mm
The Gate
Shown here as stills on purpose, because that is what these four look like for a couple of hours most days in midwinter.
The four things an offline camera does.
A stamped still
The last good frame, with the minute on it.
A named reason
In plain words rather than a status code.
No refresh loop
The page settles and tells you when to come back.
Never a stock photo
Not of this farm and not of anybody else’s.
All fourteen system states.
Every empty, error and edge state in this build, written out and given a name.
