Internet-Based Measuring/Monitoring System that Measures Drifted Snow Using Visual Image

In this paper, an Internet-based monitoring system is studied which analyzes visual image of drifted snow and measures the amount of snowing. The system is composed with reference ruler where LED's are attached, a camera, and PC with a controller. The length of the ruler is 1.5m and the interval of the LED's is 1cm. The controller synchronizes the on-off control of each LED with the image frame of the camera. When the snow is accumulated along the ruler, the corresponding LED is blocked and the lowest position of the lighted LED is estimated with this captured image of the camera. Because of week intensity of LED light and light rays of outdoors, it is hard to discriminate which LED is blocked due to snow. Image processing method is used to obtain proper resolution and good accuracy. This system ...