Wicken windmill latest mill with webcam on Smartmolen network 🌍

Wicken windmill is the latest mill on the SmartMolen network to gain a webcam, so that as well as the instrumented automatic monitoring, there's the ability to do a visual check on how the sails of the mill look, or for the curious just to see what's occurring with the mill. Since the intent is to be able to monitor the sails and fantail, the webcams are generally arranged to best show that part of the mill, not to show all of the mill.

The current mills with webcams on the network are

• Upminster - The original mill that created the system. The webcam is mounted on the visitor centre, and shows the top 3 floors of the mill (above the gallery). Some of the image is pixelated where it shows neighbouring house, for privacy reasons.
• Holegate - The webcam shows the top 3 floors of the mill, and is thus angled that it shows only a small part of the roof of the surrounding houses.
• Wilton - The webcam is mounted on the visitor hut, and shows the whole of the mill tower from the ground upwards (but thus misses the top of the sails as they rotate out of the frame).
• Wicken - The webcam is mounted low down behind the ancillary buildings, and thus shows the mill above the shed roof. As a fairly close mounting point, this only shows the top of the mill, and both sails and fantail extend outside the frame
• Dybbøl, Denmark - This webcam is rather curiously mounted, I suspect very close to the mill, and has to employ a wide-angle lens. It shows the top 3 floor of the mill, above the gallery, but there is clear distortion present, such as the curvature of the gallery rail, and indeed the ground shown to the left of the image has a very sloping horizon.