The new camera is officially installed on Roxy Ann Peak. It was hot up there, but excitement won out. Honestly, Amy was even more excited than I was—she drove me to get up the mountain and made an excellent ground crew.

We replaced the POE switch at the top of the tower and swapped out the old Amcrest IP2M‑863EW‑AI‑V2 for a new EmpireTech PTZ8X4K‑42X-Laser. This thing is a beast: 42× optical zoom, and I don’t even have digital zoom enabled. The camera is 4K, but I’m currently streaming at 1080p. OBS receives the full 4K feed and compresses it down. If we ever need higher detail, I can still do a zoom‑crop—but after seeing what this camera can do, we may never need to.

The camera also includes a “defogger” mode, which genuinely helps punch through smoke and haze so we can see farther.

And yes, it even has a lens wiper. We’ll find out how well that works once the rain returns.