Obscape

16/10/2026

A beach does not hold still.

Wave height and tide level tell you what arrived. They do not tell you what the beach did about it.

So you leave a camera pointed at the same stretch of coast, images sent as they are taken, nothing to go and collect.

One picture tells you little. A month of them tells you the story.

Full piece on the blog: https://site.obscape.com/beach-monitoring-time-lapse-cameras/?utm_source=linkedin&utm_medium=organic&utm_campaign=beach-timelapse-oct26

14/10/2026

Got an OBS-Buoy 400 on the way?

It goes in by hand, off a small boat. No crane, no survey vessel.

Full setup guide, from unboxing to your first readings in the portal: https://youtu.be/3JGTDJW9XJE

08/10/2026

Five sites. Five completely different mounting problems. One thing in common.

The measurement changes. The mounting changes. What keeps it running does not: the power, the telemetry, and the portal the readings land in.

Ports, dredging, construction, hydrology and catchment, weather. A different question every time, same platform underneath.

Swipe for the five.

Which of these would you least like to service?

06/10/2026

Tech Tip with Shawn, episode 2.

The station is powered. The SIM is active. It still will not come online.

Often it is not the hardware. The modem has latched onto a network that looks available but will not carry data, which happens on roaming SIMs and at sites sitting between two towers. You can stop it guessing and tell it exactly which network to use.

Shawn walks through it:
• Put oper = ? into settings.txt on the SD card, so the module reports back every network it can see
• Read that list in the serial terminal on the Data Portal support page, and pick the operator your SIM is actually supported on, with the best technology
• Copy the LONG format name, not the short one, and set it as oper =

That last one catches people out. The short name looks like the obvious choice and it will not work.

A few minutes at your desk instead of a trip to site.

Have you had a unit go quiet on you like this? Tell us which network and where, we have probably met it.

02/10/2026

Blog alert: a storm can redraw a coastline overnight. A column of figures will not show you that.

Wave height and tide level tell part of the story. A time-lapse sequence shows what actually happened to the beach, the berm cut back in one event, the sandbar moving along the shore, the slow rebuild through calmer months.

New on the blog, for municipalities, coastal engineers and researchers.

https://site.obscape.com/beach-monitoring-time-lapse-cameras/?utm_source=linkedin&utm_medium=organic&utm_campaign=blog-beach-timelapse-2026-10

How autonomous, solar-powered time-lapse cameras turn coastal change into a visual record: tracking erosion, sediment and storm impacts alongside your sensor data.

29/09/2026

Remote monitoring often has communication challenges.

Environmental kit somehow ends up exactly where cellular coverage is poor. And connectivity matters as much as the sensor does, because real-time data is there to inform a decision, and the decision will not wait for a reading that never arrives.
Satellite solves it. Satellite is also often outside the budget.

The cheaper answer, which generally works very well, is usually an external cellular antenna. Put the antenna where the signal actually is, higher up, clear of the structure, away from the concrete and steel, and a site that looked marginal starts reporting reliably.

The sensor goes where the measurement is needed and the antenna ensure the signal is there.

24/09/2026

📢 Blog alert: the events that matter most rarely happen on survey day.

Storm surge, flood peak, a sudden spike in turbidity. By the time the next survey comes round, you are measuring the aftermath rather than the cause.

New on the blog, for anyone managing coastal, port, river or water quality risk.

https://site.obscape.com/monitoring-changing-environment-real-time-data/?utm_source=linkedin&utm_medium=organic&utm_campaign=blog-changing-environment-2026-09

As coastlines erode and storms intensify, periodic surveys aren't enough. How continuous, real-time monitoring helps teams see environmental change as it happens.

22/09/2026

An OBS-Buoy 7 Watt on station off Scheveningen, with The Hague behind it.

The buoy belongs to a deployment by Weco - the Wave Energy Collective, the Dutch company building wave energy conversion technology. Their latest model Denshi is designed to produce power in very small sea states, which is the part of the wave climate most converters leave alone.

Designing and validating for that means knowing precisely what the sea is doing. Not rough estimates from a model but actual measured data on site.

Which is what the OBS-Buoy 7 Watt is for.

There is a pleasing symmetry to it. The buoy runs on the 7 Watt solar panel in its name, unattended, sending its data back over the air. The waves it is measuring are the same ones Weco intends to turn into power.

Thanks to Cas van de Voort at Weco for the photo.

15/09/2026

The most reliable water level sensor is the one that never touches the water.

The Obscape Radar Level Gauge, reliable, non-contact, low maintenance.

Nothing sits in the water, so there is nothing to biofoul, nothing for sediment to bury, and nothing for debris to tear off in a flood. The measurement is radar, straight down to the surface and back.

▸ Non-contact radar measurement, no submerged sensor to service
▸ Solar powered and self-contained, no mains supply needed at the site
▸ Cellular telemetry into the Obscape Data Portal, with no software subscription, the Portal comes with the kit
▸ Mounts on a bridge, jetty, pole or wall, anywhere you can see the water
▸ Satellite telemetry can be specified when the unit is built, for sites with no network coverage at all

Port and harbour tides, dam and reservoir levels, flood early warning, dredging and marine construction. One unit above the water, levels in your browser.