Murrysville PixCams brings live footage of wildlife and more into homes

While PixCams of Murrysville is best known for its live Pittsburgh Hays bald eagle webcam, the small company has been expanding and now has 30 live webcams.

They rolled out a new product for the public, businesses and nonprofits to set up their own live webcam system and broadcast it to YouTube and Facebook Live.

“Live streaming became a big deal especially when covid-19 hit,” said Bill Powers of Murrysville, owner of PixCams.

“Lots of people have security cameras but have no way to get that feed on YouTube. PixCams developed, EZStreamer, an encoder that is attached to a home or business network router.

“Lots of people can benefit, like churches that want to live stream services to sports teams to municipalities, basically anyone who wants to stream events,” he said.

YouTube is a great streaming platform because anyone can access and the platform is very reliable, he said.

PixCams used its EZStreamer for U.S Steel Irvin Works’ bald eagle webcam this year. The steel company has offered the live feed free to the public on YouTube, said Don German, plant manager for Irvin Works. It is working with PixCams to provide the equipment to local schools for them to live stream their events.

“Your family can watch school events at home from their big-screen TVs,” he said.

Powers, of Murrysville, founded PixController in 1999 for streaming and cellular technology in the energy field. He started PixCams last year to offer more wildlife webcams and webcam equipment to the public, businesses and nonprofits.

Powers runs the company as an entrepreneur and works with consultants and about a dozen volunteers who are chat moderators and educators for the wildlife cams.

“Every day we get more conservation groups coming to us and asking us to create webcam systems for them,” Powers said.

He also has been talking to municipal governments interested in the technology.

He grew his wildlife webcam business after streaming deer in his backyard in the early 2000s.

“We were on an Internet forum for trail cams and broadcasted my backyard. More than 100 viewers came in and crashed the server,” Powers said.

“At that point, we knew we had something for people to watch,” he said.

Rapidly developing new technology is changing everything, Powers noted.

“Houses have high-speed Internet and webcams can be bought for $50. The resolution is better, and the cost has come down,” he said.

The public can expect in the future to see more live feeds of everything from wildlife to public meetings to local events from the comfort of their homes in the future, Powers said.