Jack, Unfortunately, the location of my OWB is such it can not be seen from my house, although it's only 25 feet away. The way the house is in relationship to the area where the OWB is located, there absolutely no way for me to see it. Plus, the controls face away from my house. It has to do with the wind direction. I set it up so that when the wind blows from the north (90% of the wind is from the north where I live) I'm not opening the fire box door and exposing the inside of the OWB to the wind. I feel it's safer the direction I have it set. Plus, my nearest neighbor to the south is about 1 mile away through a heavily wooded area so any smoke that blows that way will not effect anyone.
This AM about 7:00 I serviced my furnace. You can tell it's warm. It was 35 degrees at 5:00am this morning. Last evening I serviced the OWB at 5:00pm when I got home from work. Essentially, I put in enough wood to last 14 hours. Man, when I opened the fire box door this morning at 7:00am, about 1/4 of what I placed inside last night had not burned yet. The bed of coals was impressive. So, I took out the unburned wood and placed it on the ground. In a large metal container I placed all of the red hot coals (to be reused when I rekindle the fire after cleaning). Once everything was cleaned to my satisfaction, (using a mirror I looked up the chimney and not a speck of creosote or dust was evident inside, it was as clean as a whistle) I rekindled the fire using the red hot coals I previously removed and put the unburned but very dry fire wood on top of the coals. In no time the water temp went from 175 to 185 and slightly beyond. Once I was convinced I was done with the cleaning and rekindling, I then turned my attention to the LCD display to see if I could find the reason why the reaction chamber/water temp readings were not toggling. I performed one of the procedures mentioned in the manual and WALLA!, it now shows up along with the water temp. I'm a happy camper. Who knows how it got turned off because I do not touch anything when I'm stoking the OWB. I cannot rule out a noisy neighbor.
I like your idea of the camera from a distance. I can mount it under the eves of my work shop and transmit the signal to a receiver which will be connected to a router so I can monitor the OWB regardless if I'm at home or at work. As long as I have access to a computer, I'll be able to see if anyone is bothering my OWB. Plus, if I set it up like yours, i won't have to go outside to see how it's doing, I can simply look at my computer.
Thanks for the ideas and help with trying to straighten this thing out. I appreciate it. Enjoy your weekend. Roger