I would go the harder route. Since I love python, and its super easy for web programming, I would write a server script that shows the images from the webcam. Python already has several library’s for webcams, and even more for web support.

Or if it needed to be a quick setup, I would find a cam-chat site, make a privet profile, and use the site for monitoring needs. My uncle went this route to check on his daughter after she came home from school while he is at work. He said it works great.

Is it actually the true spirit of the whole project to go out and buy an ip camera that does it all already for you?
I think it would be far better to have the pc and an existing webcam and have the python scripts to capture the images and then host them on your own webserver

Spy on the cat in 6 easy steps:
1) Ubuntu
2) Camorama
3) DynDNS
4) SSH tunnel
5) VNC
6) Profit.

Um…I buy the costco 16 channel one with h.264 and then I read the instructions and pray hackaday would get a clue.

“breads problems”

*breeds problems

otherwise an excellent article, more please!

I like to control people’s network cameras for fun. There are quite a few unsecured ones in Japan…

http://cgi.ebay.com/Wired-Security-Internet-IP-Camera-IP-Cam-Webcam-10-LEDS_W0QQitemZ220537075001QQcmdZViewItemQQptZLH_DefaultDomain_0?hash=item335908b539
this little bugger is amazing just got one for myself. little arm linux computer with 2 stepper motors to control pan and tilt. got mine for 39 dollers uses USB camera!!! spair USB header for internal wireless card. Working on some amazing ideas with this little guy. nice to have 2 USB 1.1 ports serial and ethernet. oh yea plus 2 way audio!

I once duck taped a usb web cam to the turret of a USB controlled toy rocket launcher. I used skype, configured with video and auto answer to view the cam. Then controlled the rocket launcher by logging in with gotomypc and just running the little aiming application to point the camera where I wanted to look. No, I did not shoot the little rockets at the cats. Kids, cats, and the wife thought I was really weird, though.

All you need is a $20 webcam and Yawcam. Yawcam canport forward itself, set it and forget it. Plus it’s free. Wouldn’t use it to identify a burglar though…

Meanwhile, at the Evil Axis corporate headquarters -

HaD has come to visit. Jakob Griffith and Caleb Kraft are in attendance.

EA – “All we need to do is to devise a scam to run an advertisement on HaD and drive traffic to our Evil website, but at the same time, fool its readers into thinking that it’s not really an ad!”

JG – “I know, how about we say that we’ve got an old Axis product in our parts box, provide a link to it on your website, and our readers will be none the wiser!”

CK – “Make sure you write ‘after the break’ somewhere in your article”

EA – “MUHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAA! Great idea!”

For controlling stuff a linux server box with a parallel port is quite handy. I was able to control an RC car using one.

Some useful code and info here, http://www.homebrewtechnology.org/2009/03/internet-controled-car-v2-parallel-port.html

usb cams might be nice but what do you do when you want cams on the 4 corners of your house? usb cables don’t work nice with those types of lengths. you pretty much have to go ip-camera or composite cams running into a pc server.

wall-wort => wall wart

Unless it really does come with it’s own power plant. (bad, bad pun)

but do you really want to run usb cams to a pc. I wasn’t initially thinking about usb over cat5 similar to hdmi over cat5 i guess but still IMHO not the most elegant or even practical solution at that. I would still rather run ip or another solution for multitude of reasons.

I do not like the “product placement” in hacks :( but, at least you mentioned some alternatives.

Don’t get so annoyed when people say just buy a PTZ IP camera. After you get an old PC, a USB webcam, some steppers or servos and a controller for them (parport or dedicated) you’ve easily spent the money on something that takes up a ton more space.

Try this solution: grab a few PTZ *webcams* and get some cheap USB over ethernet adapters (check out dealextreme or fleabay) and get a linux box with Zoneminder. You’ll have to string your own CAT5e for the cameras but that’s not a hassle.

You could go and use real network cameras but you might need a more powerful linux box to handle multiple MJPEG streams.

have to second the people who suggested yawcam. not necessarily a hack, but for all of us low budget people it can get the job done.

Another free alternative is http://www.orb.com/
This allows you to view USB cams, record events to HDD and even view on a smart phone remotely, in addition to allowing you to listen to your entire MP3 collection on the move. If your machine is fast enough it will also transcode your movies into mobile format for viewing on the go too.

Baz

another thing to think about and granted it is but a small thing is the power usage. Lately i’ve really been keeping an eye on what is using what with a kill a watt and my ip cameras use very little power. if i had to use a couple pc’s even low power ones to control usb cams the difference is massive.

thecrazzyman: I’d like to talk to you more about what you’re doing with that linux camera. Can you email me at hackaday at deadtrout.com. Thanks.

several IP cams +apache+python+stepper motors+and maybe a touch of C++ just because=something thats not just port forwarding and advertising DynDNS
just my 2 cents on it…

We have a “cat camera” set up in our house. It is kind of funny but Logitech had the software built in and you can tweak it’s sensitivity to image change (our first pics were of the blinds moving from AC vent) but afterwards, works great. It can do movies or still images. Otherwise you can google for “Catspy” which is over at sourceforge and is free and works with most webcams.
Alas we had to move the cam to watch the parking lot to bust the school kids that like to set off car alarms and try to set off airbags as they walk thru. I did get one of the lil dirtbags with his foot through a headlight which is getting mailed to his mother along with a note warning her that the cops are involved next time. Lil tubby Pokemon master kid. Anyway, best of luck.

I have a number of cameras like the one thecrazzyman is linking to. They work perfectly

People’s comments:
“This is not a hack”
…true, this problem has been solved so many different ways there are COTS products for just about any scenario.
“Can’t use (cheep) USB cameras in the 4 corners of your house”
…true, but there are USB extending scheme and one can place cheep PCs around the house and cluster cheep USB cameras around them. However the price point of wired network cameras makes this a 50/50 decision.
“People can hack into these things”
…true, but making it more difficult is the usual defence. The down side, it’s usually harder to access your cameras from the outside the more security you put into place. For instance, you may use so much security you need special software making access from a public computer impossible. Your choice.

I like zoneminder, but have always found it a bit unstable.

You can use VLC to stream your usb webcam trough the net…cheers!

@Vivalie You’ve got it. Just hook up any webcam to your computer and access it remotely with LogMeIn. I do it all the time.

The Axis camera uses an Axis ETRAX SoC, which has an OpenWRT build available. You could then run whatever software you want inside the camera itself, eliminating the need for a separate computer for performing tasks like motion sensing. The ETRAX SoC also has plenty of GPIOs, so if you poke around on the board you may be able to locate them and get the camera to control its own pan/tilt assembly. You could also use one of the serial ports I am sure are brought out to command a microcontroller to control the pan/tilt. If you got the Axis cam from an FRC kit of parts, you may as well use the pan/tilt assembly that comes in the kit as well.

Dealextreme has wonderfully cheap internet-based surveillance camera’s for under 100. They recently dropped the price of their pan and tilt camera: http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.32073

Thanks, Hack a Day, for making a few more home “surveillance” cameras publicly accessible! :D

Anyways, a better way to setup remote access would be to restrict the camera to the LAN and SSH tunnel or use a VPN to access the entire lan, instead of relying on the camera’s built in “authentication” which fails horribly…

Just use (a) small Linux-Server(s), Zoneminder (http://www.zoneminder.com) and a bunch of cheap USB-Cams.

———–8<—–(snip)————–
Feature List
Runs on any Linux distribution!
Supports video, USB and network cameras.
Support Pan/Tilt/Zoom cameras, extensible to add new control protocols.
Built on standard tools, C++, perl and php.
Uses high performance MySQL database.
High performance independent video capture and analysis daemons allowing high failure redundancy.
Multiple Zones (Regions Of Interest) can be defined per camera. Each can have a different sensitivity or be ignored altogether.
Large number of configuration options allowing maximum performance on any hardware.
User friendly web interface allowing full control of system or cameras as well as live views and event replays.
Supports live video in mpeg video, multi-part jpeg and stills formats.
Supports event replay in mpeg video, multi-part jpeg, stills formats, along with statistics detail.
User defined filters allowing selection of any number of events by combination of characteristics in any order.
Event notification by email or SMS including attached still images or video of specific events by filter.
Automatic uploading of matching events to external FTP storage for archiving and data security.
Includes bi-directional X.10 (home automation protocol) integration allowing X.10 signals to control when video is captured and for motion detection to trigger X.10 devices.
Highly partitioned design allow other hardware interfacing protocols to be added easily for support of alarm panels etc.
Multiple users and user access levels
Multi-language support with many languages already included
Full control script support allowing most tasks to be automated or added to other applications.
Support external triggering by 3rd party applications or equipment.
xHTML mobile/cellular phone access allowing access to common functions.

———–8<—–(snip)————–

http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.32073
THIS IS A FAKE IT IS NOT A FOSCAM
go to foscam under support to see there dealers so you don’t get riped off with a fake

To all those offended by HaD “advertising” a commercial product: stfu.

Just because this is hackaday doesnt mean everyone wants to BUILD their own camera. Some things need to be bought sometimes. I salute HaD for actually finding a relatively cheap network camera in a sea of expensive ones.

Im just chiming in to say that the D-Link DCS-900 (wired) and the DCS-910 (wireless) are also good network cam choices and can be found for well under $100 every few months when Amazon has a high inventory.

Also, I agree with the several other commenters here who have recommended using the linuix package “motion”. Ive been using this for a long time and have been very pleased with it.

The DCS-900 and motion have been running my Blender Defender setup for a while and I havent had any problems with it. (www.plasma2002.com/blenderdefender)

Zoneminder is great. I’ve got it doing a wonderful job with motion detector recording and passive monitoring.

It does have a *small* learning curve, but I’ve been very pleased with it in it’s small use.

“wall-wort”
“wall-wart”

Also, I know this is a lost cause, but while there is a ‘Duck’ brand of it, it’s called duct tape.

For all the other misspellings, you guys are on your own.

SheevaPlug + a few usb cameras = cheap security system. Or just plug them into your computer and head over to a webcam site and watch your own stream. Even cheaper.

is this hackaday or buyareadymadeproductaday?

Ah this is always an interesting project to try.

I bought a couple of those cheap USB cannons you see around. They support a huge pan range (Nearly 360*!) but sadly the tilt isn’t so great, around 45*.

I combined that with a webcam (enter rubber band) and used a combination of .Net WCF and a simple C# asp.net forms page using Ajax to control the cannon. Then I went ahead and used Windows Media Encoder to stream the video to the page.

I originally used peice of javascript to pull a snapshot from a custom peice of code on the host machine but it used so much processing power I decided to drop it. The disadvantage is the delay (buffering) makes the cannon hard to control accurately.