Webcam

[Chris]

Anyone know anything about webcams?

I'm looking for an outdoor webcam that takes a great constant feed that I can store on my hard drive.

[Todd W]

Anyone know anything about webcams?

I'm looking for an outdoor webcam that takes a great constant feed that I can store on my hard drive.

It won't be a "webcam" by definition.
The nicer ones use coax, and their own power supply... not USB.

Look to spend ~$100 to $150 for a nice one.

The hardware $ adds up because you need a controller card, and then software, and a power supply, most of the time 50ft+ per-camera, etc.

Also for outside you need to determine the viewing angle. Do you want a clear up close (door) or a far away wide? Do you need it to work in the dark or not? Color or B&W?

Lot of stuff to investigate :)

My friend got to play around with one that his work uses, it's a sony dome mount that can pan and zoom. It's B&W but when you zoom it turns to color. It was $1200, and totally bad ***! He put it on his roof and could zoom in on the neighbors window and it would turn to color and show the inside in detail (at night in the dark) he could also zoom a block away and read the signs (in dark).

[Chris]

I found software "WebCam Monitor" that does what I need AND lets me use my existing DV camcorder. It is an old (6 or 7 years) canon zr70 and has this annoying feature called "auto power off" that you cannot control. 5 minutes of inactivity (as far as it knows) and it powers down. No override, so annoying, what a dumb feature... but turns out if you take the not-in-use tape out the feature turns off, so, it works as a functioning webcam. Not networked, not outdoors, but it will cover one of my needs.

[Todd W]

I found software "WebCam Monitor" that does what I need AND lets me use my existing DV camcorder. It is an old (6 or 7 years) canon zr70 and has this annoying feature called "auto power off" that you cannot control. 5 minutes of inactivity (as far as it knows) and it powers down. No override, so annoying, what a dumb feature... but turns out if you take the not-in-use tape out the feature turns off, so, it works as a functioning webcam. Not networked, not outdoors, but it will cover one of my needs.

Cool.

I had some software a year or two ago that was awesome. I forget the name, ~150 let you monitor a # of cameras, motion sensing, took images every X seconds too, et.c

-Todd

[Chris]

nevermind... VISTA doesn't like firewire.... it can't handle any of my firewire hubs, and without a hub the distance is too long.

Works on XP just skippy.

Why does everything I want to do break with vista? Honestly, Vista sucks so bad.

[Todd W]

VISTA (http://badvista.fsf.org/blog/images/windowsvistaballmerpiraxz7.jpg)