stizz
06-25-2004, 07:12 PM
Several people have asked me how I managed to get the webcam on my website working, including my folks. So I decided to just try and layit all out here in as simple talk as I can. So without further delay...
We live in Los Angeles and the rest of our family is scattered all over the US. We decided a webcam was a good way to share some of the more mundane day to day activities with family. Weekday feedings could be broadcast and weekend phone calls to Grandma suddenly made us feel like the Jetsons with a futuristic video phone. Also, since I would be staying home with the kid, this would give my wife a window to peer through when she is at work. So far it has worked out very well for us in all these capacities.
We decided on a Firewire Camera, Orange Micro's iBot. I mostly bought it because it is cross platform and it had good reviews, Also, USB cameras that I looked at were surprisngly not much cheaper and offered poorer quality. I got the iBot for $89 and slapped a $20 firewire pci card into the PC. The frame rate is very nice, and I can even use this camera on my Powerbook with iMovie or iChat.
We use it predominately on my wifes machine, so I installed the Video Suite that came with the camera; a program from a comapny that doesnt seem to exist anymore:Teveo Video Live. It works well,.. however there is no support. I am currently looking into other programs to use, but like they say, if it aint broke. On the mac side, a program called EvoCam does the trick.
So once I have the Camera properly installed, and the Teveo software up and running, I am broadcasting. From any computer in my local network, all I had to do was type the local ip address of my wifes computer into a web browser and I could view the video feed. But this was only inhouse.
I went into the admin setup pages of my router, and told it that there was a webcamera broadcasting from 192.168.x.x (my wifes machine) on port 80 (80 being typical for webpages). So that way,..anybody anywhere in the world could now type the ip address of my router into their web browser and see the video feed from my wifes computer.
I have DSL from earthlink, and like most of you, my ip address is dynamic. That means it changes periodically. This means that the ip address of my router is different on a day to day basis. This makes it difficult to tell people about your web camera, becasue by the time they try the address you give them, it could have changed already.
I found a free service called http://www.no-ip.com/. they basically let you assign a static and easy to remember name to your constantly changing ip address. They had dozens of domains to choose from, and I found one I liked. servebeer.com. I then named my camera Maxcam and now from anywhere in the world you could type maxcam.servebeer.com into a web browser and you could see my video feed. The only catch was that everytime my ip changed, I would have to login to my no-ip account and update. My router does that for me however.
In my router admin setup pages, it lets me enter the info about my no-ip account,.and whenever earthlink changes my ip, the router auto updates with no-ip.com and I never have to worry about it.
Lastly, I wanted to include it in my website. So I made a page with frames, and threw the maxcam.servebeer.com url into the bottom frame.
So there are really 2 ways to view my webcam (3 if you know the current ip address of my router)
http://maxcam.serverbeer.com <---direct without frames
http://www.stizzco.com/max/maxcam/maxcam.html <--with frames
So anyway, I hope this makes sense to yall out there. If you have any questions, feel free to ask.
We live in Los Angeles and the rest of our family is scattered all over the US. We decided a webcam was a good way to share some of the more mundane day to day activities with family. Weekday feedings could be broadcast and weekend phone calls to Grandma suddenly made us feel like the Jetsons with a futuristic video phone. Also, since I would be staying home with the kid, this would give my wife a window to peer through when she is at work. So far it has worked out very well for us in all these capacities.
We decided on a Firewire Camera, Orange Micro's iBot. I mostly bought it because it is cross platform and it had good reviews, Also, USB cameras that I looked at were surprisngly not much cheaper and offered poorer quality. I got the iBot for $89 and slapped a $20 firewire pci card into the PC. The frame rate is very nice, and I can even use this camera on my Powerbook with iMovie or iChat.
We use it predominately on my wifes machine, so I installed the Video Suite that came with the camera; a program from a comapny that doesnt seem to exist anymore:Teveo Video Live. It works well,.. however there is no support. I am currently looking into other programs to use, but like they say, if it aint broke. On the mac side, a program called EvoCam does the trick.
So once I have the Camera properly installed, and the Teveo software up and running, I am broadcasting. From any computer in my local network, all I had to do was type the local ip address of my wifes computer into a web browser and I could view the video feed. But this was only inhouse.
I went into the admin setup pages of my router, and told it that there was a webcamera broadcasting from 192.168.x.x (my wifes machine) on port 80 (80 being typical for webpages). So that way,..anybody anywhere in the world could now type the ip address of my router into their web browser and see the video feed from my wifes computer.
I have DSL from earthlink, and like most of you, my ip address is dynamic. That means it changes periodically. This means that the ip address of my router is different on a day to day basis. This makes it difficult to tell people about your web camera, becasue by the time they try the address you give them, it could have changed already.
I found a free service called http://www.no-ip.com/. they basically let you assign a static and easy to remember name to your constantly changing ip address. They had dozens of domains to choose from, and I found one I liked. servebeer.com. I then named my camera Maxcam and now from anywhere in the world you could type maxcam.servebeer.com into a web browser and you could see my video feed. The only catch was that everytime my ip changed, I would have to login to my no-ip account and update. My router does that for me however.
In my router admin setup pages, it lets me enter the info about my no-ip account,.and whenever earthlink changes my ip, the router auto updates with no-ip.com and I never have to worry about it.
Lastly, I wanted to include it in my website. So I made a page with frames, and threw the maxcam.servebeer.com url into the bottom frame.
So there are really 2 ways to view my webcam (3 if you know the current ip address of my router)
http://maxcam.serverbeer.com <---direct without frames
http://www.stizzco.com/max/maxcam/maxcam.html <--with frames
So anyway, I hope this makes sense to yall out there. If you have any questions, feel free to ask.