Internet webcam suggestions

I am looking for a camera like the D-Link DCS-950G but with the ability for the camera to upload images to a remote Web/FTP server while my PC is switched off.

Which camera would you suggest?

Reply to
Denis
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On 10 Jul 2006 19:19:32 -0700, "Denis" wrote in :

Panasonic BL-C30A

Reply to
John Navas

I was hoping for something closer to the price of the DCS-950G ? The one you mentioned costs 2.5 times more, and it would be too expensive.

Reply to
Denis

If you pc is switched off, how would you know a cam ffp'd a pic.

Sounds like you wanna be cheap... DCS 1000w dlink ftps and can be had for under 100 off ebay and some online etailers As does older DCS 2000 and 2100. TrendNet makes the same cam and it can be found reasonable too. TrrendNet makes a bottom end cam that might ftp, you'll have to investigate. Intellinet cams will do it and can be found occasionally quite reasonable.

Been a long time since I used it but if that cam sends pic via email , most real hosting servers will accept that. If you're gonna put it on a web page just embed the code. then you wont waste bandwidth excpt when someone wants to see it.

Reply to
bumtracks

"Denis" hath wroth:

See:

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I like NTSC video cameras driving a camera server. The quality is great but the method is very expensive.

Reply to
Jeff Liebermann

I can't say how good it is, but the price is low.

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Reply to
Si Ballenger

Is there anything with better than NTSC resolution around? Even cheap digital cameras are over 1200x1600 ("2Mpixel") these days. If it weren't for the problem of wearing out the flash I'd be tempted to mount a cheap digital camera outside to take periodic pictures.

-wolfgang

Reply to
Wolfgang S. Rupprecht

On Tue, 11 Jul 2006 09:19:00 -0700, "Wolfgang S. Rupprecht" wrote in :

Some digital cameras can function as webcams when connected to a computer, which could be a small cheap unit. The problem with higher resolution, however, is available bandwidth.

Reply to
John Navas

Sure. Most digital cameras. NTSC is equivalent to 720x486 resolutions. NTSC DV (720i) is actually 720x480. Close enough. Just about anything with a DV (digital video) Firewire output will give this resoltion. You can double the vertical resolution with "progressive scan" or 720p, which many cameras can generate.

What you want for internet video totally depends on what you're imaging. The range of light variations, color range, and resolution means that one camera can't do it all. The reason I prefer NTSC video cameras is that they come MUCH closer than the commodity web cam boxes. For example, most cheap web cam imagers are CMOS, not CCD. In general, CCD is better than CMOS for everything except cost. |

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NTSC video cameras (also known as security cameras) also deal with auto-iris and auto-focus problems much better than fixed iris and fixed focus cameras. The CCD imager may have fabulous sensitivity for night time photos, but the same imager is easily overloaded in bright dayling. A motorized auto-focus is standard for most NTSC video cameras, but seems to be a luxury item for web cams.

Same with auto-focus. The depth of field is adequate on cheap web cams for most applications. However, a lens with a smaller depth of field and with auto-focus, yields a sharper picture. In general, the plastic lenses found in most cheap web cams are inferior to the glass lenses found in NTSC video cameras.

Trivia: Heaters to prevent condensation, image stabilization, aperature tracking, adjustable intensity linearity for improved resolution at specific light levels, color correction, etc. I won't cover these, but I should mention that they're rare in cheap web cams, and common in NTSC video cameras.

As John N. mentioned, available bandwidth is the problem. That's not a problem if you're taking one snapshot every 15 minutes or so. However, if you're trying to do online movies, it will rapidly exceed the bandwidth limits of the communications link. I'll ignore the question of whether you want to utilize 100% of your outgoing bandwidth for a web came..

Let's play with the numbers. You have an 802.11g wireless link (this is a wireless newsgroup last time I checked). The link is running at a conservative 36Mbits/sec. That yield about 18Mbits/sec TCP thruput. A single 1200 x 1600 x 24bit color image is about 600KBytes (4.8Mbits). To deliver continuous images (as in the Axis demand feed feature) through an 18Mbit/sec channel, will result in: 18Mbits/sec / 4.8Mbits = 3.75 frames per second. If that's adequate (for the LAN), you're doing fine.

However, shove the same 600KByte images out a 1500/384Kbit/sec DSL line and we get: 4.8Mbits / 0.384Mbits/sec = 12.5 seconds for each frame. Not so great.

Anyway, bloated images are a problem with many applications, especially wireless, where others are sharing the same airtime. Smaller images are usually "good enough".

Reply to
Jeff Liebermann

I hadn't even considered the movie cameras with firewire. They were always priced well out of the range of what I'd want to spend on a fun hack.

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I agree with your observation on CMOS. I've never seen a non-noisy picture from a CMOS camera. Even cheap digital CCD cameras seem to take better pictures.

A while back I played with the mpeg tool "mencoder" to reduce the size of a series of jpegs taken by a stationary camera. It took out quite a bit of the fluff. Unlike the normal x-y compression schemes which worked one frame at a time this also compress all the commonality out of the stack of virtually identical images. That is a big win for security cameras where the background hardly changes at all from one frame to the next.

-wolfgang

Reply to
Wolfgang S. Rupprecht

thank you all for your replies but i think some people have not read the initial message propertly. like i said i was looking for something similar to the DCS-950G (+ the functionality to upload pics by FTP straight from the camera). I am not looking for something very expensive. Something just like the D-Link one above.

Reply to
Denis

On Tue, 11 Jul 2006 19:57:56 GMT, Jeff Liebermann wrote in :

Quibble: Generally true for cheap CMOS sensors, but high-end CMOS sensors are actually as good or better than CCD, notably the CMOS sensors in Canon D-SLR digicams, and even low-end CMOS sensors are closing the gap.

Quibble: A sharp picture is easily obtained with a short focal length and small aperture. The latter is the usual problem, since it severely limits sensitivity.

Reply to
John Navas

On Tue, 11 Jul 2006 13:51:11 -0700, "Wolfgang S. Rupprecht" wrote in :

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Say hello to superb CMOS sensors in Canon D-SLRs.

Reply to
John Navas

Search eBay for camcorders that "needs repair" or "as-is" or "parts". It's usually the parts that move that are broken.

Yep. Cooling the imager helps as the astronomy photographers use. However, they are into sensitivity and that means CCD.

Nice idea. Security cameras are a totally different beast. In theory, you should be able to recognize peoples faces from the camera. Most of the one's I've seen are seriously defective, with a truely horrible algorithm for dealing with bright background lighting, that all I can see is a unrecognizeable blur. They desperately need an auto-iris lens, but rarely use them.

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also do very badly with freezing rapid motion, mostly because of the compression algorithms in the recorder, but also because the non-moving parts of the image tend to get burned into the CCD.

Reply to
Jeff Liebermann

Well, yes. We did get a bit carried away and off topic.

The DCS-950G sells for about $120 to $150. That's really scraping bottom for a wireless 802.11g network camera. Looking at assorted reviews, it seems the advertised ftp feature isn't really functional. I can see why you're looking for an equivalent.

I guess you didn't notice the URL I posted. Go to:

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the "wireless" box in the selection criteria. You'll be presented with a list of candidates that might be a suitable replacement. The ones with pan-zoom-tilt features are rather expensive. Sorry, no recommendations.

Reply to
Jeff Liebermann

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