Wireless Network Camera and WebCam Solution?

most of the brands have one dlink does for sure .

Unless I'm missing something during my pre-third cup of coffee mode, it looks like he's looking for an IP cam for surveillance and one that will also integrate with an instant messaging application.

As far as I know, all the instant messaging apps require a USB cam and won't work with an IP cam, unless there is a new IP cam on the market that I haven't come across yet. The closet thing I've seen so far is an application that will let you use a digital camera or video recorder camera (one of those cameras that has an LCD screen on it for home movies).

If anyone knows of an application that will let me use my IP cams with an IM app, that would be great to have.

M hath wroth:

I don't do Windoze Mess, or whatever it's now called. Skype will work with any video or audio device that can be seen by the device manager. If it shows up under: Control Panel -> Scanners and Camera it will work.

They have a feature search, which should help.

Motion sensing can also be done in the surveilance software running on the PC. It doesn't have to be a camera feature.

I don't know if picture quality is an issue, but my opinion of most cheap wecams is rather dismal. I find it much better to use a broken digital camera (plenty with broken LCD screens on eBay) and a camera server, running NTSC video.

I'm using IP Video 9100A+ 4 camera server.

Make sure you get v2.39 firmware. The manual says: "Work with MSN& Yahoo Messenger, AMCAP, and WMCAP & VIDCAP program."

Found on eBay or other vendors for about $100.

The video server has an ethernet port, so for wireless connectivity, I just buy an external "wireless ethernet client bridge". See:

Not all listed will work. Make sure it has a "client mode".

DTC hath wroth:

Sure. Yahoo even has it built in. Where you define the camera location, it can be set to an external IP address.

See the instructions for the 9100A at:

starting at page 8.

The installed software on the PC registers the camera(s) with DirectX. That means Yahoo, MSN, Skype, and others will work using the local DirectX driver. For older software, they include a VFM driver, which I've never tried. From what little I've played with (i.e. Axis), most software that comes with a camera server is similar. This is not the case with stand alone network cameras, which seem to insist on fishing out JPG's from the camera. I vaguely recall seeing some IM software plug-in for Skype that will simulate a camera by throwing JPG's at it, but I couldn't find it with Google.

But thats using the 9100 unit as an interface.

And that's the problem, IP cams by themselves won't show up as a Scanner or Camera.

I looked at that unit last summer, and it still isn't what I'm looking for. All it does it convert an NTSC video camera to a networked camera.

I'm looking to convert an IP camera to run in an IM client.

DTC hath wroth:

Well, I just bought two 9100A boxes on eBay for $90/ea including shipping. One goes to a customer. The other is all mine. I'll set it up at home and try Skype and whatever else looks interesting.

However, unless I'm reading your last line incorrectly, you want the IM client to reside inside the IP camera. No external computer. That's called a "video phone" and is available from numerous vendors.

etc... Sorry, but I haven't had the opertunity to destroy any of these and can't offer any selection advice.

Yeah, I know it's not a "real" IM client because it doesn't run various proprietary IM protocols, or have a keyboard and monitor. Add those to a video phone and you're back to plugging everything into a computer. You could therefore build your own by mounting a camera on the smallest computer you can find that will run Windoze or Linux, and configuring it to play video phone.

Another possibility is to use a PDA running Windoze Mobile 2005 and Skype. I do that on my XV6700 cell phone and PDA conglomeration. Connectivity is usually by Wi-Fi, but I can also do it with some kind of ethernet card (which I don't have).

My cell phone can supposidly do video conferencing, expect the camera is on the back, and I've never bothered to try it. However, there are plenty of other smart phones with cameras on the front.

Ok, so what features do you really need?

1. Voice
2. Chat (keyboard to display)
3. Video It looks like I can do any two of these in a stand alone device, but all three seem to require a computah. (not sure).

Umm...no, what I would like to try is to replace a USB cam used with an IM client with an IP cam because you can't view an IP cam when connecting to the internet with a cellular connection card, but you can use an IM client cam.

Currently the only way I can share out video from my IP cams out in the outback is to FTP the imagery back to one of my servers and have a client view the server imagery.

Closer in, I can make a 10 to 12 mile WiFi hop and let the client view my IP cams directly (using a full-duplex repeater setup to make the hop).

What's wrong with WebCamXP at

Chris

Hey Jeff...question for ya on the ipVideo 9100A.

I bought one last week, brand new...something like $80. I've seen them as high as $119.

I works great when connected to both of my laptops, but when I use it on Yahoo (both viewing my cam in local mode and with another user), the images flashes for a fraction of a second and then black screen for a second and then another image.

Have you experienced this?

Otherwise the 9100A works great. Of course there is some jpeg compression artifacts.

One other thing, it appears you can only change the IP address via the web app, not the viewer software. Aslo I can only get port 80 or port 8080 to save...however, port 8080 won't work when.

For example you go to say, 192.168.0.50 (with the port set to 80), but you can't to to 192.168.0.50:80 or or 192.168.0.50:8080.

Any clues?

DTC hath wroth:

Nope. I delivered one camera server to a customer and kept the 2nd one for myself. It's fairly disgusting. Long list of grievances and glitches. For example, the default viewer controls are ActiveX, so if you use anything except IE6/IE7, you get a very limited screen.

I don't have a Yahoo account, so haven't seen any such problem. Works fine with Skype, which was all I wanted. I also setup MSN Messenger, and iVisit but haven't actually talked to anyone with them. I'm also using an ancient camcorder for video, which seems to be dying. I'll post some JPG's when I get a better camera. The customer is using 4ea

350 line security cameras with autofocus and autoiris, which are adequate.

Ummm... yep. I'm not thrilled with the 9100A. However, it's 1/4th the price of anything comparable so I can't really complain (much). Works fine over wireless (using Buffalo WLI-TX4-G54HP) even with high packet loss due to interfernce.

Hmmm... Works for me. I use IPEXIT.EXE. There's a slightly newer version on Aviosys web pile. I couldn't see any difference. However, that will only change the web port, not the viewer. I had to use the web config to change both. Make sure you use IE, not Firefox or Opera.

Also, there's a bug. HTTP1 has to be a smaller port number than HTTP2 or thing stop working. I had to reset the box a few times before I figured that out.

Another bug is that in order to set the update rate, you need to set it first to "continuous", change the rate, and then select the "periodic" button. Yech.

Works for me on ports 9000 and 9010 respectively. Firmware 2.39A. I've played with other port numbers and found some oddities in what numbers can be selected. Apparently, they also can't be too far apart, but I don't know the limit.

Yahoo 9100A reverse engineering group:

Misc:

Thanks Jeff...

And the manual is less than informative also, plus it was obviously written by a person who's first language is not English.