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Hardware

Ask Slashdot: Multiple Webcams and FreeBSD 112

Posted by Cliff from the one-cam-just-isn't-good-enough! dept.
Swamp|Fox asks: "I've been tasked with finding a way to have multiple web cameras (at least 6) capturing simultaneously for a soon-to-be-opened daycare. This is not exactly a new idea, and there are many daycares out there utilizing it. The idea is that parents can check in on their kid(s) from their office. There are many commercial packages out there, but none that quite fit perfectly. The problem(s) lie in the fact that there will be a singleserver, most likely a PentiumII 300, with 256 megs of RAM, and U2W SCSI, acting as both the web server, a NAT'd internet gateway/firewall, and the capture host for the webcams." There's a bit more to this, but the gist of it is that this fellow is looking for options. Click below for more.

Swamp|Fox continues...

"The webcams will be located between 25' and 50' from the server, and should support capture sizes up to 640x480. Another item, which I'm not too hopeful can be filled, is that the still images can be taken every second, or even 3 seconds, so that the director of the daycare can view them in near-realtime, while a script runs in the background and grabs every 15th frame for display on the web. The best solution I've found so far is WinCam.Live from Stardot Technologies, and it seems to fit most of my specifications. The big problem was that its cameras can only capture a frame every 15 seconds, but in retrospect, that is probably a limitation of serial port based webcams (which are the only way i've found to get webcams that distance from the server). They even offer a UNIX capture host, currently tested on Linux, and Solaris (my local *BSD techhead is working on fixing the makefile to compile under FreeBSD).

I'm looking for feedback, either on this setup, other experiences UNIX sys admins have had (both with this system, and multiple webcams in general) as well as other alternatives I might want to investigate. As usual, Open Source Software was chosen to keep the costs down, and for the flexibility to perform multiple tasks on a single server."
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Ask Slashdot: Multiple Webcams and FreeBSD More

Ask Slashdot: Multiple Webcams and FreeBSD

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  • http://www.axis.com (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    http://www.axis.com makes the neteye, a real webcam (not some pc connected camera) which has an integrated webserver and uses normal ethernet. you can put a script on the main server that gets a pic every second from every camera over normal http.

    granted, its more expensive than el cheapo shit for quality pc "webcams" :)

  • Cameras (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    You can definitely run the cameras 50-100' away if you use some good coaxial cable and not the crap they sell at radio shack. I usually use old 10Base2 network cable and put the ends on myself.

  • Re:Firewire? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Firewire cameras are not available right now. Sony has some prototypes out, yet they cost about 700$ a piece (hence why they havent flooded the market with em). TI has a camera, its in its 2nd revision, it looks great. 640x480@15fps (RGB24). I heard that they might sell the design to a retail company and you might start seeing them next year.

    Another alternative is to run a Cu-Seeme server. Not the one from white pine but the clone version made by Brian Godette.

    http://www.dimensional.com/~bgodette/

    He makes a cuseeme reflector software running on NT, Linux, Unix, FreeBSD, Ect, Ect. With simple serial port cameras available for 50$ a piece, it should be too exspensive. Yet you WOULD need at least one computer per two cameras connecting to the main FreeBSD machine.

    You could view the entire day care from ANY machine, and i think the reflector software can re-direct the video stream anywhere you want, not sure if it will record individuial frames but its worth a look-see.

  • Easy way to do this... (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    We did this a while ago with a FreeBSD box with
    a fairly insane number of PCI slots (12 I think)
    and used BT848 based cards from Hauppage.

    89 Dollars ea if I remember.

    Just build the right number of nodes, tweak the
    kernel a tad, recompile, and use your favorite
    grabber program and application.

    Another option is to use serial cameras like
    the quickcam and a cyclades type multiport
    serial driver. That would probably work, although
    I've never done it because the Bt848 route went so
    well.

    We even got it running using VIC to do FMV.

    It was a fun project, if the president of the company hadn't been crazy.

  • Re:web cams (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    The only problem with the X10 wireless units is that they don't deal with each other very well. If you have two transmitters in somewhat close proximity, each will cause a ghost image on the other. So much for separate channels.

  • Don't forget, this is small-scale (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    You aren't likely to get a lot of hits on this site. You're going to MAYBE get twenty or thirty per day. Especially if you password protect it from the child molester and divorced fathers out there. I like the idea of having multiple junker boxes each running two cameras and passing the captured images to the main server via tcp/ip. Either tcl or python would provide this functionality quite readily. Also, for an extra bonus to the project, consider having an archival system so that you could have the stale pics moved off to a big hard drive every night. Then, if some kid knocks his teeth out or someone gets accused of fondling a kid, there would be evidence to protect the daycare center in the case of a lawsuit. dillrod seth|AT|sansa.net

  • Speaking from EXPERIENCE (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    FreeBSD.
    $50 PCI capture card (BT484)
    Grass Valley Group RS-232 controlled video switcher
    And pin-hole cameras for $60 a pop.

    It works. No 'special' 'web cam' software.

  • Possible Option (Score:3)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 23, 1999 @01:16PM (#1787053)
    See "Nuts & Volts" magazine, May 1999 (Vol. 20, No. 5) They demonstrate a simple RS-232-controlled video switcher for up to 16 sources. This is combined with a video capture card and some basic software (Win98-based in this case, but could easily be adapted to anything) to switch among the video sources and capture frames. With only 6 of the inputs used, the frame-per-second rate desired should easily be attainable.

    I've got a spare copy of that particular issue. I could mail the article (address?) or perhaps scan it or something, if it might be of any use.

    The switcher is available from the author in both kit and pre-built forms from http://members.aol.com/ncdcat/ [aol.com]. Select the "A/V Switching" link.

    Hope that helps.

  • qcwebcam (Score:3)

    by Alex Belits ( 437 ) on Friday July 23, 1999 @01:18PM (#1787054) Homepage

    It takes about up to 1 fps at 320x240, 24-bit color or up to 4 fps 6-bit B&W of the same size, has parallel interface (I was able to use up to 3 per box with additional parallel interfaces on the card), and it works with Linux and FreeBSD. See http://www.fhttpd.org/pub/qcwebcam/R EADME.html [fhttpd.org], http://phobos.illtel.denv er.co.us/~abelits/apartment.php3 [denver.co.us] for an example and http://phobos.illtel.denver.co.us/qca m-config [denver.co.us] for controls page.

    It's possible to modify the code to increase the resolution, however this kind of camera has twice higher resolution for green component than for red and blue ones, so even though picture will be 640x480 it won't be the same thing as real 640x480.

  • ..but do ensure that the pages are under password lock-and-key. Of course show sample images on the website, but the possibilities for the sickos out there are too numerous to have this sort of webpage 'open access'.
  • Where the heck did you find a mobo to do this?
  • Huh? Couldn't such a sicko just go sit in the park to watch kids?

    A webcam might make planning an abduction easier. Extremely unlikely, but one incident could ruin all involved.

    Depending on the day care, though, I'd bet you would get a whole lot more viewers viewing the young women providing the daycare. You may want to password-protect just to keep the traffic down.

    Gotta wonder, though, about how the day care providers feel about it. I mentioned the idea of this to the guy who runs my kids' daycare, and he felt the employees wouldn't like feeling watched all the time. Frankly I didn't care about watching the employees, I just wanted the ability to vicariously participate in what my kids do.
  • Who is Number One?!

    You are, Number Siz.

  • Huh? Couldn't such a sicko just go sit in the park to watch kids? Or watch Sesame Street? How is having the web page open an invitation to sickos?

  • But "the Internet" is the current big scare.

  • If I had kids, and they were in daycare, I would like the idea of seeing them on a webcam. BUT, I would not like the idea of the whole world watching them pick thier noses or whatever else.

    PLEASE consider using some security system, and only allowing the parents to view thier kids (easily done with apache, you can give parents passwords, and the rest of the world can only see the general site for the daycare center).

  • io.admcs.wwu.edu has a nice live web cam that refreshes the images however fast your network conneciton is. It is only one cam, but if it is relevent, you might want to ask them what they are using. Also note the different viewing options, large, zoomed, last 24 hours, and gallery.

    HTH,

    Ron Farrer
    ALPHA LINUX POWERED and loving it!

  • Two children just died in Memphis in seperate daycares on the same day because a single person was tasked with monitoring too many children.

    These kids were left in vans for hours by the drivers when it was well over 90 degree heat. If this was due to too many kids, incompetence, or a combination of the two, I don't know. However, the two daycares in question have had their licenses suspended by the state, are now closed, and the drivers/attendants of the vans have been fired or prohibited from working near children. Unfortunately, this is something that happens every year.

    State closes two deadly daycares [gomemphis.com]
    Mayor asks state to help monitor daycares [gomemphis.com]
    Daycares fail to follow new rules [gomemphis.com]
    Parents, Daycares struggle with 'why' [gomemphis.com]

  • offtopic (Score:1)

    by mvw ( 2916 )
    Why has this (and the exact repetition below) not been moderated down?

  • off topic (Score:1)

    by mvw ( 2916 )
    This is
    1. off topic
    2. a copy of the posting above
    3. pointless - you will see the same competition and cooperation within the BSD camp as within the Linux distros.

  • The parallel port method to contol cameras is a great way to switch cameras for one card. I wonder why there currently is not a commercially available solution.

    I only had one problem with that link. It had a schematic showing how to hook relays to the parallel port to a buffer chip. It needs to show a diode in parallel with the relay coil. Without that diode, the relay would work exactly one on/off cycle and destroy the IC on the off cycle due to the relay coil's inductance. For those who do not understand why relays have a diode across the coil in electronic circuits, understand that the driving transistor switches off at high speed and the nature of a coil is to maintain current. When the transistor is suddenly turned off, high voltages will result and will most likely puncture the transistor's junction. Fun experiment.
  • Here [www.hut.fi] is a page that shows how to hook up a parallel port to control various devices and has example programming in the C language, with examples for both DOS and Linux. It also shows why and how to hook the diode up to the relay coil (very important.) It has a few good illustrations where those wires go from the back of the computer

  • Another idea: digital cameras are getting VERY cheap. I've been seeing them for under $90 for no flash/low-mem versions. There's an Agfa model that sells for $120. Hook it up to a power supply and serial and use one of the camera control packages to run it. Excellent image quality, on-camera compression to save CPU, and when the workers get too creeped out, you can decomission 'em (the cameras) and let the kids play with digital photography.

  • We have a pair of these at our school. If you want to judge the quality, try the following URLs:

    http://www.bnet.org/ruhs3/n/n-neteye/net.shtml - Our campus walkway. *Do* forgive the actual webpage; it sure as hell wasn't my doing :)

    http://www.bnet.org/ruhs3/n/n-neteye2/net2.shtml - A second axis cam, staring through a dirty old window at the Freshmen circle.

    Check out the sidebar too, where you can pick a half-sized image or also some form of push. I think otherwise it refreshes every ten seconds.

    If you want to test the refresh rate, just open up the picture itself in a new windows and do mass reloads. I think what other people said here was accurate, ~1 picture a second max. Try it, they're pretty cool.
  • dunno if you've thought this far, but serial cameras would need the same number of serial ports as cameras. maybe you sould look into the multiport serial cards linux supports? in a linux kernel menuconfig is lists them though i'm not sure what they are. getting around the speed issues though, that's another story. are you sure webcams can only do one picture per 15 secs? what about quickcams?
  • ... assuming multiple USB cams can run off a single USB hub with cable runs of the correct length. And, of course, assuming you can use those cameras with Linux/*BSD USB support.. ;)

    Then again, you know what they say about 'assume'..

  • 1) you're a dork for trolling for more *BSD v. Leenucks flame war nonsense, and:

    2) the GPL has been tested in court, with Jobs / NeXT in the late eighties. If you'd been part of the Unix world for longer than a month, you might know that.
  • We use Axis webcams at my old university for our computer labs. 10baseT directly to the camera's. Embedded web server. Pretty cool. This will help your cable distance problem. Just make a page with links to the urls of the cameras. Just be sure to change the default passwords of the cameras. Whoever installed our cameras didn't. ;)

  • I setup a Wincam under FreeBSD using a WinCam.one about 3 years ago. Certainly the AXIS is superior, but (in addition to not being available then) I had very little money to work with, and I was unable to run ether to the camera position, thus I needed the modem capabilities of the wincam.one (yes, I know, some of the newer AXIS cameras can do that too). I had a good experience with the WinCam, it ran flawlessly for over a year, and has since been redeployed [uky.edu] (Though it's down right now as the area it's in is rewired for comm and power). And they have some simply multiplexing capabilities, however the image snap times are slow at 640x480x24 because of the serial line speed (high-speed serial is supported I think, >200K). Axis units and a little software to front-end them would probably be easiest and provide a higher-quality output, but would probably set you back $6k...x10.com has/had some tiny cameras with 2.4Ghz transmitters, these combined with reasonable video capture cards would provide an interesting solution the required little wiring. Though I'm not sure how you could caputre 6 images, or easily rotate through 6 video inputs...
  • i don't know if it was the same brand, but i saw a similar camera that was put up at the LBT so people could grab pseudo-realtime pix of the construction of the observatory while it happened. pretty slick thingie. just plug 10base-T into the back and you could browse it directly, though i think they just set up a cron job on the nearby sparc to grab pix every min or so. i also don't remember the cost, but it would save a _LOT_ of time and headaches spent playing with drivers and stuff.

    tim

  • Axis camera server can be used (Score:3)

    by nneul ( 8033 ) <nneul@neulinger.org> on Friday July 23, 1999 @01:00PM (#1787076) Homepage
    It allows hooking up 4 B&W or Color coax cameras and 1 SVideo camera, completely self contained.

    We use it in conjunction with a linux based server that grabs the images off the camera server every few seconds.

    Biggest problem I've had is that I would like to dynamically assemble the images (can be retrieved either as gif or jpg in many sizes) into a video stream (bandwidth is not generally an object, but gif anims are way too big).
  • Any security store will sell an automatic switcher (or multiplexer) for less than the cost of 5 or 6 capture cards. If you set it to switch every 5 seconds or so, you can sync the computer to capture a frame every 5 seconds. You can get the high frame rate for the manager by getting a cheap TV and splitting the output of the switcher between the TV and the capture card.

    The distance can be achieved by using an NTSC signal from the cameras.

  • Not necessarily. This is only a violation of the GPL if they refuse to allow access to the source code at all. If you call up and ask them for the code, though, they have to give it to you, assuming they aren't breaking the GPL.

    BTW, this is all prefaced with the standard IANAL disclaimer... :)

  • Yeah, I'll admit.. it's the way to go for professional apps.. and probably the way to go for this particular app, but it *is* expensive...


    http://www.onsale.com/category/inv/00031159/0149 3193.htm
  • This may be out in left field but here goes

    You may be able to use cheap video cameras and a video capture board. An example would be this [x10.com] or the camera offered by WalMart that was mentioned a couple days ago. I don't know what video capture capabilities BSD has and I don't know exactly how to switch from one camera to the next but I suspect that it's possible. If so then you could cycle through the cameras, saving a frame from each with each cycle.

  • Read a little further than the title please. This is wireless in the sense that the camera isn't wired to the display. See this [x10.com].

    Actually this is a great way to go. Borrowing this link [aol.com] from below, you can switch video input into a capture card. Any combination of coax wired and wireless (I'm not sure if you can use more than 1 X10 device in a building.) cameras should work. You can even use 2 capture cards and use both output streams if you need more speed. I think your server should be able to compress and write the images fast enough.

    It's inexpensive, fast and flexible. Hmmm this may be able to help me solve the mystery of which of my 2 dogs is eating my remote controls...

  • Could you explain to me the difference in video input types? What is RCA in? How is that different from S-video, composite, etc and all the other types I hear listed.

    I'm looking around for the best video capture card and I want to make sure it has the right input type. (And it has got to be cheap :)

    Also, you know where to find plans for building the parallel port controller box you mentioned? (I wouldn't need any more than 5 cams.)
  • Gotta wonder, though, about how the day care providers feel about it. I mentioned the idea of
    this to the guy who runs my kids' daycare, and he felt the employees wouldn't like feeling watched all the time.

    That's ok, the new employees who replace them won't mind it.

    Two children just died in Memphis in seperate daycares on the same day because a single person was tasked with monitoring too many children.

    Any thinking parent would welcome this opportunity to monitor the kids. After all, it's your responsibility, not the daycare's. They're YOUR employee, and they're YOUR kids.

    I suspect that those who are objecting here (as if the kids aren't being monitored anyway, by authority figures you're paying to do it) don't have kids, and are mostly kids themselves. Naughty ones, at that.


    BTW; if you're planning to spend the significant ongoing cash costs of maintaining password security on this, you might as well do it right and use the Axis camservers. It makes no sense to kludge together a ricketty solution that's breaking all the time and requiring intervention, and then add passwords so you can be taking tech support phone calls from morons too.
  • Who is Number One?!

    :-P
  • A few cameras out there plug directly into an ethernet device, and include a mini-webserver so that you can use HTTP to retrieve the image to your central server.
  • As soon as read this I said use a video capture card. Then you can use a video modulator which will put each camera on a differant channel. Plus, the video modulator would be way cheaper than the serial cards, and as the above said the video capture cards have really low overhead.
  • >In defense of wincam, the image quality is
    >actually better than the axis since it's a
    >true digital camera

    The Axis camera is just as "true digital" as
    the wincam, so that's rather pointless.

    I confess that the last time that I compared these two products was more than a year ago. But back then, the Axis camera's quality was _far_ superior to the Wincam.

    Images were blurry, colours were wrong and needed a lot of help by the camera's client software, light conditions were not working, the CCD's colour structure was clearly visible in the image. Just plain and simply bad.

    Looking at the images on wincam.com now, those images are indeed far better. But some of the annoying artifacts that bothered me back then still seem to be there. The far-to-strong fisheye effect, the colour artifacts.

  • Use the Axis camera instead of Stardot (Score:3)

    by Hanno ( 11981 ) on Friday July 23, 1999 @01:28PM (#1787089) Homepage
    Hi,


    others already recommended the Axis camera - I agree. :-)

    I have been doing a lot with webcams for the company I worked for in the past, even made a review of different webcams for a German internet magazine. That hardware test was about a 1.5 years ago, so my experience is a bit dated.

    To sum up: The Axis camera was the best of the crowd. It is basically a camera with an ethernet plug. _Great_ image quality, very easy to use in a network. A bit pricy, but definitely worth it. (http://www.axis.com/products/camera_servers/)

    The Stardot camera has a few nice benefits, too. It uses a standard serial connector, you can use customized cables that are _very_ long, you can also use it with a modem. But the image quality of the camera that I tested 1.5 years ago was just _lousy_. It was even worse than the first version of the Connectix colour quickcam.

    The old parallel Connectix camera has a lot of support by different Unix flavours, yet I only had running three of them simultaniously on one PC. Also, the quickcam really hogs any computer because it needs to be polled all the time - stupid protocol chosen by the developers.

    Microplex offers a camera hub made for the parallel quickcam (http://www.microplex.com/microplex/info/networkEy e.html). But since the parallel quickcam is hard to get these days, it is probably not an option for you. Also, the Microplex hub was nice and a good value for its price, but only if you already own a quickcam.

    There are a lot of USB cameras out there (the Philips product is _really_ good), but there still is no support that I know of for Linux. Don't know about BSD though.


    So to sum up, the Axis camera was the way to go back then. From reading the description of your project, it sounds like it is exactly what you are looking for.

    Mail me if you need to know more details.
  • If distance every becomes a problem Black Box (and probably other companies.. but i know they got a bunch) sells a variety local multiplexers. They will take multiple serial lines or ethernet or whatever else and multiplex it all into one signal over fiber or some other medium. It might be worth a look.

  • LinuxCAM (Score:2)

    by Dsa ( 13510 )
    LinuxCAM software will be the better choice for all. This is a two years software developement and it is about to be released. ...September 1999.
    Features:
    - Unlimited camera input (Color/B&W)

    - Robotics camera supported (all)
    Point & click pictures

    - IP protocol for all features
    Full remote IP administration

    - Streaming technology supported
    RealVideo supported

    http://www.linuxcam.com/
  • X10 is selling their remote cams for super cheap these days. You can get a whole kit for around $125 or so I believe.

    This means that you could put the cams anywhere in the day care without worry. THen you just need RC in cards to capture the content. You can stream etc with these as well as write scripts to capture every nth frame.
  • Let me just reiterate what everyone is saying here -- Axis cams are the way to go. You can run UTP cable a LONG ways.

    The only problem with the axis cams is restricting access to them.

    The way I would do that is to have the cams on RFC1918 space, firewalled away from the world. Let a Linux/FreeBSD box sit as the 'public' box, doing authentication, etc. and allowing access to the snapshots to remote people.

    Meanwhile, anyone local (adminstrators, etc.) can view the cameras as streaming video (jpeg push is how it works I believe, but its been a while since I dicked with one).

  • AXIS are really cool actually, they use linux in their "gadgets". They ported linux to their own RISC processor and that's what all of those print/scanner/webcam/isdn servers run. It's reason enough for buying them.

    /emj
  • In this case, RCA and composite are the same thing. The signal is called composite because it carries both the luminescence and chroma signals (I believe that's what they're called) in the same wire. The connectors are generally either RCA types (the same as standard audio patch cables on any home stereo) or BNC (like 10base2 ethernet). I am not aware of any video capture cards that don't accept composite signals. Heck, even my digital camera puts out a composite signal. I could use it as a camcorder!

    S-video is very different. The connectors have four pins and you won't find S-video connections on most stock VCR's and monitors. Unless you are producing a movie, s-video connectivity probably should not be an important factor.

    That parallel port controller box sounds interesting... I also wonder how that would work.
  • Use the bktr driver and 6 supported camera/cards
    on a box with 6 pci slots and onboard ethernet/video/drive controllers.

    Currently I have 2 cards in my box and streaming
    using a hauppauge gard only uses like 200K for
    system resources. You could probably find a cheaper bt848 card without the tvtuner.

  • you could use the 3com Big Picture camera kit
    and the webcam streamer included with xawtv
  • I have a FreeBSD system here with multiple BrookTree cards in it, and it works pretty well. Amancio Hasty and Randall Hopper did a lot of good work on making the Bt848 and 878 boards work for nearly anything you want. (Nearly any Hauppauge board, or most mainstream PCI 'TV' boards)

    There are a few applications out there in the FreeBSD Ports [freebsd.org] collection for taking the output of one of these cards and doing useful things with it. One in particular is fxtv. [ipass.net]

    I wrote a tiny little program based on how fxtv grabs the frames to just update a .jpg every 30 seconds, and keep a history of the last 10 frames, and it works great for a webcam of this nature. There's really no reason you can't have as many of them as you have PCI slots.

    Another option is to grab one of these from the Walmart Online site, that was mentioned in a story [slashdot.org] a few days ago on here. A sequencer like this will take 8 inputs, and cycle through all of them. Somehow time your webcam grabs to the cycle speed, and you could get by with only one digitizer card.
  • Here's what you do: define "camera clusters". These would be N cameras mounted very close together and connected to a junker PC running Linux (what else?). Have one script on each junker dedicated to these N cameras and cycling through them so that the cluster provides 1 picture every X seconds to the server via TCP/IP. Done this way you can probably do it fairly cheaply (although it may be bulky).

    BUT FIRST, I'd ask the director why "real time" is so important. If the people being watched don't know which second is the one where the pic is being snapped, a granularity of 15 seconds should be plenty. What's the director going to do, sit there and do nothing but watch the screen?

    If there is a reasonable answer to this, there may be another solution. There are digital cameras that will capture motion AND stills at the same time. Mount one in every room, feed the motion to the director and the stills to the web. I can't remember the name of the product, but there's a page out there about some guys getting in trouble in Walmart with it.


    ---
    Put Hemos through English 101!
  • I've used NetEye also. The camera server can not handle many users, but you simply don't have people connect to the camera. Have your web server grab the images from the cameras, and feed viewers from the web server.
  • Well, for assembling the images, one could always use a meta refresh and a rotation script running on the server, though that would be messy bandwidth-wise.

    Perhaps the real media video server allows you to do something like this. Not sure. haven't had enough of a chance to poke at its features.
  • Of course it's not my real number. And who wants to remain anonymous? That's my real email address on the message.

    The post was a PARODY to make a point (and a pretty damn good one, IMNSHO. Flaimbait though it may be, I think it deserved a score increase :P). It was really intended to spark some intelligent discussion on the issues it raised, but it's probably too late for this post.

    I can certainly understand parents wanting to spy on their kids in day care. The point is, where do we draw the line, and how will it affect their personality in the long term? Do we put cameras in elementary school? Middle school? High school? Their bedroom? Should privacy be granted at a certain age, like driving or alchohol? By getting kids used to having a camera around every corner at a young age, they will learn to accept as normal what most of US consider an invasion of privacy - and I'm not sure that they will "grow out of it".
  • To: Number One
    From: Advisor 482-46-9233
    Subject: Project Overseer

    Sir, I wish to suggest a new approach to our mission to eradicate the expectation and desire for "rights to privacy" in society. Our current approach has been to slowly introduce controls into the existing adult population. These projects - including key escrow, centralized databases, and expanding the use of "Social Security Numbers" as individual serial numbers - have been only moderately successful. Every time we try to introduce something new, there is a tremendous backlash from so-called "privacy rights" organizations such as the EFF, ACLU, and of course, the notorious "Slashdot" web site.

    I propose that we introduce acceptance of - even dependance on - electronic monitoring and oversight into society by starting with young children. We will place monitoring cameras in day care centers, schools, youth centers - any place that children are present. We will even make hidden cameras available to parents (in the form of smoke detectors, for example). Parents will accept this with no hesitation - most of them are desperate to extend their "control" over their offspring as much as possible. Our program of seeding the media with scare stories about molestors, daycare abuse scandels, and sadistic babysitters will ensure that parents will universally accept having their offspring monitored at all times.

    In a few years, the individuals that spend their childhood under the constant "protection" of our monitoring cameras will become adults - and that insideous concept of "privacy" will be completely foreign to them. They will have no problem accepting our other control programs, because they know of nothing else.

    I have taken the liberty of "testing" this concept on one of strongholds of privacy on the Internet - the "Slashdot" web site. I requested information on using multiple cameras in a day care setting, and as of yet not a single respondant has suspected anything. They are even willingly providing excelent technical advice on how we might implement such a project.

    If they only knew...

    Yours Truly,

    Citizen #482-46-9233.

    P.S. I realize that we are already 15 years behind schedule, and that this will take even more time, but I firmly believe that this is our best hope at this time.
  • Set up a bunch of P60-P100's, one for each camera, put in a capture card and select a camera of your choice (parallel port cameras are decent if the lighting is ok, but get grainy otherwise). In either case tho, run an OS that can support the capture card you choose. These systems can then be networked to the primary server and the server can then handle the other issues.

    OR... if you want the server to do ALL the work, you could get 6 capture cards (which can get difficult), or use 1 capture card and build a switch that will toggle between the inputs for the 6 cameras. As long as you have adaquate control over the software, and you should have, you can switch, capture, switch, capture, etc etc etc.
    You said the camera didn't have to be absolutely realtime, and a custom relay based switch can easily toggle between 6 cameras in 3 seconds.
    Building the switching unit takes a LITTLE electronics experience, along with some work hooking it up to the parallel port, but nothing too extravagant. In any event, its cheaper than multiple computers.

    -Restil
  • Sony sells camcorders which have i.Link (IEEE1394, FireWire) If you look around you can get the following models DCR-TR7000, DCR-TRV103, DCR-TRV110 for around $650 each. There may exist problems with trying to use them as a camera though. Some people leave the tape door open so the 5 minute automatic shut-off doesn't occur.

  • Here's the AXIS URL [axis.com] for their camera servers.

    Would probably work very well for you - Ethernet eliminates your distance problem, and standard TCP/IP eliminates any compatibility issues...
  • This is both scary and hilarious, especially if you understand the '15 years behind' reference.
  • This IS the way to go - no special cameras, high hackability (is that a word?) due to the building of the control, simple to set up - no special software, etc.

    I was going to mention this kind of setup myself - but you beat me to it, eutychus! This is the way to do it. It would be different if he needed to do this a realtime streaming video - but at 1 FPS on the admin end, it isn't needed...
  • The AXIS 3-camera server (AXIS 2400) is around (US)$1k without any cameras. But it sounds like this fellow needs six cameras... so $2k for AXIS Servers.

    The savings can come with the actual cameras. I have used, with great success the color one (CCDCC-1) from Ramsey Electronics (http://www.ramseyelectronics.com/) in other applications and don't see why this wouldn't work pretty well here too. $200/each (w/cover, power supply & interface board)

    So total cost is $2k + (6 * $200) or $3,200 for six cameras +/- cables. So more like $550/camera.

  • No, try the AXIS WebCam... (Score:3)

    by [Dilbert] ( 49749 ) on Friday July 23, 1999 @12:58PM (#1787110)
    This is NOT the way to go. I had to look up stuff for webcams/daycare last summer as an intern and I'll tell you that you don't want a computer if you don't need it...

    We needed one or 2 cameras. The best way i could find to do it was with an ISDN line to the daycare center and an ISP, using an ISDN router. There is a webcam made by AXIS technologies (don't know the http, look it up). It's a thinserver -- you can browse the camera directly and grab pics, using different urls/filenames for different sizes and qualities. I think it could do up to one pic/sec... Not sure. If the daycare had a PC in there, they'd get almost live feeds off the cams, and it'd all be ethernet and easy. AXIS provides cgi scripts to grab pics and post them on a "real" www server if you like, or you could just provide links to the pics directly (although in my case, that would've saturated the daycare's planned ISDN link..."

    Look into it, and if you want more input, mail me - remove the "nospam".

    "Half of everything you know is wrong." - My physics teacher.
  • I got the X10 Cam (xcam) and it's not very good. Very bad low light capabilities. Some interesting color artifacts in too much light. However it is real small and the wireless stuff works pretty well.
  • You could run just an average jo video camera with an video out RCA type plug then just use a amp to boost the signal 100+ feet.
  • Do you mean the RealVideo server?

    If so, yeah... that lets you do a live video feed using Realvideo, but it still requires that you have a separate camera/video capture device to provide the video.

    Check out Real's site for more info. And the free tools are pretty well hidden. The Basic Server (not Plus) is the free server from Real and RealProducer (again, not Plus) is the free encoder/live feed from Real.

    Personally, I don't see what's the hype about security. Maybe it'll be conforting to the parents to know that any random guy can't get to pictures of their kids, but do you really want to be supporting tech support calls and issuing each parent a uid/pass?

    Jonathan Wang
  • I'm not sure, but I think the folks who run the secureeeye cam run a linux based server. Might want to contact them or just check out the sight (www.secureeeye.com) to see what they've done.
  • Didn't Apple just make Quicktime 4.0 GPL and available on Linux? If so, couldn't you just set up a couple of Linux boxes each connected to a couple of cameras all running QT4. Then stream the video to the web server and out to the web.

    Later...
    Corrado
  • First things first, Cameras
    Go to Pawnshop buy 6 camcorders (sub 400$)
    they do not have to be good but should have remote IR-ctlr with at least on/off
    3 should have S-VIDEO out , and 3 with RCA out.
    Amps actually may not needed for under 50'.
    Also 50' is never just 50' once your in the walls.
    Best bet is try it on the floor before cutting walls.
    Now with the Remotes, cut them open & hard wire pads,
    mount under camera with shiny L flange.

    There you are 6 Remote control Cameras, Motor mounts and other things are easy add-ons.
    You can also have the units keep on camera logs by reusing the Tape in the unit.
    If you Wire in more controls(rw/ff etc) to the remote and track Time on server side accessing the log (past images) is easy.

    Now on the Boxen Side
    Get three Video capture cards with good PCI support. Each card should have RCA and SVideo inputs and Soft control of inputs. Miro, or ATI both have this several others too, you may have to get different cards as some drivers will not enumerate multicards correctly.

    Now you have 6 Instanly available Video Streams and ability to log to file with hardware compression if available on your card to backups.

    I know you can do this on Macs too as I have a 8500/G3 with 6 Video in/outs this way and a BWG3 with 4 video-io and FireWire.

    Several Shareware apps for Macs already do some of this. Check out

    http://members.xoom.com/hsoftware/inde x.html [xoom.com]



    Hope this helps
  • My concern would be more of one box doing too much work. Running a lot of web cams is pretty tough in itself, but this box is also being asked to be a firewall and such. I would recommend 2 boxs, but on the camera side I would go with the X10 style cameras that you can pick up at X10.com They are wireless, and you can put many of them into one source. They are designed for security and such.
  • To do this, i'd recommend a card with a composite input (as most of them have). I apologize for the confusion... RCA is actually a connector style as you would find on the VIDEO IN on your VCR. You would use a composite signal. Most VCR's and cheap cameras will use a composite signal... and you can stretch it quite a distance... although I'm not sure the technical limitations on this.

    There really isn't much to using the PC parallel port for basic controls. Here's a decent example... all that needs to be done is buffer it and attach a relay... I'm sure there are other ways... but that is probably the easiest.

    PC Parallel Port Info [rr.com]

    has some basic information on the port and an example interface use...

    Let me know if I can be of further assistance... granted there are probably people around here with much more of an electronics background.
  • 1. Find a good video capture card supported under Linux which also has an RCA IN. There are several cards that qualify.

    2. Build a small parallel port controller box (an easy method would give you up to 8 cameras, but with a little more electronics, you could handle quite a few more). The box should switch the RCA inputs when a data line is toggled.

    3. Get a few cheap B/W video or security cameras. You should be able to get these for $50 U.S.

    4. Write a quick script or C program to snap a picture, toggle control line, etc in a simple loop... have it place the files in a directory on your web server. Create web pages with a refresh tag, and have them load the file which the script will refresh.

    That's about it... hope this helps.
  • I work for Axis and would like to reply on the linux issue. We are working on porting linux into our thinservers (camera products being the first). Once this is completed we will of course set up a web site for posting our linux source where we will share our experiences with others. Currently all our products are based on our own stacks (which we call Axis thinserver technology). I think that once we add linux to our camera products we will see significant benefits from it, and I really belive that linux has a good place in the embedded applications as well. Already today we have it running in the lab - when we designed our latest chip (for 30 frames/second video over TCP/IP), getting it to work fist time under linux was a no-brainer compared to getting it to run under our older thinserver stack. If you have questions/comments - feel free to email me at martin.gren_nospam@axis.com (without _nospam)
  • A simple observation, as I am already doing this in a daycare center.

    Why is a 640 x 480 resolution so important, especially at higher color depths of 16 or 24 bit color. Are the parents connecting with a T1??? Because they sure as hell won't get an image very often with a 28.8 modem, or a 56K modem. Not every one uses a fast computer.

    I am already doing this with a 4 camera system and 2 computers using win98, not linux, and our daycare has recently been featured on C|net's TV.com and The Web shows.

    Each computer has 2 cameras, one of them acts as the server/firewall. Using a Java Applet to refresh images in 320 x 240 16bit color I can refresh every 4 seconds via an ISDN line. We will be getting a 768K SDSL line and will then be able to refresh the images at a frequency of every 1 or 2 seconds.

    GOOD LUCK!!!!

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