Now, this camera actually isn’t half bad. It’s got 10 IR LEDs for night vision, it claims to be 10MP, but I am not so sure about that, however the picture quality is fine. It also has audio in and out. Now, sadly, the audio in is pretty terrible, very smothered and fuzzy. I think that is partly down to the low bit rate it uses, but also because the microphone is blocked by the bodywork, which I’ll try and fix one day. The cool thing is that it has pan and tilt built in, so you can move it around to get something in picture, so you haven’t got to get up to move the camera if your baby has moved around somewhere.

The only issue I came across, was getting a video feed WITH audio out of this thin on Linux. It offers an ActiveX solution for IE, but only a video feed for FireFox, without audio (the fact it offers any FireFox compatibility at all is pretty cool). Now, the webcam doesn’t advertise what it is, since it turns out it is a rip off a webcam made by Fosscam. It is actually a Netwave IP camera. This was my major hurdle in working out how to use it. After literally hours and hours or googling and posting on metafi I finally found out how to get an video stream with audio out of it. It turns out the solution is quite simple, you just use this address in VLC’s streaming media source input:

http://IPADDRESS:PORT/videostream.asf?user=admin&resolution=32

Of course, if you changed the username, change it here and if you have a password, then add &pwd=PASSWORD or whatever it is. I found this address from an awesome PDF that lists all the Fosscam’s cgi commands and since the Netwave is a ripoff of the Fosscam, it uses the same commands.

You can find the PDF here: http://www.drivehq.com/file/df.aspx/publish/bubbah/PublicFolder/IPCAMCGISDKV1.7.pdf

There are loads of other options, you can basically configure the whole camera through cgi calls, though, beware, you can mess up and lock yourself out of the camera if you don’t know what you are doing. Here are a snippet of some of the commands:

Take a photo: /snapshot.cgi[?user=&pwd=&next_url=] Parameters user:username pwd:password next_url:the name of snapshot

Use server push mode to send videostream (no audio) /videostream.cgi[?user=&pwd=&resolution=] Parameters user:username pwd:password Resolution:8:320*240 32:640*480

Send videostream in asf format, only support vlc player and mplayer (with audio): /videostream.asf[?user=&pwd=&resolution=] Parameters user:username pwd:password Resolution: 8:320*240 32:640*480

Get device status info: /get_status.cgi Parameters now:The count of seconds form 1970-1-1 0:0:0 to now alarm_status: 0:no alarm  1:motion alarm 2:input alarm ddns_status:DDNS status upnp_status:UPNP status


Get camera params: /get_camera_params.cgi[?user=&pwd=] Parameters user:username pwd:password Resolution: 8: 320*240 32: 640*480 Brightness: 0-255 Contrast: 0-6 Mode: 0: 50hz 1: 60hz 2 outdoor format Flip: 0: initial 1: vertical rotate 2: horizontal rotate 3: vertical + horizontal rotate

Set misc parameters of camera:  /set_misc.cgi?[led_mode=&ptz_center_onstart=&ptz_auto_patrol_interval=&ptz_auto_patrol_type=&ptz_patrol_h_rounds=&ptz_patrol_v_rounds=&next_url=]
Parameters Led_mode: 0:mode1 1:model2 2:shut off the led Ptz_center_onstart: =1 Ptz_auto_patrol_interval, =0: no auto rotating Ptz_auto_patrol_type: 0:no rotate 1:horizontal 2: vertical 3: horizontal + vertical

I can also access the camera through it’s http interface or by using an Android app called IP Camera Lite, which allows me to pan and tilt the camera remotely.

Anyway, using this method, I now have a remote controllable camera that has really good night vision and with audio, all viewable via VLC. Sample nigh time pictures to follow

Well, I have an excuse, my lovely baby girl was born two weeks ago today and so my life has been rather preoccupied with nappies, vomit and bottles.

Never fear, new posts are coming, including hints and tips on using motion to take time lapse movies, a script to automatically update to the latest SVN versions of ffmpeg and x264 among others.

Till then, enjoy the peace and quiet.

Simple, but if I wasn’t running my backup solution, I would have been screwed – bye bye to my music, photos and work files.

Thank you rsback and rsync….

(Update)

What is even more awesome, is that since Linux regards everything as a file (so all drives are effectively referred to as files (via the UUID) in Linux (in my case Ubuntu)) swapping out a drive with a new one is very simple. I just updated /etc/fstab with the UUID of the new drive, and then copied over my backed up files to it.

As far as Ubuntu is now concerned, it is the same drive, now only bigger. So all my samba shares and rsync folders all work as before.

God I love Linux.

So, it’s that time of year, and I’d like to wish all my readers a very Happy Christmas and a great New Year (well, it can’t be much worse than this one ). It’s been a brilliant year for pruperting, we’ve been going for just over a year now and we have already quadrupled our readership. I look forwarding to regaling you all with hints, tips, rants and posts next year.

Keep on rocking

Yup, it’s definately Christmas now.

Happy Xmas and a great New Year to all my readers, lets hope 2010 is the year that gets us out of this horrible global mire….

There will be a lot of disappointed people out there, when they see what Chromium is, but that is only because there are lots of people out there who don’t understand what Google wanted to achieve and were, as usual, being unrealistic about what it could achieve.

It makes a good point and it is very amusing reading the SAFB writing in comments to defend Mac.

The truth of the Mac matter is, due to its price, Macs are set at a price point that only people with a high disposable income can afford them. Buying one shows that you earn a decent amount of money and care enough about outside appearances that you want to own a laptop that ‘looks cool.’ Most of the comments I have read about current Mac owners wanting to upgrade to a new Mac talk about the newer Mac ‘looking cooler’ and even Apple’s own advert on TV for its most recent Mac book talks about how it looks amazing (milled out of one piece of metal with a glass screen etc.), in fact it makes no mention of if it has any performance improvements at all.

If you ask me, the reason SAFB get so angry about defending their precious products, it is because deep down, they feel a little guilty that they have spent so much money on what is the laptop equivalent of buying a big red Ferrari.