There's nothing like a little playing with cables and following directions to make one feel all engineery. Today I stopped glaring at the web cam and set it up. It was quite easy, though it took a lot longer than it should have for me figure out I had to upgrade the firmware in my elderly router. It seems they shipped these routers without functional UPnP (the bit that deals with how my internet connection has dynamic IP addressing) and the camera needs an IP address to work with the free web addressing provided by the manufacturer.
Once I got it going, it was … fun. I pointed it at the cats' dish and watched them eat. When I used the web based controls to pan the camera, the cats got very interested in the camera, which makes a little mechanical noise, and gave me comical close-ups of noses and whiskers. Kitty-cam is so cute! I emailed the camera's web address and password to Oz.
Then I had to get it working as a security device, that having been the point of this exercise. The camera has a motion detector and though it can't save images, and the free web address doesn't include any storage space, the camera can email or FTP the images to some other place. Now this is an excellent application for one of my Gmail addresses, because that 2.77 GB of glorious Google storage can hold over a quarter million of these little web cam images. When the motion sensor gets tripped, the camera starts emailing images until there's no more motion. The file name of each image is a date and time stamp. Getting the email capability set up was kind of fiddly, but it's working now. That Gmail account now has a few hundred shots of our legs and feet, and the cats walking around in the kitchen.
I'm figuring that I'll put the camera in a strategic and unobtrusive place and turn it on whenever we're out. If the burglar comes we'll catch him in pixels.
Later that afternoon the phone rang. When I picked up, Oz said, "Okay, now you walk into the kitchen."
I'm so accommodating.
"Okay, now I can see your feet."
I sat on the floor and bent my head down to peer directly into the lens.
"There you are! Oh! I can make the lens move. The kitchen floor is so shiny."
I went back into the office and, while the cats lingered in the kitchen, Oz fiddled with the pan and tilt until he got Monte Alban's attention to the tune of several close-ups of a big green eye.
"Hee! Hee!"
God, but we're easily amused around here.
452 words | October 2, 2006 10:46 PM | WiredWe've been talking about getting a webcam for family conversations, etc. for a while now. Security wouldn't be a bad thing, either.
Posted by: Jonathan Dresner at October 3, 2006 02:46 AMI was thinking of you, actually, and another family with kids in one hemisphere and grandparents in another. A web cam would be fun for talking on the phone, opening birthday presents, or showing off a new costume or skill (like reading!).
I got this Panasonic one which works exactly as advertised and it's truly wireless. I can plug it in anywhere in the house and it automatically joins the network and starts working. Non-wireless web cams are much more economical, however, so look into those first if you don't absolutely require wireless capability. Security features are probably fairly standard.
Posted by: 100 word minimum at October 3, 2006 09:06 AM