UPDATE (1/4/03)
The Cameras and their arrangement have changed several times, so what you read below has changed. I also found that having 3-4 Snappers FTP'ing at the same time caused trouble vying for the available bandwidth to the Website. Hence, I wrote a single Snappy FTP daemon program that gathers all the pics and FTPs them together as well as archives them on my main machine. The current arrangement is:
Multi-FTP Daemon - Pentium 120
BackyardCam - Pentium 120
FrontYardCam Color Day/IR Night - AMD XP2000+
Frontyard WebCam (Color Day/IR Night)
FrontYard WebCam is mounted under the roof eave overlooking the front yard & driveway.
The picture is from a
Color CCD IR Camera (from Ebay) run through a Winnov AV video
|capture card running on my main PC (AMD XP2000+) and hooked into
the home network.
The Pentium 60 now
handles the FTP Duties and one Snapper.
02/22/08: After 6 years 2 months and 2 days, the P60 passed away. The hard disk was recovered and mounted in an old NEC 9616 P120.
BackYard Cam is in the basement window. The picture is from a VHS CamCorder and the composite video goes to a Snappy attached to the Pentium 120.
The Backyard Cam got put up 3/9/02 and use to be the Birdcam.
The Lake House Cam (not
shown) is in a picture window in our summer cabin in Maine. A Logitech Orbit
MP webcam feeds video to an IBM P4 salvaged from a dumpster. It
focuses on the view of the lake. Unfortunately the Hard disk did not survive the low
temps in the cabin during the winter and conditions are such that repair visits
will have to wait till spring!
My Snapper software,
written in Visual Basic, does the timed video capture and FTP to
the website and is designed to have multiple instances running at
the same time so multiple WebCams can all run on the same PC.
Snappy versions (2.0, 3.0, 4.0) refer to the software that came
with the Snappy. All snappy hardware is the same. Snapper runs
with either Snappy 3.0 or Snappy 4.0 drivers.
My SnapVFW software, written in Visual Basic, is basically the same as the Snapper software, except it is designed to utilize Video for Windows instead of the Snappy.
It does timed video capture and FTP to a website.
The Internet connection is Verizon DSL and the WebPage is free with the DSL service and is hosted by Verizon.net. The only bad thing is they do not allow cgi scripts, server side includes and they use really strange, randomly generated login names! But Hey! It's free!
How to Build your Own Snap Cam
Why?
A lot of folks have asked, "Why are you doing this?"
The Snapper software was (and still is) a great Visual Basic programming project involving image capture, manipulation, & titling, FTP, Timers, 24hour rollovers, etc.
These web pages were a fun, a little Web Design project
It's great to be able to see "the grounds" from the office or when away on business trips
It let's us check on the Lake House way up in Maine
Making a PC a reliable 24hour picture server has been a challenge in itself.
Making an old P60 run 3 snappys at once (for a time) was interesting.
It's a great remote PC control project (WinVNC, Remote Admin, Telnet, FTP, and TCP/IP connections)
Time Lapse photography is really cool (all the snaps are archived)
It's what can be done with a 24/7 Internet connection, home networks, and old, thought to be useless PCs, and tons of cheap stuff for older computers on Ebay
Future Projects/Improvements
Can't wait for summer to set up a Garden webcam Xcam did it. Quality way too low for Website.
WildLife Webcam - The BirdCam went operational 3/9/02. The UnderFeederCam went operational 6/8/02 and discontinued shortly thereafter (not interesting enough).
Pond (Underwater) WebCam The PondCam went operational on 04/21/02. Water clouds up too fast. Pics get blurry.
Pond Surface Monitor - Who's drinking the water at night? Switched the PondCam to the Surface for a while.
Watchdog Reset device for improved reliability (Timed automatic reboot every night eliminated the need)
Remote Over-the-Internet Control of the Pan & Tilt head
Auto Archiving, MPEG creation Multi-FTP program does the archiving.
LakeHouse Cam - Really remote (200 miles away). Hard disk did not work well in the cold. Try again in spring of '08.
Page Last updated
02/22/2008