Webcam
Camera + Static mount + Network Transmission
History
wikipedia: Trojan Room coffee pot
Webcam
Initially a "webcam" was more likely assumed to be the actual website (or URL thereof) where once could view a feed of (nearly) live pictures. The actual detail of the setup (the kind of camera and how it was connected to the web) was less important than the fact that an automatic process was setup to continually send pictures from a statically mounted camera and made available publically online. The contemporary meaning of a kind of camera that attaches (via USB) or more commonly is built in to a computer marks a shift, most notably to a device that is now typically used in private point-to-point conversations (via a program such as Skype).
The term 'webcam' (a portmanteau) may also be used in its original sense of a video camera connected to the Web continuously for an indefinite time, rather than for a particular session, generally supplying a view for anyone who visits its web page over the Internet. Some of them, for example, those used as online traffic cameras, are expensive, rugged professional video cameras.
Always On
irational.org/cctv Heath Bunting
Some live webcams
- http://www.usap.gov/videoclipsandmaps/mcmwebcam.cfm
- http://cryptogasm.com/2012/10/all-the-webcams/ http://cryptogasm.com/webcams/
- http://www.lavrsen.dk/webcam/ Kenneth Lavrsen (author of motion, on his many webcams)
Work
- Alexei Shulgin's Privatronics
- Peter Westenberg's [activearchives.org/aaa/resources/194/ Stare]
- Michelle Teran & Peter Westenberg[1]
- Manifesto for CCTV Filmmakers
- from the Unpleasant Design blog: Tag & Track & Timo Arnall "Robot readable world" Collection of "found" footage showing Computer Vision Algorithms (better without the soundtrack)
Software
Example
Some code to use gstreamer to make a live webcam stream (using Icecast)...
gst-launch-0.10 \
oggmux name=mux ! shout2send ip=79.99.202.57 password=hackme mount=variable.ogg \
alsasrc device="plughw:CameraB404271" ! audio/x-raw-int,rate=8000,channels=1,depth=8 ! queue ! audioconvert ! \
vorbisenc ! queue ! mux. \
v4l2src ! 'video/x-raw-yuv,width=320,height=240,framerate=30/1' ! videorate max-rate=4 ! theoraenc ! mux.