LivingEggs

[SteveLaw]

Okay, so here's the thing:

We are getting some eggs from livingeggs.co.uk - you get these eggs for 10 days during which time they hatch and then they take them away again after the 10 days. Don't ask me why, we are (I think it's to do with Darwin).

Anyway, what I have been asked to do is to set up a webcam to a) record whatever happens and b) stream it live on website/ plasma screens in reception.

While I know this is possible and presumably relatively easy it's just something I've just never done before, so it's a good opportunity to ask for your advice/experience and therefore do it properly.

We don't have a webcam so we'd be buying for this, so particular recommendations would be good on that. The other main issue I forsee is that of storage. I can see this taking up a huge amount of storage. Of course we can delete anything before they hatch, but the moment of hatching and I would guess the chicks post-hatch, as it were, would need to be captured for prosperity.

What sort of sizes will we be looking at for saved video files? What sort of strategy would be best? (I was thinking originally of some kind of time stop, but I can see how that might miss the actual hatching moment.)

And finally, how do I actually stream it live? What will I need? Or in other words, "How do I..."

Any help and advice will be very gratefully received. Thanks in advance.

[Hacksawbob]

I believe VLC player is pretty handy at relaying all sorts of things from one format to another, as you are only doing video (you are right?) should be fairly straight forward. also Windows media encoder
Microsoft Windows Media - Getting Started with Windows Media Encoder

I think it has a wizard for this sort of thing, basically it turns the box you have the cam plugged in into a webeserver, you put the url that media encoder gives you and put it into a browser and there you have it. For a plasma screen, most have the facility to have a computer plugged into them (vga) so hook it up to a computer/laptop and run your browser full screen , or in kiosk mode ,quality might be iffy, large plasmas are unforgiving to webcams puny output so invest in as high a res cam as possible. As for capture I believe that media encoder can do that too, but failing that there webcam "security" software that will start recording one movement it detected. coffecup did this but I haven't used it for quite a few years there maybe better/free-er on the market now.

logitech pro

this gets the thumbs up from stop motion forums resolution + quality optics + decent lighting will make all the difference.

[SteveLaw]

Windows Media Encoder seems to be ideal, thanks for that (I have a really old/poor quality webcam I just found in a cupboard somewhere to test).

Unfortunately the web part probably isn't going to work I just realised without port-forwarding and all sorts of begging and scraping to our Internet Provider / LA etc. (ngfl router + NAT)

But it's a great start, thanks.

[Hacksawbob]

Somr webcam software uses ftp to send a jpeg to a website to you have a picture every minute or so, FTP shouldn't be a problem for LA to set up/allow. But I know how frustrating it can be to get them to do "stuff" this way you are pushing the images out to the website rather than puling it from the client., ie much easier as its coming from within the firewall.

[tech_guy]

Can you choose what sort of eggs they send - crocodile?, ostrich?, dinosaur?

[mattx]

Can you choose what sort of eggs they send - crocodile?, ostrich?, dinosaur?

Reminds me of the joke - how do you like your eggs in the morning ?

Fertilized or un-fertilized........?

I'm going to hell arn't I ?

[tech_guy]

I'll be there waiting...

[Jobos]

I've used this Yawcam - Yet Another Webcam Software in the past with good results

[eduabncs]

Speak to your LA/RBC. Many will in fact have streaming servers that can support more concurrent streams then the basic windows media encoder. Also it saves on your schools bandwidth as you only have one stream from the school to the LA/RBC streaming system which then distributes the stream out to other connections as required. We did just this for one of our schools here in Birmingham a couple of years ago. It worked well and the school were quite happy with the results.

I even posted the link on here at the time!

Cheep Cheep...!

[SimpleSi]

Somr webcam software uses ftp to send a jpeg to a website to you have a picture every minute or so, FTP shouldn't be a problem for LA to set up/allow. But I know how frustrating it can be to get them to do "stuff" this way you are pushing the images out to the website rather than puling it from the client., ie much easier as its coming from within the firewall.

Although we'd all like live vidoe with 5.1 sound - the ftp to website does work and is the easiest and cheapest to do :0

I've done this twice in one school and once at another school.

Its lets pupils/staff see what's going on outside school hours and generates a lot of enthusiam from both - when the first egg starts to show signs of cracking - all eyes are glued to the website and if the 1st chick hatches at night - the staff descend upon the school then and there and you find pupils queued outside at 7am

Here is some footage

regards

Simon

[SteveLaw]

The ftp/jpg approach sounds like a good one and YawCam looked promising, but it can't access the site and I'm not sure why (I suspect because of the proxy and it have nowhere to enter proxy details).

I have emailed both the ISP and the LA. We'll see what happens. Thanks for the pointers though everyone.

[varun]

Steve, this is an interesting project and I hope I'm not too late to help you out. Came across your question quite by chance through Google...

I'm the co-founder of a service called HomeCamera. We're free (for now anyway), easy (no NAT etc), and you can use our "Auto-Record" feature to record images and/or video clips every 5 minutes onto our servers. You can share access to your camera (just hit "share" and enter the email addresses of the folks you want to share it with) and - here's a cool one - you can set up motion detection video recording to capture the chick hatching! (no guarantees though... lighting conditions can play havoc with this).

What we don't have is streaming video (though it's coming soon).

I hope you find the service useful. Let me know if there's anything I can do to help (write to support@ <website name goes here>).

EDIT: Forgot to post the site URL (getting old, sorry....): www.homecamera.com

[SimpleSi]

Looks very interesting.

JFYI - I'm trying to sign up and the sites gone a bit awol

Using FF3 on 1024x768

Same on my NC10 at 1024x600 (which is where I want to trial it on)

regards

Simon

[SimpleSi]

I've downloaded the client and installed it but its just sitting there with my beautiful image and a big warning triangle and says Offline

Can't find anything to make it go online

regards

Simon

[varun]

Simon, are you running McAfee firewall on your PC? Or worse, are you behind a corporate firewall that's proxying port 443? (that's the standard https port). BTW, I don't want to turn this into a support thread - could you drop me a note at support@ <site>.com ?

Thanks,

- Varun.