Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

The ASCII Cam

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the dear-lord dept.

griffjon writes "The folks over at Dyne.org have hacked together a method to take live camera feed and turn it into ascii-character video on Linux. You can get the latest release, or see screenshots from a live stream. Y'know, this kinda ascii could be good random noise input for a cipher."

7 of 122 comments (clear)

  1. PNG really necessary? by rkent · · Score: 4
    Why on EARTH is the screenshot encoded to a PNG file? Seems like the most bandwidth-efficient way would be to just send the ASCII!

    Oh, wait... I don't have ANSI terminal emulation enabled in Netscape... nevermind :)

    Ahh, the good old BBS days. It's great that they now have "live webcam" functionality for systems like that, 10 years after they're useful :)

  2. randomness from video source: sgi already did it by TheGratefulNet · · Score: 4
    converting video to random data for seeding random number generators and such has been done:

    lavarand!

    walking past a fishbowl at SGI and seeing a bunch of "heat lamps" [sic] was pretty trippy...

    --

    --

    --
    "It is now safe to switch off your computer."
  3. Cipher by rw2 · · Score: 5
    Y'know, this kinda ascii could be good random noise input for a cipher."

    Yeah, there's really nothing better for cryptography than a repeating stream!

    --

  4. False Advertising by Mignon · · Score: 5

    Damn site doesn't work on Lynx. What good is an ASCII-cam that won't work on Lynx?

  5. someone at SGI developed this 5 years ago by nrmrvrk · · Score: 5

    Linux is only 5 years behind... I used something when I worked at SGI with my Indycam to display the output of the camera in an xterm in ASCII.

    I found this webpage (circa 1995) detailing the software. Congrats Linux you've revolutionalized the computer industry again. I hope you at least stole *some* of the code before creating this new and wonderful tool...

    http://reality.sgi.com/cpirazzi/ttyvideo.html

    no egg!

    --
    Keine eier
  6. SSH and Telnet by don_carnage · · Score: 5
    So does that mean that I can now watch a video stream over SSH or Telnet?

    Finally video Pr0n at work! woohooo!


    --
    --
    Wooden armaments to battle your imaginary foes!
  7. Nice by OlympicSponsor · · Score: 5

    Hey, she's a hottie! ...or is that a man?

    Don't tell amihotornot.com about this technology...
    --
    MailOne

    --
    Non-meta-modded "Overrated" mods are killing Slashdot
    (Hey Ryan! Here's your proof!)