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Linux WebCam Software?
Who_Sez asks: "I'm interested in setting up a Linux based webcam, however the solutions I've been seeing are either very convoluted in execution, or the referring sites appear to be out of date. Can anyone recommend a webcam package that runs on Linux? I don't really care what distro is required but I'm familiar with Fedora, Yellow Dog, and Ubuntu. I guess I would be considered a 'mid-level user' with regard to experience. Is there a web cam software package that is a fairly complete solution that is also pretty easy to configure (preferably with a GUI)? Also, some suggestions for compatible webcam hardware would be welcome. I'd like to be able to do this on the cheap, and would love to be able to brag about setting up a Linux web cam. Any help here would be appreciated. Thanks!"
Here you go! Now go brag about your awesome google, er, webcam setup skills.
You can always just hook up a regular video camera to an ATI Rage All-in-One TV Capture Card (AGP works best!)
I'm a big retard who forgot to log out of Slashdot on Mike's computer! LOOK AT ME.
Nonsense! 2006 is going to be the year of Linux on the desktop!
Are you looking for something that will just pop up a semi-frequently updated shot, or are you looking for streaming media? They are pretty different requirements. Also, you didn't mention what kind of camera you'll be running. It's been my experience that the USB cameras out there require a bit of work to get running under Linux. (And some won't even reward you with pictures after considerable effort).
Now that we have webcam software, Linux can move forward to being a mainstream desktop OS. I just hope that a/s/l and c4mwhore-i386 are supported.
Unlike the "canned" software packages, Linux is one of the environments where everything is modular. There is no just plain "webcam software" for Linux that I know of.
On the other hand, there are a lot of components that you can put together to do things with webcams. It depends on what exactly you mean. Do you mean a camera to show your face while you're "chatting" with someone? Or a fixed room-monitor cam that people can get snapshots from off of a website? Or something to stick in a window to do time-lapse movies with? Or are you just looking for drivers? I know I've seen software components that can do each of those things...
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The point was to use an older computer and not use my G5 or any of my other Macs on a webcam. That seems like a waste somehow. But thanks anyway.
=== The road goes on forever
There should be some USB equipment that works. If you look around you should be able to find some. Anything that is compatible with Video 4 Linux (what is the current version? 2?). Look at the kernel drivers in that category and look for hardware that way.
My second suggestion (and possibly better) would be FireWire (if you have it). It's a video source. You should have no problem since FireWire video is well defined. I would be surprised if this didn't work. So besides the FireWire web cams (like the iSight) which may be expensive, if you have a camcorder with FireWire on it, you can use that (or should be able to, I think, may depend on the camcorder).
Last, there is always the video capture card route. A nice camcorder for 10 years ago will probably give you a much better picture than most low or middle range web cams (larger optics, lens, etc).
Now I haven't tried any of these (I don't use Linux regularly, or web cams).
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
I use motion http://www.lavrsen.dk/twiki/bin/view/Motion/WebHom e, an application which detects motion within your camera's field of vision and then either takes still images or moving video captures of the scene. Great for paranoid security or annoying your roomate.
knowledge is power... power corrupts.... school is corrupting me.
Get yourself a network-attached webcam (I use a D-link), use wget to go to the camera and get the current jpeg, store it in a directory, use ImageMagick's display program to show the pics.
This is fast, easy to automate with tcl or bash script, and would probably work just fine on a i486 box.
You want a pre-packaged GUI program? Sheesh dude, if you don't see what you like out there in userland, make it yourself and present it as a gift to the world.
Programmin' ain't, like, rocket science, ya know?
Cheers.
Everything in the Universe sucks: It's the law!
webcams on linux were just mentioned on the linux link tech show podcast, so you may want to check that out. i think they were using an isight.
I'm interested in setting up a Linux based webcam
Step 1: Buy an Axis.
Step 2: There is no step 2.
The Axis is what you asked for. It is pre-packaged, embedded-linux-based, open (you can edit the scripts on the device if you want) and very easy to set-up and configure (sometimes as easy as plug in camera, access camera from browser).
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"You are not remembered for doing what is expected of you." - Atul Chitnis
The 210/211 are as nice as they come, except you can't set up the motion detection unless you use Internet Exploder. It flatly refuses to work with Firefox.
An amazing sucky for such a nice camera which runs Linux internally. I tried to get answers from Axis about why and what workaround existed, such as tell me the format of the motion detection files and how to upload them, I would edit manually if I could, but their response was vague and did not answer the question.
The old 2100 has an ftp option, so I had my own motion detection software which simply downloaded pictures and did its own analysis. There is no ftp option with the 210/211.
Infuriate left and right
Camsource: http://camsource.sourceforge.net/ has met my needs in the past. It's rather flexible and should work with any Video4Linux cam. (I had a USB webcam) It supports making the cam images available in a variety of formats and can do archiving, motion detection, ftp uploading, multipart streaming and probably more.
Only one of about 20 decent choices out there :-) and almost all have some form of web services embedded in their OS. For a decent list of manufactures check out this list of supported hardware over at Milestone. FYI we sell it and the hardware but the list covers many of the top players. Also there is IndigoVision, VCS/Bosch and Smart Sight for those trips in to analog to digital to analog transmition.
Si vis pacem, para bellum! For evil to succeed good men need only do nothing!
Ekiga, formerly known as gnomemeeting, is a full SIP Phone as well as a videoconferencing application. It works with usb webcams as well as firewire attached digital camcorders.
I've had good luck using this https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Webcam utility to install the latest drivers for many consumer webcams.
IM clients that do video Chat include aMSN and kopete.
My vote goes for camE - command line only, but it comes with some pre-canned config files that make it easy to set up. It can do timestamps, pretty antialiased/alpha-blended text, keep an archived copy of each image - and it talks scp as well as ftp for somewhat more secure uploading.
For hardware, I've had good luck with the Philips/pwc cameras (there was a time when they were only supported by a binary module, but the free replacement now works well enough for webcam use).
webcams under linux break into roughly two camps: firewire (aka DCAM or IIDC) cameras and anything that can be handled by V4L or V4L2. which software you use depends very much on what camera you have (sucks, but that's how it is).
if you have an iidc camera (a la apple's isight, an orange micro ibot, etc.) then you really should be using coriander which can be compiled with support for ftp upload of the images. you can also use coriander to set things up for using ffmpeg (see below).
otherwise, i'd suggest looking into using ffserver and ffmpeg. when compiled correctly, it can handle both dv, iddc/dcam, and v4l cameras. i've had rather good results with them, and they're a lot cheaper (i.e. free) than an axis box.
if neither of these works for you, i wish you the best of luck -- you're probably going to need it.
I have a Logitech USB webcam, and in Ubuntu it just works (it worked fine in Gentoo too but I had to do a lot of searching to find the kernel driver for it). Software wise there's a program called Camorama which will automatically take a picture at user-defined intervals and will either save it to your hard drive or upload it to a server. It also gives you the option of having "cool" camera effects as well. And the whole thing could be done by a novice (no command line, easy to understand dialogs).
Since your UID is smaller than mine, I can only conclude that you're trolling. -s20451 (410424)
try camserv
http://cserv.sourceforge.net/
google for them.
motion is motion-tracking software, can create stills or video streams and even has a weird webserver kinda-thing. pretty hard to setup the way you want it.
palantir is a streaming image server (mjpeg?), doesn't work too well for msie (only stills or java applet thing) but is fine for firefox. can also control tiltable webcams.
other than that, get an axis network camera, built in webserver and dhcp client, just plug it into your switch.
#include <sig.h>
http://www.smcc.demon.nl/webcam/working.html
If you were running debian I'd simply say -- apt-get install gqcam I installed my first usb webcam on linux (an intel, sigh) yesterday with no effort via this method.
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Motion is great. The package compiles dead easily too, it *might* be too complex for this guy, but he should try it... it's not hard!
I've had a similar question to what this fellow has... I have a video capture card, and it works fine with Motion, but I'm looking for a camera with reasonable night exposure and zoom... from what I can tell, the only stuff out there would be camcorder type equipment. I would strongly prefer a digital camera with USB output rather than relying on my capture card.
I might be a total noob on this, but can you get streaming video out of a digital camera under Linux? Fuji apparently could do it for certain models on Windows. These small digital cameras with optical zoom, greater clarity and higher resolutions than typical camcorders would be exactly what I'm looking for... provided I can leave it on, streaming video to the computer for 24 hours at a time too.
Audio out of those little cameras would be a nice bonus. Most have microphones and movie modes, but their docs are scant on streaming and webcam-like capabilities, especially under Linux.
It was very nice when I was on holiday recently to be able to check up on home and see that nothing whatsoever happened in my house when I was away.
If that server of yours is also located in the house, I would not be so sure about that...
617B3B7F7E7C7D7F00EOF
If the usb video class takes off like usb mass storage (Logitec is using it for one). Have a look at work of Laurent Pinchart http://linux-uvc.berlios.de/.
...about setting up a linux webcam. I'd brag about getting published on /.
I recently got my webcam set up on ubuntu, without using v4l.. it might work for other distros.. found a much easier method at a place you should've looked too (like google).. Howto
Spook is a linux Video Streamer applicaiton. He goes in to and the in's and out's of the applicaiton, there is an active though quiet lately Mailing list that may answer many questions. The developer is also responsive to email when he he isn't compltetely swamped with other deadlines.
There is also a Fredhmeat page about the project.
camorama (for gnome) works fine.
you all are fucking failed trolls.
http://webcamserver.sourceforge.net/ webcam_server is a program that allows others to view your webcam from a web browser. The program itself is a server that provides a live feed of images to clients using a Java applet embedded in a web page. webcam_server uses the video4linux interface.
I use motion with WinTV cards. WinTV cards are very nicely supported by windows and linux. I use cheap composite cameras from Sams Club ($40 for 640x480 color with infrared night vision, also comes with cabling) and they seem to work fine. For the price of a comparable USB "webcam", a $40 Wintv card and a $40 camera isn't too bad of a price. With motion, I have built-in motion detection that saves jpgs when it detects motion. I also have it encode xvid through ffmpeg. It's pretty easy to set up and just runs.
I highly recommend it.
Why read the article when I can just make up a snap judgement?
http://www.zoneminder.com/
ZoneMinder is pretty good. It is organised as a home security type setup, but you have options to have a streaming window open. There are seperate parts that control the streming, motion detection, so you could probably use those.
Go to this site and take a look. If you're a nerd for Linux, no problem. You grok this and get it done.
If not, well... imagine having to force Windows XP users who have never been without a GUI to compile XP programs and drivers and patches at the DOS command prompt. Nightmare. If you don't think so, you obviously never worked desktop support in a corporation or for home users. The majority may be whizzes at day trading, welding, cooking, whatever they do for a job, but they largely suck flat out at figuring this stuff out.
I have to reinstall my cam drivers every time I upgrade my kernel. I can do this. Worth it to experiment. But that is all it really is right now. Until the major vendors start porting webcam related features to their Linux releases, it is for nothing as far as adoption by less 7337 people is concerned. Yahoo IM would be a good start.
No, open source projects would not be better. Most of these have next to no adoption among those welders, cooks, day traders, etc. who are likely to be OUR FAMILY AND FRIENDS. Do you not want to ever speak with them on webcam? Fine. Use Linux and Open Source while they use Windows and we'll remain two separate camps. The more day to day applications we have in common, the less the difference, the easier to adopt more and more *nix style things and the less tied they will be to Windows.
If my grammar and spelling are off, I am [distracted/tired/careless] (take your pick)
i found it quite interesting that lot of people do not no amsn wich in version 0-95 uder linux works very good, if we talk about soft but surely you have to solve driver for your webcam first,, under this version sound is not working but anyways tried it with gentoo and video worked i hope there's gonna be much more soon