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however the solutions I've been seeing are either very convoluted in execution, or the referring sites appear to be out of date.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!"

Comments

motion

[ender_the_hegamon]

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.

Re:What exactly are you looking for?

[CableModemSniper]

There is. Its called appropriately enough webcam. There's no GUI afaik, but the config file is really simple. It sounds like exactly what you want. apt-get install webcam will grab it in Ubuntu for sure.

Axis

[linuxwrangler]

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).

Re:What exactly are you looking for?

[Craig Maloney]

Well, I wrote a webcam Perl script called "Poor Man's Cam" (http://decafbad.net/pmcam), but unfortunately it requires that you have a program to grab the images already. Once that's taken care of, the rest is pretty straightforward.

Hope this helps!

Except ...

[A nonymous Coward]

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.

Camsource

[Leknor]

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.

Re:What exactly are you looking for?

[moro_666]

yeah the webcam thing is quite fine for the purpose. i have a logitech quickcam here (had to build the kernel module by hand from sources found by google) but it works with the webcam application.

webcam can be set to react on image changes and a simple shell 5liner can be written which checks if the file has been modified since last upload and uploads it into the server via curl&http.

that's as simple as it can be, 1 kernel module, 1 application, 1 shell script.

you could also use the builtin features of webcam to upload images but using ftp is a bit too insecure for my case :)

Re:Axis - not the only player in cyberspace

[JohnnyGTO]

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.

Ekiga

[iamstan]

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.

Ubuntu and Camorama

[delirium_9]

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).