I know this is probably tough if you don't know much about electronics etc... but as a EE in our labs we learned a little about custom programming microprocessors, general electronics etc... If you are interested in webcams, chances are you would also like other digital/electronic toys you might take some EE classes. I know they teach a ton of theory and some practical stuff, however some of our lab classes were golden, like VLSI where we had to design a chip that would be manufactured for us for free(MOSIS) while using some opensource layout tools (I think it was called ELECTRIC or somthing like that) however that versus a more digital programmer choice like DSP and Field programmable gate arrays(XILIX makes good stuff, and PIC) where you can make the chip in your hobby lab. these classes were fun but very time consuming. On the flip side you could also take up hobby electronics where magazines like poptronics, and nuts and volts basically teach pure application on things like BASIC and some elegant yet cheap PIC controllers. I have had the luck to do both schools of thought so i have formal training and some good application skills so i have created some pretty slick systems like using perl as a signal analyzer and custom coding linux mp3 harddisk player things like that are fun but not too expensive to accomplish.
As for the webcam, one approach is to get together with some people in the know and flow chart out exactly what is happening, you can disect existing ones, and break down the logic but from a basic analysis standpoint i can tell you that a web cam would be pretty easy to make from scratch (atleast using off the shelf components!) so you would need somthing to take the picture, so this could be a CMOS image sensor, or maybe some other kind like CCD, but my canon EOD 10d has a cmos and i read good things about it. who knows for sure? it could just be for still pictures so CCD would be the way to go. then you trace the image through the logical components needed, so if it is analog signal you need an Analog to Digital converter, etc.. some signal conditioner stuff, then to power it some DC voltage, i think you could use USb for interface and also for the power so that is cool, i know they have kits for USB/PIC controllers and this investment would also help in future endevours. I am probably missing some vital parts, but any kind of research on the topic should yield good results. A big challenge would be the software side, need to figure out a protocol to use to get that video signal to display, and i dont' know off the top of my head how that would be done, in linux just accessing the usb port probably and make some Tcl/Tk or GTK front end would probably need some custom programming, Or you could look for some opensource software that works on the different usb webcams, i am sure there should* be some standard.
I think advanced features like zoom, capture, etc.. would take some slick custom programming, a good start on this would be to rsearch out the different parts you need and simply order samples from the different suppliers, i know LINEAR makes a good precision gain OPAMP, and National Semiconductor is another known source for good semiconductors you could spec out. Recently SOC (Systems on chip) seems to have taken the industry by storm and some might offer a bundle of these features through this.
Making it wireless might just take a PLD or some integrated wifi controller.
Just be sure you are having fun.:)
Try out a crosspad, I bought one of these things about 4 years ago, and it was awesome, just a pad of paper, a pen (RF no less) and a clip-board type interface. Then you hook it up via serial port and use IBM's digital Ink program to convert your chicken scratches to e-text. It was a little expensive and mine is collecting dust now but it was essential when i was in college collecting notes etc...
The one problem was that there wasn't an eraser, however this was offset by the ultra-cool pen, that takes a aaaa battery, i never knew they got that small.
I would imagine you could pick one up off ebay for not too much money, or use the newer nokia pen thing, which i think is pretty slick, however it might have it's own issues.
I used to work for a company that rolled their own booter box systems (i think there are some official ones now) about 5-6 years ago. It was a really sweet setup, cause all they had was 2 (primary/backup)booter boxes for almost everything however some were specialized booter boxes too and most of the servers (over 100) were diskless machines which network booted everytime off of these booter boxes. I know it seems elaborate, but it was also really awesome because you have centralized deployment so you need to patch you dns servers just patch the files on the booter box and then your done. This was done using redhat with EtherBoot(or was it EtherDisk) The cool part was you only put hard drives in machines that need to store information (we had several logger machines sniffing network and recording events) While this was a sweet elaborate setup i imagine you could setup a linux firewall with minimal programs and a lightweight kernel all without messing around with deleting files etc... Ofcourse it does take some time to get this whole infrastructure going, but then lets say you wanted two firewalls, just grab another box and set it up to use the firewall image, your good to go. One warning is it power goes out unexpectedly, make sure if you stuff autoboots that you have proper delays setup for booter boxes etc.. cause we found this out the hard way, when power when out nothing was working, found out that all servers came on the same time so the name servers, email servers, everything came on and it was chaos, plan out your infrastructure if this is used in a "mission critical" environment like where i used to work.
Infobeing has over 12,000 news RSS feeds it scours and then sends email alerts for you. While it might not be exactly the same features, i am surprised how at how the infobeing site works. I have found it doesn't alert to duplicate stories, but the emails really get flowing if you search with a generic term. Best of all it is free and looks like is it based on OSS software! Surprised no one else posted this site as an alternative.
There is always the thought that technology change sports, and where should we draw the line? I have heard about tennis-players using contacts to enhance vision so they can see the tennis ball better, also the use of gloves to cool players blood allowing the players an advantage. This is because the blood can go to muscles instead of the hands to cool down body-temperature. The use of vests to track players vitals. These are mostly add-on's but when getting a "robotic" arm or people bred with enhanced gene's all of these possibilites are a byproduct of technology.
Slashdot Mirror
Check it out, maybe take this story with a grain of NaCl Hoax
check it out FURL
I know this is probably tough if you don't know much about electronics etc... but as a EE in our labs we learned a little about custom programming microprocessors, general electronics etc... If you are interested in webcams, chances are you would also like other digital/electronic toys you might take some EE classes. I know they teach a ton of theory and some practical stuff, however some of our lab classes were golden, like VLSI where we had to design a chip that would be manufactured for us for free(MOSIS) while using some opensource layout tools (I think it was called ELECTRIC or somthing like that) however that versus a more digital programmer choice like DSP and Field programmable gate arrays(XILIX makes good stuff, and PIC) where you can make the chip in your hobby lab. these classes were fun but very time consuming. On the flip side you could also take up hobby electronics where magazines like poptronics, and nuts and volts basically teach pure application on things like BASIC and some elegant yet cheap PIC controllers. I have had the luck to do both schools of thought so i have formal training and some good application skills so i have created some pretty slick systems like using perl as a signal analyzer and custom coding linux mp3 harddisk player things like that are fun but not too expensive to accomplish. As for the webcam, one approach is to get together with some people in the know and flow chart out exactly what is happening, you can disect existing ones, and break down the logic but from a basic analysis standpoint i can tell you that a web cam would be pretty easy to make from scratch (atleast using off the shelf components!) so you would need somthing to take the picture, so this could be a CMOS image sensor, or maybe some other kind like CCD, but my canon EOD 10d has a cmos and i read good things about it. who knows for sure? it could just be for still pictures so CCD would be the way to go. then you trace the image through the logical components needed, so if it is analog signal you need an Analog to Digital converter, etc.. some signal conditioner stuff, then to power it some DC voltage, i think you could use USb for interface and also for the power so that is cool, i know they have kits for USB/PIC controllers and this investment would also help in future endevours. I am probably missing some vital parts, but any kind of research on the topic should yield good results. A big challenge would be the software side, need to figure out a protocol to use to get that video signal to display, and i dont' know off the top of my head how that would be done, in linux just accessing the usb port probably and make some Tcl/Tk or GTK front end would probably need some custom programming, Or you could look for some opensource software that works on the different usb webcams, i am sure there should* be some standard. I think advanced features like zoom, capture, etc.. would take some slick custom programming, a good start on this would be to rsearch out the different parts you need and simply order samples from the different suppliers, i know LINEAR makes a good precision gain OPAMP, and National Semiconductor is another known source for good semiconductors you could spec out. Recently SOC (Systems on chip) seems to have taken the industry by storm and some might offer a bundle of these features through this. Making it wireless might just take a PLD or some integrated wifi controller. Just be sure you are having fun. :)
Try out a crosspad, I bought one of these things about 4 years ago, and it was awesome, just a pad of paper, a pen (RF no less) and a clip-board type interface. Then you hook it up via serial port and use IBM's digital Ink program to convert your chicken scratches to e-text. It was a little expensive and mine is collecting dust now but it was essential when i was in college collecting notes etc... The one problem was that there wasn't an eraser, however this was offset by the ultra-cool pen, that takes a aaaa battery, i never knew they got that small. I would imagine you could pick one up off ebay for not too much money, or use the newer nokia pen thing, which i think is pretty slick, however it might have it's own issues.
I used to work for a company that rolled their own booter box systems (i think there are some official ones now) about 5-6 years ago. It was a really sweet setup, cause all they had was 2 (primary/backup)booter boxes for almost everything however some were specialized booter boxes too and most of the servers (over 100) were diskless machines which network booted everytime off of these booter boxes. I know it seems elaborate, but it was also really awesome because you have centralized deployment so you need to patch you dns servers just patch the files on the booter box and then your done. This was done using redhat with EtherBoot(or was it EtherDisk) The cool part was you only put hard drives in machines that need to store information (we had several logger machines sniffing network and recording events) While this was a sweet elaborate setup i imagine you could setup a linux firewall with minimal programs and a lightweight kernel all without messing around with deleting files etc... Ofcourse it does take some time to get this whole infrastructure going, but then lets say you wanted two firewalls, just grab another box and set it up to use the firewall image, your good to go.
One warning is it power goes out unexpectedly, make sure if you stuff autoboots that you have proper delays setup for booter boxes etc.. cause we found this out the hard way, when power when out nothing was working, found out that all servers came on the same time so the name servers, email servers, everything came on and it was chaos, plan out your infrastructure if this is used in a "mission critical" environment like where i used to work.
Infobeing has over 12,000 news RSS feeds it scours and then sends email alerts for you. While it might not be exactly the same features, i am surprised how at how the infobeing site works. I have found it doesn't alert to duplicate stories, but the emails really get flowing if you search with a generic term. Best of all it is free and looks like is it based on OSS software! Surprised no one else posted this site as an alternative.
There is always the thought that technology change sports, and where should we draw the line?
I have heard about tennis-players using contacts to enhance vision so they can see the tennis ball better, also the use of gloves to cool players blood allowing the players an advantage. This is because the blood can go to muscles instead of the hands to cool down body-temperature. The use of vests to track players vitals. These are mostly add-on's but when getting a "robotic" arm or people bred with enhanced gene's all of these possibilites are a byproduct of technology.