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Topic # 18241 3-Jan-2008 11:28 Send private message

I couldn't really fit this into any other category, so hope it doesnt annoy by being here.

I have two buildings at work, that are about 10 km's apart, we have always had a problem with making all the staff at the two sites feel part of the same team, so we at ICT thought we would dazzle them with high tech warm fuzzies, and let them view different areas of the two sites by web cam.

Now I have started with using, dare I say it Skype!, for the initial test of letting one site view the xmas festivities at the site I am at, this had limited success, and seems to have been well received.

I really only went for skype as it was the easiest to set up on the short time frame I had.

My initial plan, and the reason for this post was to try to set up a long term reliable framework, that could be expanded in the future.

I was hoping to be able to stream live web cam images over our intranet, from multiple cameras, possibly with sound in the future, but that's a limited application for a couple of the main sites.

So my question are

1: has anyone done anything similar, that can give me some pointers?
2: Is it possible to do this with a unique URL for each camera, that I can list for each view on our Intranet?
3: Is there some software that's economic (cheap) that anyone can recommend to do this?
4: How cool can this get?, what really awesome bells and whistles can I add?

All suggestions would be gratefully received!

Cheers

Alex.

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  Reply # 102765 3-Jan-2008 18:35 Send private message

We were looking at putting a couple of IP cameras around the place, they generally have a web interface so you can watch them online.  The more expensive ones even let you control them so you can move them remotely.

This should get you started, you could then setup a webpage with all the webcams on it, so you can watch everyone.

Hope this helps.






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  Reply # 102862 4-Jan-2008 11:10 Send private message

nate: This should get you started

Hope this helps.


If I was looking at being big brother, and stock was walking at a rate that could justify the cost of a couple of the cameras, I would go down that track (they look really cool Cool) , but this is plain and simple, a warm fuzzy ICT project, that doesnt really warrant that sort of cost.

I currently have some of these Web Cams spare, but I am now thinking they may not do the job?

I have a couple of the old HP e-Vectra mini PC's spare, floating around under my desk as well, which I thought I would connect the spare cameras to, if need be.

Any tips out there on how to embed the web cam vid into a web page via dreamweaver???

Cheers

Alex


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  Reply # 102912 4-Jan-2008 15:54 Send private message

If you have the cash I would recomment a LifeView video conference setup. The picture looks amazing on large LCD's/Plasmas.



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  Reply # 102916 4-Jan-2008 16:00 Send private message

Interesting Idea, I do have a 42" plasma at both of our sites, that may be something to build to, once I get the basic system up and running.

I am just investigating some software at the moment, seems to stream your webcams you need a bit of the old software to help make it fly.

Cheers

Alex

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  Reply # 102918 4-Jan-2008 16:07 Send private message

Make sure you get a camera with a good video resolution and a decent lens (Not a plastic one).

Also make sure the software you are using is capable to streaming the video at a high resolution. I think Skype from memory is limited to 640*480 (Or maybe even lower) which is going to look terrible on any kind of screen above about 10"

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