webcam_server Project Home Page

Welcome to the webcam_server Project Home Page

About

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 apologize for the ancient screenshot. That is a very old version of Galeon and I do not live in that apartment any longer. However, you should get the jist of what the applet looks like.

News

2007-03-10

webcam_server is finally being updated to use the v4l2 API, mainly to allow it's use on the Nokia N800 Internet Tablet. Watch for an upcoming release soon.

2006-11-03

It's been a while! I am releasing a small patch for version 0.50 which corrects the following error:

sh-3.00# webcam_server 
ioctl (VIDIOCSWIN): Invalid argument
error setting video device parameters, using defaults
ioctl (VIDIOCSWIN): Invalid argument
not a valid video device? quitting.

I discovered the problem after finding an obscure page talking about how some cameras won't work unless you clear the vid_win.flags before calling ioctl().

Change directory to webcam_server-0.50/ and apply the patch:

patch -p0 < webcam_server-0.50-camera.c.patch

Download the patch

2004-10-27

Last week I finally made 0.50 available for download. There was a horrible bug and it must have originated from some late night programming. I was using sizeof() instead of strlen() to determine the length of a string from a pointer.

My brother Mike recently became interested in hacking the webcam_server and has added support for alpha blending in the caption text. This feature will replace the transparency command line option (-tt). For now this is available in CVS only.

Installation

Download a version of webcam_server that suits your fancy. Unpack the archive and run the configure script. If you are using 0.40, be sure to install libjpeg, as I forgot to include this dependency in the configure script and it is a most crucial dependency.

Next, build the program using 'make'. You can install it using 'make install'.

Next you will want to explore the options. Type 'webcam_server -h' to get a list of options. They should be self explainitory. If you need some help with them, check the webcam_server man page.

You'll find a file called 'webcam.html' in the 'src/client' folder. Copy this to a directory under your web site. NOTE: Please edit this file. You have to change 'localhost' to the network name of your computer, otherwise you will be the only one who can see yourself on the camera using the applet.

You will also have to copy the 'src/client/applet.jar' file to the same folder in which you put 'webcam.html'. You might also want to compile the Java classes yourself. To do this run 'javac *.class'. Then, stick them in the jar file using 'jar cvf applet.jar *.class *.jpg'.

There, you're ready to go.

Contact

Email donn at donn.dyndns.org regarding inquiries to the webcam_server project.

Donate

While I don't expect anyone to donate anything to me as I don't need the money, if you find yourself with some extra money you just do not want, you can donate to this project.