Capture webcamera images at timed intervals?

Technical IT / Communications
1

Hi,

I was wondering if there was some program which could basically capture images from a webcam at timed intervals then load them onto a server.

More specifially:
The webcam will be attatched to some old WinNT machine down where the robot is. Every so often the webcam will take a picture, then upload that picture to my linux server, where it can be viewed. The computer at the robot room is some old Pentium 1 junk running Windows NT 4.0; the server is running RedHat 9.0 (Apache 2.0.40, MySQL 3.23.58, PHP 4.2.2, FTP not enabled); and the webcam is an IBM USB Net Camera.

Also, if there is some program out there which would be able to remotely capture images, please let me know.

Thanks in advance,
NoodleKnight

2

I don’t know about windows, but it’s very easy in linux. Look for the package webcam (it may be a part of xawtv in the distribution of your choice).

Here is the package description from debian:

webcam captures images from a video4linux device like
bttv, annotates them and uploads them to a webserver
using ftp or ssh in an endless loop.

3

Awesome, thanks.
Yeah, my only problem is that the computer thats in the robot room is a windows machine. Maybe I can convince the team into letting me install linux…

4

You might want to look into http://www.coffeecup.com/webcam/ You can get it free here http://www.coffeecup.com/addlink/linkParty.php

5

Check this out
http://www.kabsoftware.com/kabcam/

nice little program

6

i use this one

Webcamfirst

Totally free, easy to use, one button between automatic by time and manual capture

7

awesome, thanks a lot guys, I’ll be sure to try them out when I can find myself some free time.

8

Microsoft has a free “PowerToy” called TimerShot that does exactly what you describe. You can get it from http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/downloads/powertoys/xppowertoys.mspx

However, I would recommend that you get the AT32 Comedy Webcam. In addition to having a build in web server, the ability to upload via FTP, and the ability to save to a local file, it can do a whole bunch of image processing effects, such as adding a caption, the date and time, distorts (funhouse mirror, embossing, blurring, sharpening, etc), special effects such as chromakey and overlays, etc. There is a freeware version, but it puts “at32.com” in the corner of your images.