Sandaysoft

Hi Geoff,

I needed a wireless camera because of chosen location and something reliable because we may be away for long periods of time. That bumped the price up, but we had been thinking of trialling something for some time for security too, so went for it. After much research and trawling of reviews, I went for the Y-Cam. I chose the white version without night IR.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=ycam+camera&x=0&y=0

I've been very happy with it. Like Hills, I use Yawcam software to drive it, primarily because it has a scheduling facility for the ftp upload, so saves a bit of bandwidth and I can replace the image with a night time image when it gets dark. I too ftp an image at about 60% quality, resulting in a pretty good, decent sized picture which is usually under 30k.

The Y-Cam has a facility to switch the led's off, which is useful, we too had reflection off our window. The only problem I had was when our windows were coated in a film of volcanic ash , but a quick clean and we were back in business. There is an option to buy an external case, should we decide to locate outside.

It's run well so far (4 months to date). Yawcam hasn't been 100% stable, I had a few problems with the scheduling, which seemed to tie itself in a knot when image production, ftp and file creation were all scheduled to start at the same time. I now stagger these and it has been good since then.

If you click the thumbnail on my home page you can see the image.

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Many thanks
Helen
La Locherie Weather

Thanks for your comments Helen.........

I am really impressed by your weather website!

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Geoff

Many thanks Geoff

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Many thanks
Helen
La Locherie Weather

I took the plunge and bought the Microsoft webcam from Amazon I'm very pleased to confirm that it works with Linux I haven't explored it's full resolution yet - just running my standard software set to 640 x 480. What I can say is that, even at VGA res., it's much clearer than the old one which cost just under half the price. It's a far superior camera certainly worth more than twice the other one! It's also a wider angle lens than the other one giving wider coverage for the same conditions/settings.

I'll report later when I've had time to experiment more.

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Gina

Sorry, no banner - weather station out of action. Hoping to be up and running with a new home-made one soon.

Been having a good "play" but not really any further ahead. Booted into Windows XP (Pro) and installed the supplied software - took ages but wasn't bothered, just did other things while it got on with it :lol That allowed me to preview the HD image though not with the relevant display res - there seemed to be no way to change the window size - no push/pull bars on the edges or Max button. It gave a widescreen image about 600 pixels wide. I couldn't find any FTP function in the supplied software so I presume it works with MSN Messenger or whatever for use as a standard webcam. OTOH conferencing isn't the only use for webcams, so I don't know.

I then downloaded and installed Yawcam and got that working after a bit of a fiddle However, I couldn't see how to alter the image resolution in that and I currently have it running at 640x480, same as Linux webcam. Now I know some members here have this webcam and/or Yawcam running at higher res... any suggestions, please?

EDIT... And how did you turn off auto-focus, Phil ? Mine seems to like hunting for focus every now and then.

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Gina

Sorry, no banner - weather station out of action. Hoping to be up and running with a new home-made one soon.

Hi Gina,

you can amend the stream resolution under Stream, Scale To: - a dropdown that goes up to 1280 by 1024.

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Many thanks
Helen
La Locherie Weather

Thank you Helen

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Gina

Sorry, no banner - weather station out of action. Hoping to be up and running with a new home-made one soon.

select "settings" tab then "Device"(in my case Microsoft lifecam cinema) then "device properties". A new properties window will open then select "Camera control" tab. then remove the green tick from the "focus" line. Then "apply" & "ok"

EDIT: Wow I just had a look at your webcam, thats a great view!!

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Cheers

Phil

http://members.ozemail.com.au/~storerfamily/weather
http://www.seabreeze.com.au/graphs/sa.asp

We love it

Thank you for the info Don't know why I couldn't find it myself I've now got the webcam working at 1280x720 and fixed focus I may reduce the resolution a bit as it may be too wide for some people. I'm also thinking of moving the webcam outdoors with it's own waterproof housing - it's currently just inside the lounge window with it's bendy bracket wedged between the fanlight window and frame. So it's looking through domestic standard glass.

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Gina

Sorry, no banner - weather station out of action. Hoping to be up and running with a new home-made one soon.

Yeah I left mine at 640 x 380 at 60% quality to take advantage of the wide screen, but also so it doesn't take too long to down load the previous 3 or 24 hours images as each image is about 20k For a single image though 1280 x 720 looks great!! How large is the image file?

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Cheers

Phil

http://members.ozemail.com.au/~storerfamily/weather
http://www.seabreeze.com.au/graphs/sa.asp

About 400K as I recall. ATM it's refreshing with a 2min period but I'll put that back to 5. When I get round to producing a history of images I'll use a scaled down image and probably greater compression. I've added an extra webcam page with 800 x 450 pixel image for those with lower res monitors. This resizing is done at the server end.

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Gina

Sorry, no banner - weather station out of action. Hoping to be up and running with a new home-made one soon.

Just taken a look at your webcam and it is still the middle of the night in Somerset Gina!

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Geoff

Just about to fix it. XP decided to reboot in the "wee small hours" I'd forgotten it had that habit. I'm running Win XP because ATM Yawcam is the best webcam software I can find and only works in Windows ATM. I have plans to write webcam software in Python and combine the webcam with my other weather software eventually but I have too many other calls on my time ATM. Alternatively I may try adapting Yawcam, which is written in Java, to run under Linux in the interim.

Oh and we are in Devon, though only a couple of miles from the Somerset border

EDIT... Working again now but the image is suffering from rain droplets on the window.

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Gina

Sorry, no banner - weather station out of action. Hoping to be up and running with a new home-made one soon.

AAAAAAAAAARGH!!

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Cheers

Phil

http://members.ozemail.com.au/~storerfamily/weather
http://www.seabreeze.com.au/graphs/sa.asp

I've had bugs too

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Gina

Sorry, no banner - weather station out of action. Hoping to be up and running with a new home-made one soon.