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 Post subject: Best Camera Control Software?
PostPosted: Fri May 21, 2010 7:48 am 
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Joined: Fri May 08, 2009 3:12 pm
Posts: 344
Location: Pembrokeshire West Wales UK
Weather Station: Watson Weather Station W-8681
Operating System: Windows 7
I seem to be hogging the question in this new thread, but I suppose that is because I have just set my first decent camera that gives a good picture of the sky.

I've started out with Yawcam as Phil and Gina are using it, but ImageSalsa has also been mentioned. Any other shareware or freeware applications worth a look?

If not what about a shoot-out between ImageSalsa and Yawcam?

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 Post subject: Re: Best Camera Control Software?
PostPosted: Fri May 21, 2010 8:22 am 
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Joined: Sat Dec 26, 2009 8:52 am
Posts: 588
Location: Crafers, South Australia
Weather Station: Fine Offset WH1091
Operating System: Windows XP
I haven't used anything other that Yawcam so I can't really be too objective.

I think the functionality of Yawcam is great and does 99% of what I want it to. The only improvement I would like to see is the ability to monitor 2 cameras in the single instance of Yawcam concurrently rather than having to install a second instance of Yawcam.

I suspect the ftp side could be more robust too as mine seems to have issues ftping alot more than Cumulus, although that said it does rename 150 images each time it updates.

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Phil

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

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 Post subject: Re: Best Camera Control Software?
PostPosted: Fri May 21, 2010 12:46 pm 
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Joined: Mon Jan 25, 2010 1:55 pm
Posts: 623
Location: Brighton, UK
Weather Station: Watson W-8681
Operating System: Vista
geoffw wrote:
Any other shareware or freeware applications worth a look?


Try Fwink, it's free and the FTP seems very reliable for me

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Paul

http://www.greatcollegestreet.co.uk -Online
http://www.lehamel.eu - Online

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 Post subject: Re: Best Camera Control Software?
PostPosted: Fri May 21, 2010 11:40 pm 
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Joined: Mon Aug 10, 2009 10:16 pm
Posts: 1772
Location: World...
Weather Station: No weather station
Operating System: No operating system
hills wrote:
The only improvement I would like to see is the ability to monitor 2 cameras in the single instance of Yawcam concurrently rather than having to install a second instance of Yawcam.

I suspect the ftp side could be more robust too as mine seems to have issues ftping alot more than Cumulus, although that said it does rename 150 images each time it updates.
Phil, I have tried Yawcam but did not like its reliability - similar problems to what you and other users have encountered.

As it is for you, I cannot be too objective when I write about ImageSalsa weather edition...

ImageSalsa has been running flawlessly for almost two years, grabbing the images from the wireless camera, adding/watermarking the weather information onto the image and then uploading the image to the Internet server.

Although I have not tried that possibility, I feel/think that ImageSalsa could/should handle more than one camera - ImageSalsa uses what it calls a 'portfolio' and inside each 'portfolio' are created what it calls 'canvases' - each 'canvas' can contain up to 100 lines of text and 20 graphics - a 'canvas' contains information about the video feed, the video device, the frame rate, the canvas size, the canvas background colour (a canvas is composed of four different layers), the graphic to appear on the canvas (other than the Webcam image), the text/watermark to appear on the canvas (image), the scheduler for saving the image (and creating appropriate sequential names), the scheduler for saving the image as a wallpaper, the scheduler for uploading FTP the image to an Internet server, etc.

ImageSalsa can also be setup as Web server with “near” real-time image streaming.

Here is a link to the ImageSalsa Web page as well as to the PDF documentation.


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 Post subject: Re: Best Camera Control Software?
PostPosted: Sat May 22, 2010 10:06 am 
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Joined: Thu Jan 07, 2010 9:44 pm
Posts: 2517
Location: Wilmslow, Cheshire, UK
Weather Station: Davis VP2
Operating System: XP SP3, Win 7
Any more suggestions? Yawcam has driven me up the wall so far, very unstable, and arbitarily 'flips' the image - even mid-stream, and the settings will not 'stick' no matter what I do. Now it will not set to 640x480 at all, set the cam to 640 and the format flips to 320, set the format to 640 and the cam flips to 320 - this worked yesterday :x

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Mark
Wilmslow Astro Weather


Last edited by mcrossley on Sat May 22, 2010 11:41 am, edited 1 time in total.

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 Post subject: Re: Best Camera Control Software?
PostPosted: Sat May 22, 2010 10:54 am 
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Joined: Sat Dec 26, 2009 8:52 am
Posts: 588
Location: Crafers, South Australia
Weather Station: Fine Offset WH1091
Operating System: Windows XP
Are you using version 0.3.3? I used to have similar problems with the previous version, but after upgrading and setting the format in the "settings" - "Device" - "Change to device" screen mine hasn't changed since.

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Phil

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

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 Post subject: Re: Best Camera Control Software?
PostPosted: Sat May 22, 2010 11:24 am 
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Joined: Sat Feb 21, 2009 12:41 pm
Posts: 1859
Location: Devon UK
Weather Station: FO WH1081PC (Maplin)
Operating System: OS X, Linux Mint, Win7 & XP
So far, Yawcam is working pretty much perfectly for me. Again the scheduling correctly stopped file and FTP for the period set last night and sent the "Offline" image to the web server. I've just changed some Windows settings which required a restart and Yawcam dutifully sent the "Offline" image as set. On restarting it, it had kept all its settings and is running fine.

Equipment is HP, Pentium 4 HT, 512MB RAM, 80GB HD with Microsoft LifeCam 720 HD Cinema. OS is Windows XP Pro updated to SP3. Yawcam 0.3.3 (the latest version). Auto-focus turned off. Resolution set to 800 x 448. File & FTP period set to 120secs.

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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.


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 Post subject: Re: Best Camera Control Software?
PostPosted: Sat May 22, 2010 11:44 am 
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Joined: Thu Oct 23, 2008 10:23 am
Posts: 127
Location: Rochdale
Weather Station: WH1080PC
Operating System: XP
Hi

I am looking for some free software that can display 6 cams and upload to a web page every min but only if there is activity, any ideas?

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Nothing is foolproof, to a sufficiently talented fool . . .

WH1080PC Rochdale UK, 171m


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 Post subject: Re: Best Camera Control Software?
PostPosted: Sat May 22, 2010 1:03 pm 
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Joined: Sat Dec 26, 2009 8:52 am
Posts: 588
Location: Crafers, South Australia
Weather Station: Fine Offset WH1091
Operating System: Windows XP
If you have a linux box you could try zoneminder, but its a bit tricky to get USB cameras to work correctly. I gave up and went back to Yawcam on windows. The only way you could do this with Yawcam is by installing it 6 times. I imagine that would get a bit messy and resource hungry.

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Phil

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

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 Post subject: Re: Best Camera Control Software?
PostPosted: Sat May 22, 2010 1:24 pm 
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Joined: Sat Feb 21, 2009 12:41 pm
Posts: 1859
Location: Devon UK
Weather Station: FO WH1081PC (Maplin)
Operating System: OS X, Linux Mint, Win7 & XP
One problem with using USB webcams with Linux is that many have extra functions (eg. auto-focus in the Microsoft ones) that rely on the driver. Unsurprisingly, MS don't supply a Linux driver - the USB control codes would need to be obtained by reverse engineering. The standard image at the default settings is all that's available.

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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.


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 Post subject: Re: Best Camera Control Software?
PostPosted: Sat May 22, 2010 10:21 pm 
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Joined: Thu Jan 07, 2010 9:44 pm
Posts: 2517
Location: Wilmslow, Cheshire, UK
Weather Station: Davis VP2
Operating System: XP SP3, Win 7
Well I take most of it back, I had made some non-standard firmware changes in my webcam that I had forgotten about (for asto imaging use) I restored it back to the factory settings and now Yawcam is behaving. :oops:

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Mark
Wilmslow Astro Weather


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 Post subject: Re: Best Camera Control Software?
PostPosted: Mon May 24, 2010 6:44 am 
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Joined: Mon Mar 09, 2009 7:36 pm
Posts: 6
Try using Easy Free Webcam . http://www.msagentsoftware.com/easyfreewebcam/ Been using it for more than a year and has got multi web settings as well.


Uploads are regular


See http://www.wellingtonweather.co.za/webc ... ebcam.html


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