Y-Cam Camera

[gtsupport]

After a long break for the holidays, I'm back at the keyboard again trying to get my system functioning as I would like.

I see that somebody on here has used the Y-Cam cameras with LinuxMCE, I had one anyway and want to integrate it.  I'm not sure what template to use, but I also seem to be missing something because whichever template I pick, I can't see any images from the camera.  I can log into the camera from my windows box, and see the streaming video, I can even log into the camera from another computer in a different country, so I know it works, it must be something I need to setup properly with the LinuxMCE unit.  For now I have connected the camera directly via cable to the network switch, linuxmce gave it an IP address in the correct range, but there are no images.

Any users with this type of camera that can give me a prod in the right direction?

Cheers

Matt.

* Update *

I can log into the camera and view the feed from firefox within LinuxMCE, its just the camera button on the orbiter that doesn't get the picture??

[purps]

Welcome back, hope you enjoyed your hols.

What are you wanting to do with the camera? Do you want it as just a viewer? Do you want to use it as a motion sensor? Do you want to record images with it? Does it have pan/tilt/zoom function?

I found cameras to be a confusing subject, but mine are all up and running now and am fairly happy I could do it again. Check out the cameras in my setup page for detailed explanations of how to install them. Any problems post back and let us know.

Cheers,
Matt.

[DragonK]

I can log into the camera and view the feed from firefox within LinuxMCE, its just the camera button on the orbiter that doesn't get the picture??

Hi Matt,

whats the full path to your camera when viewing the it from firefox?
Screenshot of ur template?

Karel

[purps]

Also check to see if username and password is entered correctly, different from camera to camera. Sometimes you put them in the username/password field, sometimes they go in the path.

Also check to see that the device # for the scenario in question is correct, I had that problem.

[cht_winston]

Hi Matt,

The path to the jpeg image stream is /stream.jpg:account:password

Obviously replacing account and password for your own. We have used a few of the Y-cam models and that path has been valid for all of them.

Good Luck

Win - CHT

[tschak909]

Guys! can we _PLEASE_ make a proper device template for this?

Having to futz around with the path names, is unacceptable!

-Thom

[gtsupport]

All I really want is to be able to view the images from the camera, I'm not worried about motion sensing.  There are no axis controls either.  When I type the ip address of the camera into firefox it goes straight to the login page, and when I enter username and password I get the live feed.

When I unplugged and re-inserted the LAN cable Linux detected it as a "DCS5300", which I guess is another camera type, should I base settings on this template, or use the generic ip camera?

Personally I like Thom's suggestion, if there were a template already there, it would be great!

[purps]

I would have thought that the Panasonic template would be a good place to start. Add it in web admin and change the appropriate parts.

From the point of view of making a specific template for this camera, I don't know how to do that.

Does anybody know of a decent explanation/example of how to make a template (either from scratch or copied from an existing one) and submit it etc?

Cheers,
Matt.

[DragonK]

HI,

I came across this....
Wiki page to create or edit Device Templates.
http://wiki.linuxmce.org/index.php/Edit_Page

Karel

[purps]

Thanks Karel.

Matt, I will attempt to make a template for your camera, if you would be willing to test it for me? I've not done it before, but I need to learn in order to try and avoid these constant bollockings.

Two questions for anyone who knows:

1. For a given manufacturer, in this case Y-Cam, how do you find out the MAC range without the risk of leaving any Y-Cams out?
2. Once the template is complete, obviously it will be in my list of device templates, but how do I share it with the community?

Cheers,
Matt.

EDIT: 3rd question - If the username and password is included in the path, how can a device template be written without having to manually edit the path? Assuming people want to choose their own username and password for their camera?

[coley]

Matt,
The first three octets of the MAC address will give you the manufacturer range - eg for y-cam its  00:19:70
check out http://www.wireshark.org/tools/oui-lookup.html

Once your template is complete and tested you should be able to commit it with sqlCVS via webadmin, although I don't know if this is working correctly at the moment - maybe one of the lead devs can confirm?

-Coley.

[purps]

Thank you very much.

OK cool, so the range is 00:19:70:00:00:00 to 00:19:70:FF:FF:FF? I realise this needs to be converted to decimal for the template.

How would I go about sending the template to an individual for testing?

Cheers,
Matt.

[tschak909]

Again, the template needs to be checked into sqlCVS for testing. The user can then update from sqlCVS, and he will have the template.

As the username and password in the individual fields, you can take a cue from the panasonic template, it grabs the values of those fields....Instead of using basic auth in this case, however, simply append them onto the end of the URL you send as part of the GET request to the camera.

-Thom

[purps]

Ah, Coley said to commit it with sqlCVS AFTER testing, which made sense to me, but I will take your word Thom (sorry Coley ).

Regarding the username/password, is there a specific reason why "dceadmin" and "dcepass" are used? Am I right in saying that if somebody wants their own different username/password on their camera, they would have to change this manually on the path in web admin? The reason I ask is because I thought we were trying to avoid having to make manual changes to the path.

Cheers,
Matt.

[tschak909]

hmm...

dceadmin and dcepass are merely the default device data entries for username and password in the template. The correct practice is for the code in the device template to use these fields wherever the username and password are required (in this case, the template specifies dceadmin and dcepass as the defaults.)

So, you have two options:

(1) set the username and password to this in the camera's web admin beforehand, or...
(2) create a script that can set the username and password on the camera, and use this as the Configuration Script in the template.

-thom