Homemade IP Camera (sorta)

[slampt]

Hey All,

I am not sure if this will be of any interest to anyone but I intend to use it with my Linuxmce install and thought I would tell you all about it.
I have built my own IP Camera type system using a Seagate Dockstar and a Logitech C910.  This is a really cheap alternative to buying an IP Camera with Hi-ish Res.
the C91 is capable of doing 30fps @ 1280x960 (well so my initially testing shows) I plan to add 2 cameras onto 1 dockstar, then configure up each camera individually at the core.

The Dockstar is running openwrt and using uvc and usb video modules with mjpg-streamer.  In order to view the image you goto http://ip address:port/?action=stream (or snapshot).

I think these will be a great addition to LinuxMCE, I plan to write a guide on how I did it soon.

Thoughts?

Cheers
Slampt

[purps]

What an interesting idea! Did you get the guts out of the Dockstar to do this?

Following on from a discussion had on IRC, I wonder if you could run an IR array off the USB port, and bang it all in an external enclosure? Could potentially make a very high spec external IP camera for not a lot of money, especially if you have existing hardware laying around.

Cheers,
Matt.

[MDH1966]

You can also add this to your bag-o-tricks.
 A quote from the link below, "... also included a guide for cracking the Dockstar open and connecting a serial cable."


http://hackaday.com/2010/07/17/openwrt-on-a-seagate-freeagent-dockstar/

<M>

[purps]

Slampt have you thought about PoE for this contraption?

[slampt]

Hey Purps,

The Current Draw from the Dockstar plus one camera is just less than .5Amps. It requires 12Volts so if you step down the 48V POE to 12 Volts you can pull about 1Amp.
So there should be just enough power to do 2 Cameras off the one Dockstar. I will be testing today and let you know.

I will also be putting the external serial connector on it like MDH1966 suggests as this is required to upgrade.

Cheers
Slampt

[purps]

Is the intention to use the Dockstar wirelessly?

[slampt]

nope, i will use it wired.

I have found a problem with the cameras I am using c910. With UVC it appears the camera requests all the BW over the USB Controller, so I can't add 2 to the same dockstar.  I will have to keep playing with it.

Slampt

[rperre]

slampt have you ever heard of the icamview e.g. it's made to turn 2 usb cameras into ip streams

Just a thought, it looks like it's similar priced and other options are probably out there.

Richard

[slampt]

Nah, I haven't heard of icamview, but having a quick look at it now and it looks like it probably does the same thing I am attempting to do. (Although at a little more cost for the unit).
Reading the UVC lists and there is a patch to fix the problem with the newer HD cameras so that they don't hog all the BW on the USB Bus.

I will give it a crack tomorrow and see how it goes.

Cheers
Slampt

[slampt]

Just a quick update on this,
I have managed to get 2 x C910's working on the dockstar with OpenWRT, thanks to a heap of help from the UVC devs and some module patching.
I currently have Linuxmce pulling a snapshot off the 2 cameras using different ports. For example;

webcam01 - http://192.168.80.140:8081/?action=snapshot
webcam02 - http://192.168.80.140:8082/?action=snapshot

However I would like to use the motion jpeg support from mjpg-streamer as I am able to do 30fps @ 1280x960 (rather excessive and I will drop this down to something lower) but when I try to add the stream url instead of the snapshot url the device template times out (using generic IP Camera). So my question is this; is it possible to use the motionjpeg stream with linuxmce, I am not using motionwrapper I plan on using a external PIR.

Cheers
Slampt

[rperre]

slampt could you enlighten us with what patch you had to apply and maybe some more detailed steps of how you did it, i'm trying something similar with 2 usb cameras and an old laptop and running into similar USB hogging issues.

Thanks,

Richard

[slampt]

Hey Richard,

I will chuck it all on my blog shortly and will let you know

I would like to figure out how to get the mjpg stream working through lmce but.. If anyone could help that would be great!

Cheers
Slampt

[tschak909]

Cool, now make it plug and play. Make an actual device template, and necessary bits to make it so it can detect the cameras and have LinuxMCE set them up.

mjpeg support will require changes to Orbiter to properly distribute to all the orbiters.

-Thom

[slampt]

Thanks Thom,

I plan to make a template for these, the problem I face with plug and play on these devices is the mac changes on boot each time if you don't set the mac address in the U-boot env variable). Not so much a problem if you follow a guide which I will write up soon.
The only reason I asked about mjpg on the orbiter was because I am seeing a delay of over 10 seconds before the image refreshes. I haven't got any motion sensors yet so not sure if this would make any change to the refresh rate?

Sorry if these questions sound dumb, I haven't looked into it all yet.

Cheers
Slampt