Wireless webcam for PC/Mac?

September 29, 2008 11:14 AM

So I finally got around to setting up my wireless video webcam. I like the camera, I like that it's wireless and streaming video, but I can't view the video from any of my three Macs, though it works with my Dell laptop. When I try to view from my Mac (on IE, Firefox, or Safari) I get the video page but no video.

I'm looking for one of two things:

1. A way to make it Mac compatible -- Linksys technical support set the whole thing up for me remotely, so all the settings should be right. I was told that I needed a browser with ActiveX to view it. My IE:Mac has ActiveX preferences and they're all enabled (and were reviewed by the technician), but I still can't view the video. She told me to update my IE, though I'm running the most current Mac version.

2. OR for a suggestion for a good, reliable (and ideally easy to set up) replacement camera that will be both Mac and PC compatible.

Thanks!

posted by rinosaur to technology (7 comments total)

ps I could share the web cam address privately if that might help.
posted by rinosaur at 11:16 AM on September 29, 2008

i would recommend any of the AXIS cams... they're mac and pc friendly and extremely reliable. setup is pretty straightforward. http://www.axis.com for camera models.
posted by hummercash at 11:49 AM on September 29, 2008

The forum page at http://www.ultratech.us/ultra/?p=10 suggests you can use the excellent VLC to stream video from the camera, using the URLs http://cameraip/img/video.asf or http://cameraip/img/mjpeg.cgi.
posted by pocams at 11:50 AM on September 29, 2008

Here's a guy who figured out how to embed the camera's feed into a web-browser without the requirement of Quicktime or Windows Media Player. His camera works in my Mac browsers (Safari, Firefox) so it appears to be successful.

Perhaps you could use his workaround with the .cab file instead of trying to use the ActiveX software that Linksys wants you to use.
posted by mrbarrett.com at 11:56 AM on September 29, 2008

I think that's the webcam I was checking out a few months ago - if it is, someone posted directions to work on the Nokia 770 tablet, running Linux, so ActiveX is not required. Let me look around a bit.
posted by Pronoiac at 2:31 PM on September 29, 2008

GREAT! So I've got it working on my home mac (on the same network as the webcam) by way of pocams suggestion, but my work mac still can not see it using the same methods.... is there something I need to do to "unlock" it?
posted by rinosaur at 2:45 PM on September 29, 2008

You likely need to set up port forwarding on your router. See mrbarrett's comment.
posted by Pronoiac at 3:03 PM on September 29, 2008