How to Monitor Baby with Webcam

December 29, 2005 11:06 AM

New Baby / Webcam Question: I'll be taking our baby to work with me from now on. I'd like to hook up a webcam over her crib in my office and have it upload a pic every so often (automatically) to my website so that my wife can see her from work. What's the best program solution for this?
posted by damiano99 to computers & internet (6 comments total)

Just about every web cam comes with software that will do that for you. If you post what web cam model, operating system and if you have any firewall restrictions at work, someone can probably give you some additional helpful information.
posted by sexymofo at 11:44 AM on December 29, 2005

This doesn't quite fit your website needs, but:

With a Mac, iSight and iChat, you can point the iSight at the baby and be signed into iChat with a particular screen name. In the preferences you can set it up to automatically accept video chats.

Then, on another computer with iChat & iSight, you can start a video conference and see the baby.

A guy I know did this to keep an eye on his puppy.

You can also substitute a video camera for an iSight.
posted by starman at 11:48 AM on December 29, 2005

Years ago, I downloaded the freeware Booru Webcam (Windows) to run a webcam. It should read from just about any plug-and-play webcam and uploads a file at a given interval to the FTP address of your choice.
posted by rafter at 11:54 AM on December 29, 2005

How about an IM client that allows you to share your webcam only with 'chosen' buddies?
posted by m@ at 12:10 PM on December 29, 2005

If you are on a Mac you can use EvoCam to accomplish what you are asking, or you can use iChatAV as suggested. I use EvoCam for my current webcam needs and love it. If you are using windows, I think WebCam32 is still around and still will do what you want. I have used both for various webcam uses.

The iChatAV configuration would be cool because of the audio feature. Your wife could "speak" to the child. This may be a good thing.

Good luck and have fun!
posted by terrapin at 12:20 PM on December 29, 2005

Nice and easy one for you - ConquerCam
posted by DrtyBlvd at 5:30 PM on December 29, 2005