Webcam for weathercams

August 2, 2007 3:07 PM

What would be a decent cheap webcam or webcam-software combo to use for a 24/7 home outdoor "weathercam"?

I've been disappointed with the usual run of Office Depot type webcams (i.e. Logitech webcam, Creative Labs webcam, etc) due to:
1. Requirement of very clunky, resource-intensive software to grab images
2. Tendency of the webcam abstraction layer to crap out randomly after a few days
3. Poor imaging in outdoor lighting (overexposure is common)
4. Stingy 6 feet of USB cord which hardly even reaches the window, and I'm not sure if extra cable might harm signal reliability

What might be some options I can look at without spending a mint? Weatherproofed cameras (and thus $500+ price tags) are not necessary; I can build an enclosure.

posted by chef_boyardee to computers & internet (5 comments total)

A lot of the cheap cams can use generic (TWAIN) software. They'll still SAY that the branded crap software is required, but it's a lie... In fact I would not be surprised if some/most of the cams you've tried already support this.
posted by anaelith at 3:59 PM on August 2, 2007

I've been exquisitely happy with my "3Com HomeConnect Camera", which is a rebranded "Vista Imaging ViCam USB", which was then purchased by Digi and released as the "Digi Watchport/V". Confused yet?

It's a very early USB camera, from when such things were expensive, so things like implementing the full USB spec (you can plug two into one machine and they show up separately! unlike more recent, cheaper implementations) and glass optics were considered standard.

The low-light performance is quite respectable, and the auto shutter speed can be set to center-weighted, center-only, or full-frame modes. Any TWAIN or VfW software can grab images from it. Find 'em used in the $20 range on eBay.

Any USB cable should work out to about 20 feet with passive extensions, and if you need to go longer, throw a hub in the middle to regenerate the signal. (Hubs are cheaper than "active extension" cables, I've found.)

You might also have good luck with a plain NTSC camera feeding a capture card. Loooooong cable runs will deteriorate the signal somewhat, but fifty feet is nothing, and you might find that regular "security" cameras, which shift into B&W mode at night, provide better low-light performance.
posted by Myself at 4:15 PM on August 2, 2007

I've had some decent luck using one of the many "Infrared LED Night Vision Webcam Security Wireless" systems found on eBay such as this one. They typically only offer RCA style outputs, but it is pretty easy to find a middleman device to convert RCA signals into a usb interface a la this.

For a while I had my wireless camera setup facing my front door, and the receiver located near my home pc, connected to it via the Adaptec GameBridge, using the program Dorgem to monitor for motion detection and to capture stills when something was detected.

The wireless cameras tend to run at the 2.4GHz band which seems to be overused nowadays, so I had occasional interference, but overall capture quality and speed were top notch. Well worth the $38 I spent on the system.
posted by skwillz at 7:22 PM on August 2, 2007

Open Source webcam applications don't usually care much which camera you use with them (as anaelith points out above, TWAIN is a common denominator). So consider using an inexpensive "real" digital camera from eBay or ? that's smarter than a dedicated webcam. I don't have up-to-date info on webcam applications, but search for open source + webcam and you'll find the state of the art, good and bad -- but probably a lot less bad that the CD that comes with an Office Max webcam.

It sounds like you'd like a really long USB cable for your situation -- but keep in mind that USB doesn't work well with long cables (which is why the cables you've worked with before are "stingy"). Can you redesign your problem to deal with a shorter cable?
posted by gum at 11:16 PM on August 2, 2007

Instead of a USB camera, I suggest you try one with a composite output, and add a video capture card to your PC. The Geeks have both the cameras (something like this, as an example) and the capture cards.

If this is for outdoor use, you need to be careful about placement. The cams don't work terribly well under temperature extremes. Commercial enclosures typically have fans and heaters to control their environment.
posted by SteveInMaine at 7:29 AM on August 3, 2007