Posted: February 09 2003 at 06:45 | IP Logged

Does anyone have any experience/tips of using webcams with PowerHome?

I have just bought a Logitech QuickCam Pro 4000, and wonder how (if?) it can be used with PowerHome

Ideally I would like to:

1. See the webcam view from within a screen within PowerHome

2. Get PowerHome to email me an image (say every hour)

I would ideally like the email to be triggered by listening for a trigger on a device (A11 say)

If anyone can suggest anything or point me in the right direction I would be very grateful - I have searched these boards for ideas, and checked the user manual, but can't find anything specific to start me off.

I am now using Windows XP (Home Edition), if that's relevant.

Thanks

Ron

Posted: February 09 2003 at 11:51 | IP Logged

I'm using WebCam2000 (http://www.stratoware.com/webcam2000/), and, it serves up a new image when accessed via port 8080 (default). You could create a macro to get the image and then do something with it (i.e. send it to you).

Viewing the image in PH itself could be tough, but, viewing it from a PH web page would be easy.

I just tried a quick macro to do this, but, the macro didn't get an image; it just got a bit of code...

HTTP/1.0 200 OK
Server: WebCam2000/1.64 (Windows; color=#800080www.stratoware.com/webcam2000/)
Date: Sun, 09 Feb 2003 16:46:55 GMT
Content-Type: image/jpeg
Content-Length: 13529
Last-Modified: Sun, 09 Feb 2003 16:46:55 GMT
Expires: 0

������1O� ;���M��;]SX�d-u �"i ���

Let's see if Dave has anything on this.

Tony

Posted: February 10 2003 at 10:25 | IP Logged

Currently PowerHome does not have any specific controls for working with webcams.  In my own setup, I use Webcam32 (http://www.webcam32.com) and have created PSP pages to utilize the images within frames.  I have 1 frame with the webcam, another frame with camera controls, and a third frame for the PowerHome program.  You can see a screenshot of my page here (http://www.myx10.com/images/dwh1.jpg).

Webcam32 has the ability to FTP still images via remote control.  I have not had the time to do so yet, but I can create a trigger within PowerHome that will tell the Webcam32 software to FTP an image to a remote server.

I downloaded the Webcam2000 software and took a brief look at it.  You should have no problem creating webpages for PowerHome and incorporating the image from the software within it.  As Tony stated however, it would be difficult to get the image displayed within the PowerHome software itself.

Getting PowerHome to email the image would also be problematic.  You could easily write a macro which could make a request to the webcam software and retrieve the code for the image, but you would then only be able to paste the code in your email rather than attaching it since PowerHome does not currently support file attachments in email.

I'll do some thinking along these lines and see what I can come up with to make this type of application friendlier within PowerHome.

Dave.

Posted: February 10 2003 at 15:44 | IP Logged

Dave,

I downloaded an evaluation version of webcam 32 over the weekend, before I posted my original question!

I checked out your link http://www.myx10.com/images/dwh1.jpg

That looks exactly the effect/view I am after - that's what I meant when I wrote initially "See the webcam view from within a screen within PowerHome"

I could have phrased it better, I guess - I know the camera image in your screen above isn't PowerHome as such, but it can be seen on the same screen when you link your browser to it (albeit in a different frame)

Now I need your help (again!) - I have dabbled with some simple web page writing years ago - just about got my head around frames.

But - there's no way I would be able to create your page (above link) from scratch. Can you help me out? Is there some template / blank you could provide?

Could you perhaps send me a version of the default web page in PowerHome - but modified with a frame to link to a camera image (you could assume I use webcam32)

I don't like asking - but what little technical ability I have is more on the hardware side, as opposed to programming...!

Thanks

Ron

Posted: February 10 2003 at 17:46 | IP Logged

Dave,

Your comment above, "paste the code in your email ", yields the result I posted above. Can you see anything there that makes sense? I would be interested in doing this to capture a frame when a motion trigger comes in.

Tony

Posted: February 11 2003 at 09:25 | IP Logged

Ron,

No problem...it's actually quite easy.  The first thing that I have is an index.htm in my web directory that details my framesets.  The source is below:

<html>
<head>
<title>Dave Howard PowerHome Control Center</title>
</head>
<frameset cols="350,*">
<frameset rows="280,*">
<frame src= "webcam"><frame src= "></frameset>
<frame src= ""></frameset>
</html>

You can see that there are three framesets with three source files, 1 for the webcam, 1 for the webcam control, and 1 for the PowerHome main.  The PowerHome main just loads the standard internal page.  The webcam.psp is a very simple file that loads the Webcam32 java applet.  Ive added some PSP code to determine whether the request is coming from my internal network or from an outside location so that the IP's are dynamically configured as either internal or external.  The code for my webcam.psp is below:

<html>
<head>
<title>WebCam</title>
</head>
<body>
<applet width="320" height="240" code="JavaCamPush.class" archive="JavaCamPush.jar" codebase="http://<%if(left(ph_getwebremoteip(),10) = "192.168.0.","INTERNAL_IP","EXTERNAL_IP")%>:8001/applet"><param name="cabbase" value="JavaCamPush.cab"><param name="URL" value="http://<%if(left(ph_getwebremoteip(),10) = "192.168.0.","INTERNAL_IP","EXTERNAL_IP")%>:8001"></applet>
</body>
</html>

The last source file is my camcontrol.htm.  It doesn't require anything to be dynamic so it's just an HTM instead of a PSP.  It uses the internal execsendkeys function to perform its actions.  The code for it is below:

<html>
<head>
<title>Camera Control</title>
<script language="JavaScript">
<!--
function sk(skvalue)
{
document.send_keys.sendkeys.value = skvalue;document.send_keys.submit(); }
// -->
</script>
</head>
<body>
<form method="post" action="ph-cgi/execsendkeys" name="send_keys"><input type="hidden" name="sendkeys" value=""><input type="hidden" name="nexturl" value="/camcontrol.htm">
<input type="button" value="Living Room CAM" onclick="sk('ph_rtne(ph_x10(1,\'O\',2,0) + ph_x10(1,\'O\',102,0))')">
<input type="button" value="Ninja CAM" onclick="sk('ph_rtne(ph_x10(1,\'O\',1,0) + ph_x10(1,\'O\',102,0))')">
<input type="button" value="Cameras Off" onclick="sk('ph_rtne(ph_x10(1,\'O\',1,0) + ph_x10(1,\'O\',103,0))')">
<input type="button" value="Watch Camera" onclick="sk('ph_rtne(ph_macro(\'SET WDM CHANNEL 28\'))')">
<input type="button" value="Watch Satellite" onclick="sk('ph_rtne(ph_macro(\'SET WDM CHANNEL 20\'))')">
</form>
</body>
</html>

Let me know if you need any further help or explanations.

Dave.

Posted: February 11 2003 at 09:32 | IP Logged

Tony,

Looking at what you pasted above, I don't think it will work.  The length of the JPEG should be 13529 and it only looks as if a roughly 32 bytes were pasted.  This is most likely because a hexadecimal 0 was encountered within the file and most programming languages will interpret this as the end of a string unless special handling is performed.  Also, I don't believe the raw data of an image can just be pasted within the body of an email message.

Im investigating the addition of some new functions which will allow you to attach a file to an email as well as handling non-text data being returned from a URL request.  Once these are in place, I think you'll be able to accomplish what you want.

Dave.

Posted: February 11 2003 at 12:02 | IP Logged

Dave,

Semi-good news!

Tony