Looking for help--How to put a webcam on your tank

[mdrumm]

Anyone want to offer advice?

[roguemonk]

Hook up a web cam and point it at your tank? :-)

Sorry, couldn't resist.

Is there a particular problem, or is this a solicitation for information on how webcams work?

Thanks,

Brad

[Ebmorri]

It depends on the camera, I have one that has a built in web interface others you need to connect to you PC. Linksys has a pretty nice WiFi one if you have a wifi network Then you also need to forward ports from your DSL/Cable modem. Thats a little starter for you.

[adova]

Ya sure - for your tank - you sick perv......

[chadscharf]

I want one of those old-school diver toys that ran on batteries and would swim up and down in the tub. You could strap a water-proof wiFi web-cam on that guy and have a whole underwater sitcom!

[mbunakeith]

they have those mini-radio controlled submarines you could strap a camera on and zip it around inside the tank. heck you could even strap the microscope to it and program it to search for baby corals!!!LOL

[miwoodar]

MDrumm - did you get the webcam to work out?

I would like to figure out how to set one up so I can check on my tank while I'm out of town.

[mdrumm]

working with adova on this...will post once it is set up.

[stugray]

I have done it before.

If it takes you more than about an hour, then youre doing something wrong.

Here is a quote from my other post:

" have done it with a cam just like the Linksys WVC54G.

I was in florida on TDY for 3 months & I was able to check on the tank from my rental unit or the office via broadband.

It was a bit of work to setup.

You get the cam working from a computer in the house first ( obviously ).

Next you allow a port forward through whatever you are using as a firewall/router. You would use a request ( on a particular port ) from the outside to redirect that connection to the camera

Next you need to register with a free DNS service ( like http://www.dyndns.com/ ). Here you choose a name for your webserver ( your router ) like myfamily.homeip.net

finally, you get your router to always notify the DNS if the WAN address ( the one assigned by your broadband provider ) changes.

Once you get that, you can login to the camera from anywhere with just http://myfamily.homeip.net: port# and the camera will come up. Frame rate was good enough to watch the movement of the fish while swimming.

Hope that doesnt scare you off"


Stu

[stonkers]

Here's an awesome link for web cam on the cheap that works well (you can control it from the web site in fact):

Web Cam (http://www.camerapad.com/products.asp)

I'm using these at my church for recording the sermons. Should be streaming them soon.

I use the Picturetel PTZ2's.

[miwoodar]

Very cool. I'm looking forward to seeing a post of the results.

Thanks Stugray/Stonkers.

[miwoodar]

Mike - did you ever get this working?