Network Camera
Archive - Originally posted on "The Horse's Mouth" - 2004-12-07 00:57:16 - Graham EllisWith web servers and networking capability now built into printers and broadband access boxes as well as computers, it was only a matter of time before a network webcam became available which doesn't need to be plugged straight into a computer. I've had "half an eye" open for such a device for a while - thinking that it must be technically possible. And on Sunday I spotted one on the shelf at our local PC World ....
It's a nice little camera from Linksys. Wireless and Cat5 connections. Powers up at IP address 192.168.1.115, so it can be spoken to (with a bit of temporary address changing!) from our network, and configured through its web server ... it's now on our network at 192.168.200.73, and configured to email us a few seconds of video clip if it detects movement.
All we have to do now is to work out how to view the .asf files that are coming into our Mac and Linux inboxes. It does seem a huge shame that Linksys (part of Cisco) are supplying a product without drivers even for OS X. A quick search of PHP's "Pear" and Perl's CPAN has drawn a blank so far ... but I have come across a formal specification of the file format. Perhaps my chance to write something as a contribution to one of those repositories? Or has anyone any experience with .asf -s ??