Viewing on Mobile Phone

A new portal to the webcam image has been installed, allowing access through mobile phone (currently only tested on Windows Mobile):

http://creativetech.inn.leedsmet.ac.uk/m/webcam.php

The script for this page has been radically simplified, for fast loading and wide compatibility. It embeds the usual IFRAME method for including the picture and is therefore also automatically refreshing. The image size is automatically adjusted to the browser window size.

This access portal works also on any other web browser on a "normal" PC, providing just a simple window with the webcam image only.

New Script Version

The PHP script for sending out the captured image on request has been modified:

• The maximum sent image dimensions have been increased from 640x480 to 1280x1024. The previous version only sent 640x480, even if the originally captured image would have been larger.


• The refresh time has now been changed from a fixed value of 60 seconds to a variable value. The value depends on the time since the most recent image was captured and is set to twice the time difference between now and the file date of that image. A limiter sets the range of this refresh time result from 5 seconds to 10 minutes, to avoid either too rapid refresh or too long delays. This will now enable the distribution of image capture to be adapted automatically to the speed of the actual image capture. To show the currently used refresh rate, the caption text line has been amended.


• The size of the output image is now limited to the actual captured image size.

All these measures are seamless, because the next image refresh through the IFRAME will refresh the whole script, so that these new features are immediately available for anyone who has implemented the IFRAME image capture on their web site.

New Capture Software Version

A brief outage today from 10:03 until 11:17 was caused by an upgrade of the capture software. The new version has no effect on the captured web image, but only provides some improvements for the GUI. There is now an optional real-size preview, showing exactly the image that was captured. Earlier versions had a scaled down preview which fits on the small Dialog window.
A problem had occured in handling the video property pages. It appears that parameters that have been set within the property pages are lost when the video device is opened again. A work-around has been implemented avoiding multiple initialisations of the video.

Anyway, it works fine now :)

New Webcam: 1280x1024 capture

The previous webcam has now been replaced by the Microsoft LifeCam VX-6000. This camera has a much larger wideangle field of view, which now allows to see the front of the James Graham building (to the right) and part of the Acre (to the left). It also can capture at a high resolution: it is currently set to the maximum at 1280 x 1024 pixels.

Image from the MS LifeCam VX-6000:



Image from Philips ToUcam Pro:



Image from the Philips SPC 200NC camera (here only 320x240):



Also, the capture software is constantly being revised and updated, as the development for this tool provides me with additional code for other projects. The current revision 104 allows to select a camera from a set of connected cameras, makes accessible the property pages, and allows to set a compressor.

Change of Camera

Yesterday I connected again the Philips ToUcam Pro to the video capture. It provides a better image quality, despite the problem with the vertical stripes in high contrast. Right now the weather is foggy and hazy, so not much contrast.

The new version of the video capture software was extended to include the property pages. This now allows again to set the image size. These past few days it has been set at 320x240; now it is set to 640x480.

Setting up a Microsoft LiveCam VX-6000 did not work yet, as the USB cable is too long, and as a consequence too little power arrives at the camera (needs 500 mA at 5V). I will have to add a USB power booster. This camera would allow 1280x1024 image capture, at a much better quality than the current capture.

New Version of Capture Software

I have rewritten the complete capture software for grabbing the webcam image and ftp-ing it to the web server. This was necessary, as the old code in Visual C++ v.6 become difficult to handle. Also, I wanted finally to have a video capture class in C# for my further software development activities.

For the webcam functionality and the outer web interface there is no difference: the image is captured as before and uploaded to the server.

Only on my desktop there is a difference: instead of a separate capture window (from the old VideoForWindows preview window) there is now the preview included into the GUI of the main window. The tabbed controls look much cleaner now. The FTP client shows status messages. And I do now have C# classes for video capture and FTP upload.

Hopefully this new version runs as reliable as the previous version!

Change of Camera

The web cam which had been used since the server has been set up, displayed some visual artefacts in areas of high contrast. I have now replaced this camera with another one which does not seem to have this problem. Unfortunately, the image quality is more blurry than the precious camera, and the lens has a smaller aperture angle, which means that a smaller segment is shown. But it seems to have a backlight compensation, which may be useful in the evenings when the camera points in the direction of the sun.

Webcam up again

After the crash of my PC last week, I now have a new one. The boot HD had failed, for some unexplainable reason. Got the new PC yesterday, and today I set up the camera capture.
There is an inexplicable problem: the newer versions of the camera capture software do not work anymore: no video device is being recognised. Strangely enough, the version 1.6 from 7.April 2008 (exactly one year ago) works just fine. So I am reverting to running that one, before I identify and fix the problems of the latest version. The frame rate is now set to 2 minutes, to keep the likelihood for potential problems down. Will be increased when a stable camera capture will have been developed.

I hope to leave the camera running over the Easter holiday.

Happy Easter to everyone!

Server Down

On Saturday, 28.3.2009, 2:27am, something must have happened to the server where the camera video capture is running: the capture stopped grabbing and updating images. It was noticed during the day that the PC appeared to have rebooted, but an HD failure did not allow the boot process to complete.

So at the moment, the camera server is down, until the hard drive has been fixed.

Camera Stopped

This afternoon, 15:38, the software for capturing the continuous image from my web cam stopped operating. My PC did have some trouble around that time, applications running sluggish. But I noticed the web cam failure just now... so am rebooting now, the camera should be up in a few minutes again.

Happy New Year!

The web cam and the server appear to have been running fine during the holiday shutdown.

Happy New Year 2009 to all of you!

Webcam up again

After the "switch-off" over the weekend and my two-day absence from work due to illness, the webcam is again up and running.

Webcam down over the weekend

This weekend, we do have a test going on at Leeds Met: shutting down all unnecessary equipment, and measuring the consumed power under these circumstances. Since this webcam is not really deemed "necessary", it will remain shut-down over the weekend and will only be restarted on Monday, 24.11.

On Travel - Update stopped

I am on travel since 1.November. The server appeared to run fine until 6.November, 4:51 - since then no new image was uploaded. I will only be able to find out what happened, after my return - which will be 17.November.

Server restart - camera update stopped

This morning at 5:07, the camera server in my office decided to shut down, probably because of some pending Windows Updates. Therefore, no new image was uploaded to the web server until now (10:55). The server now is up and running ok again. There still may be occasional outages, as I am currently getting more Windows updates.

Web cam listed on Facebook

Carl Noblet has addeds this Leeds Met Headingley camera into the listing at the Facebook group Leeds Met Headingley Campus Grounds. Thanks, Carl!

Marquee has been dismantled

The marquee has now been dismantled. A time lapse sequence of more than 7000 individual images has been recorded which can be integrated into a fast-forward-running video. The recording has now stopped, the camera has been turned to show again the James Graham Building, and the image capture time period has been shortened from 2 minutes to 30 seconds.

Webcam Recording: Dismantling of the Marquee

The webcam has now been set up to record an image series (timelapse) of the dismantling of the Marquee on the Acre, here at the Leeds Met Headingley Campus. Yesterday, the direction of the camera was moved slightly to the right, to get a better view of the marquee, instead of the walk way ikn front of it.

Back from travel

After 2 weeks of travel, I am back at Leeds Met. The webcam and server were running nicely, no crash occured.

The campus is quite empty now during the summer holiday, so the webcam picture often looks the same, like this scene below.

Graduation - Increased camera framerate

After returning from a more than one-week-long absence, the webcam and the server are running fine - no crashes or problems had occured.

The framerate is now increased to one image every 15 seconds, to account for the increased activity during the graduation ceremonies. The images are being recorded, with the potion to integrate them into a time-lapse movie at a later time.