My Technophilic Musings

My Sites: My Blog | My Tech Blog | Follow me on Twitter
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It’s amazing, isn’t it? Even a sneeze at google makes the headlines. Well, it’s not the sneeze today but the new favicon I just got. So, are you also seeing the all new, re-designed, artisticly polished “g” as the new favicon?

In other news, my Twitter-Webcam integration post has bypassed my earlier lifehacked post about Remote File Access Through E-mail by more than a few thousands, even though the time difference between the two posts is more than 3 months. Thanks Stumble Upon

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Quote of the day: “If there are any questions, direct them to that brick wall over there.” — Network President

written by Shantanu Goel \\ tags: e-mail, favicon, google, lifehacker, news, remote access, stumble upon, Twitter, webcam

My Sites: My Blog | My Tech Blog | Follow me on Twitter
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Worried about someone breaking into your house in your absence? Or just need to keep a tab on who enters your room while you are away? Well, all you need is a webcam, a linux PC/laptop and a twitter account. And you are set for real time updates through twitter about all that goes on at your abode behind your back (can even receive a text message/sms on your phone). Keep reading for the very simple setup you need.

1.) Download and install "motion" on your computer. For ubuntu users, this is as simple as running

2.) Setup your motion configuration file. (Usually at /etc/motion/motion.conf). There are quite a lot of options available. You might want to tweak it a lot according to ur needs later on but the most important ones that you can begin with are (leave the rest untouched for now):

2a.) Add/edit the option "target_dir" to point to the directory where you want to save the images of the event when motion is detected.

2b.) Add/edit the option "locate" and set it to "on" so that you get a nice square box around the detected moving object/person.

2c.) Add/edit the option "webcam_port" and set it to, say, "8000". Motion includes a mini http server so now, you can use it to view the actual images of the happening when you get the update and check for false alarms.

3.) Now, comes the most important part, about getting the update. Continue reading »

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Quote of the day: "Human beings may not be perfect, but a computer program with language synthesis is hardly the answer to the world's problems." - JC Denton

written by Shantanu Goel \\ tags: fun, linux, motion, motion detection, real time updates, sms, thieves, Twitter, ubuntu, webcam

My Sites: My Blog | My Tech Blog | Follow me on Twitter
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Did you know that instead of installing special software to view your webcam video, you can simply use mplayer for the same purpose, and with a lot of fine control. e.g. try running the following command with your webcam attached to your computer.

And you can use mencoder to capture and encode video from your webcam:

Have fun playing with the huge number of options available. You could even cat the test.avi file into a folder of your web server and have instant streaming video .

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Quote of the day: "When due process fails us, we really do live in a world of terror." - JC Denton

written by Shantanu Goel \\ tags: fun, linux, mencoder, mplayer, stream, video, webcam

My Sites: My Blog | My Tech Blog | Follow me on Twitter
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I have an old noname cheapo webcam, that I dusted out of my junk (why? More on that in a post coming soon). I hoped that it would work in my Ubuntu setup out of the box like most of my other hardware. I connected it to my laptop's usb port. dmesg gave the following output:

[21328.211333] usb 1-1: new full speed USB device using ohci_hcd and address 2
[21328.319698] usb 1-1: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice
[21328.439705] Linux video capture interface: v2.00
[21328.458509] zc0301: V4L2 driver for ZC0301[P] Image Processor and Control Chip v1:1.05
[21328.459113] usb 1-1: ZC0301[P] Image Processor and Control Chip detected (vid/pid 0x0AC8/0x301B)
[21328.520576] usb 1-1: PB-0330 image sensor detected
[21328.870287] usb 1-1: Initialization succeeded
[21328.870919] usb 1-1: V4L2 device registered as /dev/video0
[21328.871001] usbcore: registered new interface driver zc0301
[21328.913737] usbcore: registered new interface driver gspca
[21328.913811] ubuntu/media/gspcav1/gspca_core.c: gspca driver 01.00.12 registered

Great! Everything set up, I thought. But running various programs, camorama, camE, kopete, everything gave weird errors like "Connection could not be made", "device not ready" or just showed a blank screen. But soon, after  few trial and errors, I found the solution. Basically the "zc0301" module is the culprit and all you have to do to get your camera working is prevent it from loading. So, this is what I did:

And voila! the webcam started working like magic. Of course, this tip is only for webcams that use this particular chip. And if you want to make this change permanent so that you don't have to run these commands everytime you want to use your webcam, all you have to do is add the following line to your /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist file

blacklist zc0301

This would prevent the module from loading whenever you connect your webcam to your computer. Let me know if this worked for you or if you have some of your own tips/tricks/hacks to get this or other webcams working on linux.

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Quote of the day: All we really need to survive is one person who truly loves us-Penelope

written by Shantanu Goel \\ tags: blacklist, camera, dmesg, gspca, linux, modprobe, ubuntu, webcam, zc0301

My Sites: My Blog | My Tech Blog | Follow me on Twitter
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If you thought that a webcam is just for getting in visual touch with your distant friends, then you could not be more wrong. There are many other uses e.g., making videos, rudimentary security systems, etc. But I didn’t know that it’d be as simple as a a few keystrokes and a couple of clicks, until I stumbled across this article on Linux.com – Five fun ways to use a Linux webcam. It lists out the following five things that can be achieved ever so easily with a webcam and your linux box:

• Record Yourself
• Make a Video Streaming webserver
• Monitor your house
• ASCIIfy your image
• More fun with your videos and stills

Do check it out at the aforementioned link.

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Quote of the day: "Bravery is not a function of firepower." - JC Denton

written by Shantanu Goel \\ tags: convert image to ascii, five fun ways to use a linux webcam, fun, fun with videdos, house monitor, linux, record, security, video streaming, webcam, webcam fun, webserver