Making an online Fish Tank webcam!

I'm more worried about my own bandwidth from my home connection, at work, my apps I run probably use about a thousand times more bandwidth than a webcam would... kinda like spitting in the ocean I suppose. Well depending of course on the webcams res and refresh rates. There are plenty of webcams out there, I watch several at work already,nothing new.
 
loaches r cool said:
I'm more worried about my own bandwidth from my home connection, at work, my apps I run probably use about a thousand times more bandwidth than a webcam would... kinda like spitting in the ocean I suppose. Well depending of course on the webcams res and refresh rates. There are plenty of webcams out there, I watch several at work already,nothing new.
Click to expand...
Well I mention that because most companies tend to frown on people streaming video and sucking up bandwidth that others may need.

And yes, it depends on whether you're actually streaming the data or just doing snapshots and refreshing the page. Most home connections will suffer from lack of upload speed for streaming.
 
Three years later I ordered a Panasonic Petcam. It has a built in webserver so you don't need a computer running near it 24/7. D-link has a similar IP camera that I looked at.

The Netscape Fishcam webpage is there but the camera is long gone. That's a static photo.
 
About two or three months ago I met a guy who has a web controllable tilt cam on the outside of his nano reef. It's pretty cool. You could tilt and zoom in and out. I'll post the link when I find it.

I actually had the idea to add some water proof night vision cams to my SW tank today. They would have to be really small with a flexible shaft (pen sized) and I would put them mostly in caves and attach them to a small 7" LCD located at the top of my tank. I would also put them in my Clown Loach tank. Maybe that way I could actually see them every once in a while!
 
if you are handy with acrylic/lexan you can make small waterproof enclosures for web cams. Web cams are pretty easy to take apart without damaging them. They also pick up infrared light very well... add a few IR LEDs and you have a night vision webcam. This requires a little more handy work than ordering but could save a lot of money (ptentially).

If you want an example of web cams picking up IR light you can use a remote control and a phone camera. Turn on the phone camera and then point the remote at the lens. Start pressing buttons and you should see some 'light.'
 
well regarnding a safe fish camera, use ice fishermen know that they have fish cams and there are perficly safe for you tank, my uncles uses it on is 250 gal. tank, when hes at work
 
Fishfiles1 said:
well regarnding a safe fish camera, use ice fishermen know that they have fish cams and there are perficly safe for you tank, my uncles uses it on is 250 gal. tank, when hes at work
Click to expand...


ya an icefishing camera would work great,i never thought of that...:)
 
When building or buying to put IN the tank remember to make it fish safe. I found a todo online that looks like it may eventually poison the water.

Pan & tilt webcams are cool but they start at $300.

Ice fishing or underwater sport fishing cameras cost much more than network cameras & you would still need a digitizer/broadcaster if you want the picture to be accessible online.

The Panasonic Petcam BL-C1:
Pros: Autosetup works for some people, pretty case easy to mount on aquarium glass, no computer needed.
Cons: Autosetup doesn't work with MacOSX. Took me a couple days to get it working. Panasonic support is terrible. Web interface is ugly & doesn't like you to embed it in your own webpage. There are ways to do it that I'm trying to learn now.

Dlink has a competing ip camera for the same price. I'm not saying it's the better camera but I do know that Dlink has excellent support.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
AquariaCentral.com
Top Bottom