Velleman K8000 - [K8000 Applications] - [K8000 Webcam Control]
This page describes a remote controller for a webcam through a K8000 card. The webcam can be viewed via a simple HTML page which shows a real-time video stream. There are also two buttons available: you can rotate the camera with them.
A primary requirement for this application would be a ... webcam. I myself use an USB QuickCAM from Logitech.
To rotate the camera you need a motor. Preferable a steppermotor because they are very precise. I used a steppermotor from Velleman - it is controlled by the K8005 kit. A steppermotor driver you can connect to the K8000! This motor isn't very powerful but it is strong enough to move the camera.
It wasn't too difficult to connect the webcam to the motor. First I've attached the motor to a piece of wood by means of two screws. The camera itself is connected to the rotor via a little cylinder.
Once you have gathered all required hardware you can start building the software!
The software is a more complex to realize as it needs to be accessible through webpages.
I started developing a system that allows you to move the camera left or right. I did this by writing a very small webserver: this allows the camera to be controlled from webpages. Actually the server only serves a single webpage. This page has two hyperlinks: LEFT and RIGHT. When the server catches a request to one of these 2 links it will send a movement command to the steppermotor card.
Once the motor control got working I started looking for some software to stream webcam images to a webpage. After a little search I found the "Streamee" software. The software is in German but you should manage to get it working. The software acts like a server for video streaming. The video streams can be viewed through a webpage.
I now had two servers: my own webserver to control the motor and the Streamee server to view the images. Each one serves its own webpage. I figured the easiest way to merge the pages together is in a HTML page that uses frames: each frame has a different source page. The top frame points to the webcam server. The frame at the bottom points to the motor server.
A have made a webpage that contains the basic frameset (cam.html) to merge both webservers together. You can download it at the bottom of this page. You should upload this page to your own webspace. It MUST be modified to let it point to your own servers. You must also upload the webpage that is created by the Streamee software: rename it to webcam.html.
Remark: I am not sure if Streamee still exists. Their website always seems to be down. There are probably similar programs on the net!
Copyright ©1998-2012 Vanderhaegen Bart - last modified: August 28, 2011
