While browsing amateur radio sites, haven't you also wished for a webcam? After all, amateur radio operators, especially those who go out to broadcast in the wild, are in an attractive environment that is simply calling out to be, if not visited in person, then at least immortalized on photographic paper, tape or digital memory. And of course, so that as many people as possible can see it... and immediately.
Making your own webcam on your website is not difficult. You will need the following things:
- Webcam (digital camera)
- Computer connected to the Internet
- Suitable software
- Code in the page
In the article you will read
Webcam (digital camera)
Today it is not unusual to have a webcam or digital camera. It must support webcam mode. It connects to the PC via a USB cable. USB support in the operating system is not always enough, finally you know why the manufacturer packed the CD with the camera.
Computer connected to the Internet
A fast connection is not necessary either, rather it should be assumed that it is a permanent connection. So dial-up would be fast enough, but it is charged based on the length of the connection and that is not very convenient. So GPRS, EDGE, DSL, etc.
Windows, Linux and MacOS can be used as the operating system. The choice then depends on it.
Software
There are a lot of such programs. Most are shareware. Here I want to point out that during the entire transfer of images to the web, the FTP connection is active. Since most of us are not the authors of such a program, you have no idea what data the program is sending. So I highly recommend a firewall.
One of the freeware programs under Win is WebcamFirst. After installation, set the parameters of the FTP connection (ftp server, login name, password, possibly also directory) and the transferred images (size, quality, effects, embedded texts, ...). You can immediately see what the image from the webcam looks like in the program.
Code in the page
It is ideal to load a thumbnail (small preview image) that we put in the reference link, which will open a new window with a larger image and automatic refresh. How to do that?
Such a part of the code might look like this (for the correct display of the article, the angle brackets are replaced with round brackets):
(a href=“http://www.mojastranka.sk/webcam.htm“ target=“_blank“)(img src=“http://www.mojastranka.sk/webcam/webcam_mini.jpg“ widht=“118″ height=“88″)(/a)
As a possible example, this will serve. Webcam images are uploaded to the "webcam" directory. A small image, only a few kilobytes, is displayed in the block. Clicking on it opens a new browser window with the file webcam.htm. It might look like this:
(HTML) (HEAD) (META HTTP-EQUIV="refresh" CONTENT="120″) (META HTTP-EQUIV="pragma" CONTENT="no-cache") (TITLE>WEBCAM – automatically reloading every 120 sec(/TITLE) (/HEAD) (BODY) (CENTER)(img src="https://www.mojastranka.sk/webcam/webcam.jpg" width="640″ height=”480″)(/CENTER) (/BODY) (/HTML)
It is actually a small HTML file whose content is automatically reloaded over and over again. It displays a large image from the webcam. If you want, you can add a countdown script that will inform you when the window content will reload.
The webcam on the OM3RKP website can serve as inspiration. www.om3rkp.CQ.sk.