Panasonic Network Camera

[wxcrw]

I'm in the testing phase of setting up an outdoor webcam. I've purchased the BB-HCM531A and I am happy with the image quality during testing. I'm not pondering the whole image overlay part.
Image salsa looks very easy to learn and modify (I need some easy right now), I'm still using demo until I'm happy it will work well. I am currious the best way to get the video feed and/or trigger snapshots into the software?

Right now, the computer running ImageSalsa has Filezilla FTP Server running. It collects Trigger uploads from the camera ever few seconds. I've created a portfolio/canvas that looks for the cam.jpg image on the local hard drive. This appears to work for still images, but I saw Ken from Saratoga-Weather.org can a simular camera, but is getting video.

Anyone else have suggestions for performing this?

Regards,
Shawn

[saratogaWX]

Hi Shawn,

I use the Panasonic BL-C10A netcam with ImageSalsa.  ImageSalsa is set to pull an image from the camera at 1 second intervals, then two different canvas definitions copy the image obtained by http from the camera, and annotate a 320x240 image that is available via the ImageSalsa built-in HTTP server, and the second copy is reduced to 120x90 and uploaded via the builtin FTP client in ImageSalsa at 15 second intervals.

The netcam.php page uses a 1-second refresh JavaScript and points to the cable connection IP address (with a dyndns.org domain name), and a hole in the outer firewall router sends the requested port traffic to the system running ImageSalsa.

I decided not to 'push' the 320x240 1sec images to the site, but instead offered it via the built-in HTTP server on ImageSalsa .. saves a bunch of upload traffic since the netcam.php page doesn't get a lot of views.  Also I have a <meta> refresh on the page to go back to the home page after 1 minute so folks can't camp-out on the netcam page.

I use the http access in the Panasonic to have ImageSalsa fetch a fixed image at 320x240 every second.

Hope this helps..
Best regards,
Ken

[wxcrw]

Hi Shawn,

I use the Panasonic BL-C10A netcam with ImageSalsa.  ImageSalsa is set to pull an image from the camera at 1 second intervals, then two different canvas definitions copy the image obtained by http

Thanks Ken. I do have a few more specific questions for you. How are you pulling the image via http directly from the webcam, without all of camera's built in web page stuff? Do you have a SD card in your camera? I don't.

I'm hoping the basic concepts of these netcams are close enough your method works. your method would simplify my configuration, and provide more features (like video).

Regards,
Shawn

[saratogaWX]

My BL-C10A has a http interface that allows urls like

Code:

http://viewer:[name]@192.168.1.253/SnapshotJPEG?Resolution=320x240&Quality=Clairity

to be used to fetch the image off my local network.

In the Canvas Properties, Graphics TAB I set:

Enable: Yes
Schedule: 24-hours
Layer: 0
Update interval: 1
Update Base Time 00:00:00
Alignment: 0
PosX: 0
PosY: 0
Source Type: 2
Video Feed: [OldVfW]
SourceUrl: (see above in code)

Rest of settings for line 1 are the defaults.
No settings in any other line in the canvas.

In Canvas2 (320x240 netcam image), I have the Graphics Tab use Source type=4 and specify the above canvas as the source.  Then in the Text Tab, I put the date/time stamp and imported weather variables on the image along with the boilerplate text.  I enabled the Web Server tab to offer up 'netcam.jpg' as the image, refreshed every second.  The web server settings are specified by the Internet web server setup for location of the webserver file directory and the port to use, and that's the port I set to forward to the internal IP address of my system from the outer firewall router (Linksys).

In Canvas3 (120x90 thumbnail) I have the Graphics Tab use Source type=4 and specify the raw image canvas as the source.  In the Text Tab, I put on the date/time and 'Live' on the image, then enable FTP to push the image to the website every 15 seconds.

Best regards,
Ken

[wxcrw]

My BL-C10A has a http interface that allows urls like

Code:

http://viewer:[name]@192.168.1.253/SnapshotJPEG?Resolution=320x240&Quality=Clairity

to be used to fetch the image off my local network.

Thanks Ken. I just quickly tried and your URL didn't work. I removed the

Code:

viewer:[name]@

and it now works fine. My camera has a default user account granting MPEG access to the camera only. No change settings or move the camera.

I am able to get image salsa to import the image from the URL. I haven't tried video yet. I'll play more with imagesalsa this evening, and let you know if I have any more questions. Thanks again.

BTW, the Power over Ethernet (POE) works great, and was worth the extra $$, since I can mount the camera without messing with getting power near the camera. I'm using the SMC POE http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16812995017. Very clean looking install.

Regards,
Shawn