Would you like to be able to monitor your home, pet or child from anywhere on the internet. Or maybe you’d like to monitor the weather or watch a birdhouse online. This project provides an automatically updating image on the free webspace that comes with Shaw Broadband internet access.
Project Hardware:
A USB webcam – almost any Microsoft or Logitech webcam
A USB extension cable to reach from the webcam to your computer
A camera tripod (or the webcam can be duct-taped into position)
High-speed internet access.
Software
Windows XP, Vista or 7 + Tincam
OS X + Evocam
Filezilla to view your files on the free shaw hosting space.
Tincam and Evocam are both simple webcam servers that use ftp to update a webpage with an image from your webcam.
Both packages lets you specify how often to update the image; from every so many seconds to minutes. Seconds works well for rapidly changing scenes like a birdwatcher webcam. Every 5 minutes works well for something like a weather webcam. If you update the image more than once every 5 minutes be sure to check that your internet connection is fast enough to finish uploading the image before the next picture needs to be sent.
Hosting and internet access
ftp server ftp.shaw.ca
username shaw_email_username (your shaw email username)
password your_shae_email_password
After starting the capture, you can view your image at
http://members.shaw.ca/yourusername/webcam.html
Tincam costs $19, but a free 30 day evaluation copy can be downloaded from their website.
After you have the camera set-up. You can buy a domain name from GoDaddy and forward the name to your free Shaw hosting webspace.