How Come I Can’t See anything From Your Camera?

 One thing I have noticed is the wide variety of IP cameras available (often at very good sale prices). The problem is that often a special driver or manufacturer software package is needed to view the video in your browser.

A while ago I bought a Tenvis IPRobot3 which produces 720P HD, a very nice camera but the output is MPEG-4, H.264 which is not supported by many browsers without installing Quicktime.

After poking around the bbhn network that became available to me when I set up a vtun client, using Google Chrome on a Win7 laptop, I found several cameras online:

Foscam which required me to install IPCWebComponents.exe

Foscam HD IP which required the Foscam HD Plugin from the Chrome web store

AirVision which required the install of InstallCamCliCtrl.msi

JPEG which required Java

MPEG4 H264 which required Quicktime

There are probably more out there and luckily when you try to connect and don’t have the correct browser helper app or plugin, there is a clickable link to take you to the site where it can be downloaded.

But what if you don’t have internet access at the time? What if you have just set up a mesh network with several different cameras (possibly for a hamfest display where everyone brings their own equipment, or possibly for a public service event or ARES event) and find that some of the computers you plan on using don’t have the browser and different plugins needed? What if the “served agency” is using their computers and only their IT department can install new apps (this is common).

 Maybe a USB stick could be carried around with all the different programs that may be needed (assuming they can be installed on the computer) but don’t forget the documentation on how to make each plugin work on each browser. Some just work, but I had to tell Google Chrome to automatically allow Quicktime to run when I clicked on a MPEG4 link, and I had to tell both Chrome and Java (and reboot the computer) to allow me to display video from the JPEG video link.

To further confuse the issue, many hams (myself included) still have some computers with XP which is no longer supported by the latest versions of Java, or Google Chrome, or Internet Explorer. And what about the people using Linux, or Apple computers?

I agree that various camera manufacturers have their desired programs to setup and view the video from their product. But the open source community has alternatives which get the job done.