Live Newts on the Web
Last update 1 Apr 1996 JV
The tapaboy live newt-cam is a real-time controllable camera on my
tank of newts. It will update about every minute and is motorized to
allow you to control the view.
The Amazing Web-Steerable Newt-CAM!
How does this Newt Cam Work?
The Newt-CAM signal chain looks something like this:
A color CCD camera module sits in front of the tank and outputs NTSC
video to
A Video Blaster SE board sitting in
A 486/50 ISA bus machine running Windows for Workgroups.
A DOS script sleeps for 60 seconds and then wakes up long enough to
capture a jpeg image and copy it to a network drive mounted on
A P-90 Linux system running Samba. The Linux machine is running
A CERN http server which provides the html page and image to the
internet via
A PPP link to my ISP, ultranet.com.
The Web-Steerable Newt-Cam
The mechanism I made from various parts pulled from a VCR and
answering machines. It interfaces to a PC via the parallel printer
port and is controlled with a small DOS
program. The software looks at three magnetic switches on the
turntable to locate the left and right bounds and center position of
the camera.
To be controllable from the web a CGI script writes a control file
with the the commands for the camera. A DOS
batch file looks for the control file and calls the steering
control program and the Video Blaster image capture.
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