Can I help it if I’m constructed of 110% pure nerd-awesome? Of course not; I must simply accept my fate. 😀

After WebcamXP crapped out on me for no reason (I didn’t do anything, it just didn’t work after I’d shut down one day, then booted the next), I tried to figure out what was wrong. For reasons known only to XP, the webcam server also killed my sound. I fixed the sound by just uninstalling and reinstalling the sound card (with the fourteen accompanying fucking reboots involved in doing anything useful in Windows), but couldn’t figure out WTF was wrong with the webcam server. It said the http server was running, but when I’d try to go to the URL, it would say the page was unavailable. Finally, I said, “Fuck it,” since I hate Windows anyway, and decided to try using VLC as a server under Linux. I don’t need (or want) sound anyway, and if I could get that to work, then I could have the webcam on my laptop, which does not have Windows at all, instead of on my dual-boot desktop. VLC can transcode feed from a v4l device to an mms stream, so as long as the client computer has the capability to view the stream, it can see the webcam feed. I had tried it before, but could never get it to work properly, and never bothered to figure out why. I tried it again today, connecting the camera to the laptop, and starting the stream. Everything looked okay there; it was using around 11% of CPU0, which is no big deal, so I tried to connect with VLC on the desktop, under Ubuntu. No joy. Ooooo-kay, since it’s a WM stream, let’s see whether it works with WMP; if it does, then the problem is with VLC, not the stream or the port forwarding. I booted into XP, fired up WMP, and after it worked using the internal IP, I forwarded requests on port 12345 to the laptop and tried my public IP. Yay…worked just fine. Back into Ubuntu, tried VLC again, and even installed the w32codec package, but again, no joy. Finally, it occurred to me that even though the GUI sucks balls, and I hate the Gnome frontend, I don’t think I’ve ever encountered anything that Mplayer couldn’t handle from a command line. I am now sitting at my desk, watching myself from across the room with less than one second latency. Since the camera is on my laptop, not my desktop, it can be Fish Cam, Manti-Cam, Crab Cam, or any other “cam” that I want, depending upon how long I’ll need the battery, or whether there is an outlet nearby. What I’m going to do with it, I have no idea, since a webcam server isn’t exactly “mission critical” to anything, but goddamn it, it works and I’m made of pure awesome. Now, I just have to figure out a way to upload the live stream to my webhost so that I won’t reveal my IP to anyone with sense enough to know where to look. Maybe I’ll set up MiniMo Cam or something; he’s an active little guy, his tank is in a reasonably well-lit spot, and he’s very dance-y. No time for that now, though; I’m still not dressed and haven’t started the laundry, and I’ve got about 4000 email messages still unread. Oops. 😀

Oh yeah…and when I forget the command to use VLC as a server (since it never seemed to work configuring from the GUI)….

vlc v4l:/dev/video0:size=320×240 –sout “#transcode{vcodec=WMV1,vb=180,scale=1}:duplicate{dst=display, dst=std{access=mmsh,mux=asfh,dst=:12345}}” -v –noaudio