Setting Up Your Own Webcam

YES! You can set a webcam up yourself, and it really isn’t that difficult. Check out our simple instructions below and give it a go!

First things first... before you do anything, decide what method you’ll be using - still shots? streaming video? etc.. then choose which hardware and software solution will fit your situation best.

Streaming WebCams

Images of the WebCam in a continuous motion (like in a TV)
Image quality tends to be poor and the motion is not as smooth as the TV
This method consumes a lot of resources and it's not as easy to set up as the snapshot webcams.

Snapshot WebCams

Image is only refreshed every few seconds, there's no continuous motion like in a TV. Quality is superb, the resources are minimal and they're very easy to set up compared to the Streaming cams.

Some Important Points To Consider
Consider the image size of the shots being taken by the WebCam: the greater the image, the lower the refresh rate. A 640x480 (width x height) image can be great to show an amazing panorama, but obviously users with a very slow Internet connection would have a snail-like refresh rate.

Different pieces of hardware and software allow different capture sizes. For refresh rates of 20-30 seconds per image, a reasonable user-accessible image size can be 320x240. For lower refresh rates, try with an image size of 160x120, which will let you refresh rates of up to 10 seconds. For video streams, try to keep an image size of 160x120 so slow Internet connections can have a chance of seeing something.

Know which are the resources available to you on your connection to the Net.

What You Need...