On 04/02/2007 04:16:24 AM, Michael A Peters wrote:
I've not purchased any hardware and I will not be doing this until next year. I want to start looking into what is needed now though. I breed reptiles as a hobby, right now just various subspecies of the Common Kingsnake (Lampropeltis getula) and the California Alligator Lizard (Elgaria multicarinata multicarinata) Next year if it is possible I would like to set up a webcam to show incubation and hatching of a clutch of eggs. I'd like to do it using Linux technology - as I'm not buying a mac and I'm not paying for vista. For most of the incubation, there is no action - so a still image refreshing once an hour would be more than sufficient. As it gets closer to hatch time, though, it should refresh a lot more often. I don't know if a streaming video codec should be used that time or what. Kingsnake eggs usually take several days to hatch. The snake makes a couple slits in the egg and then rests with its nose sticking out for sometimes two to three days before it decided to venture out of the egg while it finishes absorbing the yolk. Alligator lizards sometimes do that, sometimes they burst their egg open and are out within a minute. So an alligator lizard egg incubation webcam would definitely need to have a very fast refresh to catch the action. Any suggestions on what type of hardware and software would be needed to do this with Fedora? Preferably I would want a script set to just automatically switch from the once an hour refresh to the more frequent refresh when it gets near hatching time. Also it would be nice to have a text layer automatically added that shows the days since clutch deposited. Resolution of webcam hardware is also an issue. kingsnake eggs are often the size of a ping pong ball, sometimes elongated and a bit bigger. Alligator lizard eggs are about the size of lemon drop. What kind of bandwidth is needed, can theora be used, and are there theora plugins for quicktime and windows media?
Well, I'm not going to be a whole lot of help, because I _mostly_ want a free copy of the results! That admitted, something like Motion (you will have to search that down, I don't have a URL to hand and I'm lazy) might suit your needs as to limiting the amount of no change frames collected.
As for the camera itself, more resolution will be better than less resolution, but how close in the camera can focus may be even more important.
Two final, not very usefull thoughts. Some cameras seem to have the ability to act as a web cam which might improve your optics and resolution issues. As an alternative, you might consider a video capture board with a decent security camera attached to accomplish the same thing.
Sorry to have not added light to the situation, but maybe some of this rambling will be of help.
