On Sun, 03 Feb 2008 16:16:55 +0000, Timothy Murphy wrote: > Has anyone any recommendation for a steerable webcam for use with > Linux/Fedora? > > -- > Timothy Murphy > e-mail (<80k only): tim /at/ birdsnest.maths.tcd.ie tel: > +353-86-2336090, +353-1-2842366 > s-mail: School of Mathematics, Trinity College, Dublin 2, Ireland What's a steerable webcam? I use a pan-tilt-zoom Sony EVI-D30 like this one: http://www.webcam-production.com/en/video_surveillance/sony_evi-d31.php Video goes from the camera into a framegrabber card (e.g. BT-8XX) through a Composite or S-Video cable. It works with any v4l/v4l2 application such as tvtime, xawtv, zoneminder, even kopete with jasper, etc. The pc sends commands (pan, tilt, zoom, grab image, apperture, shutter, etc.) to the camera through the serial port. It also comes with motion detection built-in, but I never use that. The commands are well documented by Sony, so you can write your own drivers if you prefer, but there already exist such drivers (search for "visca commands"). Note that this exact model has been discontinued, and superseeded by newer models. I'm sure you can still buy it at a price significantly lower than it used to be, but still on the order of a few hundred USD. It works very well though.
