When I bought a webcam for my front door – mine is the Linksys WVC54GCA – I was faced with a predicament. The built-in motion detection software bombarded my email inbox with images of an empty frame. It was set off by the motion of a leaf or a reflection, rendering one of the most important aspects – notification of trespass – ineffective.
At an impasse, I decided to build a cyberbiomimetic AI using a cockroach brain and a vat of amino acids. The resulting system, while effective at spotting intruders, eventually threatened to become self-aware and so I had to shut it down. Finally, I tried Vitamin D.
Problem, as they say, solved.
First, I doubt this is an officially licensed Disney product. Something tells me Brando doesn’t have that kind of pull. Second, this thing is $52. I’m pretty sure you can buy a cheap webcam and put a mirror next to it for the same price. Third, wouldn’t this look great next to my Beanie Babies? Like totally! I could put Weenie and Tiny on both side of it, like protective lions! OMG are you doing NaNoWriMo? I am totally doing it and I’m doing a vampire story but about kid vampires who go to high school at a special vampire school in England. I KNOW!
And there won’t be ANY sex in it.
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Designed to work without a dedicated PC, the new Astak Mole was announced today. The Mole is a wireless webcam that can upload video directly to such sites as YouTube, Facebook, or Twitter. It can also record directly to an SD card in the camera.
I know I give tiny cameras a lot of guff, but merely small ones are getting pretty damn good. It’s wrong to hold the iPhone camera to the same standards as something with a lens and sensor four times larger, but this new webcam from Microsoft seems to know its limitations. They probably could have pushed it to 1080p if they wanted, and people would have freaked out, but man that would have been one ugly image.
So much for the “Keep It Simple, Stupid” saying. Logitech just outed seven new webcams that’s “designed to fit within every lifestyle.” We think Logitech means that there is a webcam for every lifestyle that needs a webcam and doesn’t already have one embedded into their notebook, netbook, or computer monitor.
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If there is one gadget that really caught my attention this year, besides the Palm Pre, was the BT-1 Bluetooth Webcam from Ecamm Network. The BT-1, which won Macworld Best of Show, has received much praise since its announcement at Macworld and I was quite excited to open it up and give it a try.
Maybe I’m missing the point, but why would you need a bluetooth webcam for your Mac if they already come with one built in? Maybe you want to be able to look out the window while you are trapped at your computer.
I guess you could watch the baby, too, but the window is a lot more interesting.
Hey! Memorize Every Wonderful Moment With AEE Cool Recording Gadget! It is Very Small. It Support USB 2.0. It only 55mm tall! It has LED Indicator. You Can Mount It Anywhere. But the Absolutely Best Thing About it?
Granted, this webcam isn’t loaded with the latest gizmos and widgets, but it’s so cute. And it holds your pens and pencils! The whole cute and cuddly monkey webcam only goes for $25 too. Look at it. So cute!
Obviously the world didn’t end on Wednesday when the Large Hadron Collider fired its first particle beam. The geeks at the LHC aren’t going to make anything that will kill us. They even have a couple of webcams so wannabe’s like you and I can see what’s going on. So far, there are only two of ‘em but I’m sure more will come later on. Just screenshots above, the live ones are here. Enjoy!
How many webcam videos have you seen where the subject of the video is constantly looking down at his or her monitor to see how they look on camera? Millions? Skillions?
Well here’s a 1.3-megapixel webcam that might actually be able to solve that problem. It’s an $80 device with a mirrored face surrounded by LED lights. Behind the mirror is the actual camera itself, so you can finally look your video viewers in the eye. Nice. You gotta use an AC adapter though, which is not nice. Oh well. It’s probably for the LED lights and perhaps some of the mirror trickery. If you do a lot of webcam videos or video conferencing, though, this might just work out really well for you.
USB Mirror Web Camera [Brando]
When it comes to buying a webcam, there seems to be two distinct product groupings. On the one end, you have inexpensive cameras that sell for between $20 and $50. These cameras often feature relatively low resolutions like 320×240 or 640×480 and are relatively simple to operate — you stick the camera on top of your monitor, fire up AIM, Windows Live Messenger, or Skype and then start your video chat.
Then there are the $80+ cameras that feature higher resolutions and carry features like automatic face tracking, low-light adjustment, and stuff like that. Most regular consumers will opt for the less expensive models but those that opt for the higher-end cameras often have a very specific reason for doing so and, as such, put a little more time and effort into researching their various options.
So that brings us to my story. I’ve been looking for a good webcam for a while now and I needed one that could handle the specific task of grabbing decent videos of gadgets at very close range. I didn’t want to spend a bundle because I didn’t need things like HD or even very high resolution due to the face that the width of the CrunchGear page is only 560 pixels wide. So I needed something that did 640×480 at the most and I didn’t need head tracking or anything like that found in the more expensive cameras.
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Ha! This modern age. Vlogging and lifecasting (shudder) site Justin.tv user Chowda633 went off to get ear surgery a while ago and returned to find several vital items missing from his apartment. Fortunately for him, his Justin.tv stream was going the whole time he was gone, and another user found the footage of the robbery.
It’s not really that exciting to watch, of course, but the event itself is great. Anyone else know of any good stories where robberies, cheating spouses, or alien visitors have been caught by a webcam?
Although this video mainly convinces me never, ever to try getting into Second Life again, the glimpses you get of the actual technology behind this depth-aware webcam are pretty compelling. I think the accuracy and responsiveness need some improvement before it’s ready for mass consumption, but this isn’t meant to be a finished product, simply a demonstration of basic capability.
With a little tweaking, it could perhaps track the features of your face for real-time expressions, or offer the same level of resolution as a mouse by tracking the tip of your finger. It’s all pretty much fantasy at this point, but a proof-of-concept like this is probably what gave birth to the technology behind the Wii. The mouse-and-keyboard (or gamepad) scheme is increasingly inadequate, though we make do with extra buttons and programmable functions. Who’s to say what’s next?
I can’t decide whether this is useful or not. First, it must be said, it’s cool. Everyone wanted video chat with the iPhone despite the orientation of its camera, and some mirror-based products have addressed that problem. They’ve made this app so that there’s no configuration necessary, it’ll show right up in iChat or Skype. The question is whether iPhone owners, who are very likely to own newer macs, have need of another webcam considering there is a perfectly good one built into the bezel of every MacBook. There are still plenty of people with old boxes and laptops, of course, who could use this app, but whether or not it gets picked up by many users it’s still cool as a proof-of-concept product.
Sneak Preview: iPhoneCam [Mac Daddy World]
I know it’s pretty difficult to get excited by a Webcam, so I forgive you for not reading this. But, on the off chance you’re actually shopping for one, you should maybe add the Creative Live! Cam Optia AF to your list; it became available today. Creative promises the $130 camera has a “true 2-megapixel sensor and Live! View technology for sharp, HD-resolution video.” (Though in my experience with other cams, this doesn’t translate into a smooth video experience at the higher resolutions—up to 1,600×1,200 in this case. It will likely give you decent still shots, however, and good video at lower resolutions like 800×600. But this is all pure speculation, so take it for it’s worth.)
The Creative Live! Cam Optia AF (man, that’s a mouthful) has a lot more going for it than the 2-megapixel sensor, though. For example, it’s completely plug and play, so there’s no driver installation necessary. Just pop the USB cable into a port and you’re ready to start chatting with friends and family or making odd videos of you and your friends humping the ottoman. Of course there’s the auto focus and auto tuning features, too, making sure you’re in focus with the best lighting and brightness levels while you violate the furniture. Dual adaptive array microphones are built in as well to capture every bump and grind.
It works with every major video-chat app (it is Windows only, however) and there’s a bunch of software extras like Creative’s proprietary Audio FX for modifying your voice and Video FX that lets you change backgrounds and add special effects.
Creative Live! Cam Optia AF [product site]
Sony launches PLAYSTATION Eye cam for PS3 [Electronista]
Product Page [via Red Ferret]
 every move. You’re so naughty.</p>
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SCIRC t1 [Digital Xtractions (more like Digital XXXtractions, haha!)]
. This clever little USB memory stick supports a VoIP camera feature in the mother country’s market. With a USB cable you can adjust the viewing angle and apparently you can even make movies with a few camera adjustments.<br />
It supports a 0.3 megapixel camera, 30fps and a 640×480 resolution. Using Sunyang DNT’s camera tuning technology users have the ability to employ web messenger services like Skype or MSN for instant web cam usage while still toting it around as a memory stick. You now have the ability to be the Spy you always dreamt of and send all those secret docs. </p>
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Memory Stick and Cam in One [AVING]
