Web video camera for observing experiments

[James Eaves]

I'm setting up an experiment and would like to be able to monitory it from a distance using a HD video feed that I can check online.  Can someone please recommend a system for that please?  Is there some sort of kit that includes a video camera and sensors (temp, humidity...)?  Thank you for your help. 

[Sensei]

You didn't tell whether you want to see IR, night-view or visible spectrum of light.. But let's assume you wanted visible spectrum.

You didn't tell how long experiment will be taking.. I put my own cheap digital camera on tripod, connected external power source, connected to computer, and wrote special application which was sending commands "make photo", "download photo" (from device to computer), (to simulate missing feature of cheap device - timelapse)..

Long time taking experiments will exhaust battery within minutes. So you need to have external power source (fuel power aggregate/diesel generator? They are making loud noise, can ruin many types of experiments, which require absolute quiet).

Long time taking experiments will exhaust memory card (how long will depends on quality of image (resolution, compression)). Therefore timelapse app required downloading photo and removing them (from device memory card), otherwise I could store just ~10-12h of full quality images.

Long time taking experiments in raw environment (like forest) might require setting up solar panels giving enough power from the Sun (in dense forest might be problem getting enough sunlight). You should be informed by device what is power level, so you won't waste time to find out battery was gone in the middle of experiment and didn't take photo any more.

Some experiments require timelapse, some other experiments require higher than 30 FPS.. What you can see through Internet depends of how good is working Internet in your area (in deep forest there is no access to LTE, or extremely poor).. How many Mbps upload do you have? Upload and download speeds in asynchronous asymmetric ASDL/LTE differs.

ps. I could probably find dozen more questions..

 

Edited December 5, 2017 by Sensei

[Endy0816]

May want to look at a simple phone app(IP webcam). Does depend on what all you are looking for.

Sensors can be off the shelf, if they can be placed so they can be read via the camera.

[fiveworlds]

I use xsplit broadcaster https://www.xsplit.com/#broadcaster to do most of my recordings. It allows you to record directly to youtube.