Re: [LUG] Archlinux on the RPI and the PI camera

> or jpg to zoneminder. If you have a specific need for icecast (whatever that
> is!) then the following may not be much use.

It streams video in a browser friendly way. It's good for watch a live
events, not so much for a security camera tbh.

Fair enough.

> Why not use the rpi as a usb webcam host? This idea has been bouncing around
> for qutie a while, and been used successfully with cheap reflashed routers,
> guruplugs and others. Simply plug in a bunch of cheap usb webcams and run
> mjpegstreamer which converts them to a nice mjpeg stream that is read
> natively by Firefox or Chrome. (And also Zoneminder if you want something
> recording it remotely, or doing smart things with motion detection)

Doesn't sound like it will work. Basically USB bus is very CPU
intensive. So one wants to avoid USB on embedded stuff. That's why the
PI camera is pretty good. Very low CPU and H264 hardware encoding.
Handy.

Thing is, it does work. And very well. The technology is proven and there are a number of installs that I know of personally using hardware even lower specced than an rpi.

I find the motion jpeg format a bit weird. Doesn't work well across
browsers. I hope to have a h264 stream with audio.

Sorry, have to disagree! mjpeg is simply a stream of jpgs, nothing complicated at all, and is handled natively by firefox, chrome and perhaps other browsers (that aren't Internet Explorer).

> btw, Y-cams are at the medium-high range of price for ip cameras. Foscam do
> much cheaper ones at very similar quality levels, and there are also foscam
> clones flooding the market. Expect to pay ~£30 to £50 for a foscam clone
> with infra red, 640x480 and pan/tilt. Also edimax have some very low priced
> ip cameras, some under £50 at 1280x1024. Apart from geekpoints, I can't
> really think why you wouldn't go for a ready-made ip camera.

Didn't know about foscam.

I guess for that price point, the rpi won't compete with the security
IP camera market . I like the idea of streaming data from the camera
in a format I want it. Something HTML5 video compatible. :-)

A lot of these cameras also do h264, mpeg4, asx by both http and rtsp.

Nothing that an rpi can't do, of course, but it's a case of plugging in and it working. Not as much fun if the objective is to have a little geek out, but great if you just want a camera :)