XCams and PC interface. How?
Bullwinkle Moose
I don't know how they interface with a PC. Do I need to buy a card
with RCA jacks or something?
Theodore M. Seeber
> I want to take advantage of the 3 XCam deal that X10 is offering, but
> I don't know how they interface with a PC. Do I need to buy a card
> with RCA jacks or something?
They use a USB video sampling cable. You will need to upgrade your PC to
have at least one USB port. AFAIK, to actually run these cameras from the
PC, you also need one of the X10-compatible PC interface items (if I ever
do this for a webcam, I'm going to use a CM17A firecracker on my
Webserver, as I already have a CM11A on my X10 server).
Ted
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Theodore Michael Seeber
Coo! he's the remedial beer.
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In 1555 Nostradamus wrote: "Come the millennium, month 12, in the
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Robert K. Williams
Video to USB converter. At this point, you could use Netmeeting to view the
camera's output. If it comes with Xray Vision, be forwarned, its extremely
buggy. I can't imagine what the XRV Streaming beta is like. I'd personally
say the straight XRV is beta. So many ghosted and non working items I'd be
ashamed to put out such garbage software.
Each camera, has a power supply that you can setup your house/unit codes.
Using any remote, you can turn on a camera. The kit does come with another
transiever, so you can put all the cameras on a different house code than
any you might currently be using. And I would recommend so. As you turn on
one camera, it apparently turns off any other cameras on that house code. I
say this because as you flip from camera to camera, it takes a good 5
seconds for the camera to warm up, so you can see the picture clearly. And
that's if you are lucky. I found that although the quality of the xcams was
not that of my 3 chip security camera's, the color was weak and fuzzy.
Hooked directly from the transiever to my tv input, it looked ok at best.
But through the USB adapter, as viewed on my computer screen, the picture
was riddled with noise. When I hooked my 3 chip camera to the USB adapter,
it was sharp as a tack. Don't totally understand why it looked ok on the
tv, but crappy on the computer monitor. Obviously the vid-usb adapter was
fine, or my 3 chip would not have looked so good.
XRV also comes with a Firecracker, which can automate changing the camera
being viewed. It will rotate through all the cameras you have defined.
However, I never could get it to properly save images. And although it did
save some images, when called up in Photoshop, they looked worse than the
live screen images.
I also feel, and this is just a educated guess, but in reality, each camera
needs to be tuned to the specific transiever you are using. The picture
quality from each of my 4 cameras varied from terrible to ok. I understand
they can be tweaked, but I'm not about to try and void my warranty.
Bottom line was I bought the hole kit and kabootle. 3 Camera Deal, XRV,
Multiview, VCR Commander, etc... almost $500 worth of stuff. Since I've not
recieved any responce back to my emails, and my support calls, I'm sending
it all back.
So, I'm not saying don't buy the system, but just be aware of the problems
you may encounter.
Good luck!
Rob
"Theodore M. Seeber" <see...@aracnet.com> wrote in message
news:Pine.LNX.4.31.010213...@shell1.aracnet.com...
Alan McKay
I just bought the 3 cam deal and the XRV server software works great,
but I can't seem to get the client to communicate with the server. I'm
running Win2K on both systems so maybe there is a problem with the
software running on Win2K or something. Some folks at work are
using it with Win95 client and Win98 server no problem at all.
Does anyone out there know anything about this?
In general everything looks great, though I guess I have found some of
the bugs that the other fellow talks about.
Who else is using these things and what are you doing with them?
How is it working out for you? Is there any way to use different
software other than XRV to store images and stuff?
I doubt I'll send mine back because they are pretty cool. I find the
picture quality to be better than I expected. Quite a bit better, in
fact.
cheers,
-Alan
--
Alan McKay amc...@nortelnetworks.com
Small Business Solutions 613-765-6843 (ESN 395)
Nortel Networks All opinions expressed are my own.
WilbyWalker
AVICAP32.DLL error... A week since I wrote to the x10.com folks, TWICE, no
answer...