Motion JPEG Camera (Linksys WVC54GC)

[dagummace]

Greetings, fellow users and esteemed developers.

I was curious to learn if anyone else happens to be using the WVC54GC ethernet/wireless video camera from Linksys - or, more specifically, using it with success.

Before trying this particular device, I did some searching and reading to determine that ZoneMinder does, indeed, support Motion JPEG.

The device supports, as I understand it, two HTTP paths: /img/mjpeg.cgi and /img/video.asf.

Setting up a monitor to pull from either of these does not seem to work so well, however.

I recently updated from the 1.21.3 version of the live CD (many thanks to Ross Melin), which works beautifully for my other camera - a DLINK that provides simple, static JPEG files.

Would anyone have any tips as to how a monitor would be set up properly for this MJPEG camera?

Thanks

[dagummace]

zmc's run attempts generate this error in the system log:

"Unrecognised content type: application/octet-stream"

[Flash_]

Please read:
http://www.zoneminder.com/forums/viewto ... highlight=

This was for the WVC54G - Not sure what difference your extra C makes in the model number, but from your post, I'd guess not much.

My conclusion after MUCH work trying to get this camera working is that: It doesn't.

It can be hacked to supply mjpeg (what zoneminder wants), except the output it produces isn't standard and neither works in ZM or Firefox (which handles mjpeg fine). It does produce MPEG4 (with the audio stream) but that's no use to ZM, and it's many other restrictions relegate it firmly to "pretty paperweight".

I've owned quite a few ip cameras, and this was by far the worst of them all. Crap build quality, crap lens, crap sensor, crap software, bugger all features, vastly underpowered (only one output stream - even the most basic Axis cam supports 20), NO support, Internet Explorer ONLY (ActiveX wrapper for the, again, non-standard MPEG4 stream)
The only thing that worked as advertised was the wireless-G link. Sorry for the bad news.

(Disclaimer: There is a change some guru has done a better firmware for this cam (it's open-sourced) but I couldn't find it.

[dagummace]

Thank you for your reply.

I went through that posting, to see if it would get me as far as vague, partial functionality, but it looks as though Linksys has changed the CGI in this firmware, so that that trick does not work any more.

I will see if I can send it back.

[tech_fixer]

Does the camera produce still JPEG images? If so, then you could still use ZM JPEG mode.

It is not high framereate, but you can squeeze from 5-15fps this way, depending on your camera, network, etc...

Regards,
Jose.

[dagummace]

I can't find a way to grab simple JPEG images from the camera. I seem to be stuck with ASF or (apparently broken or somehow "special") MJPEG.

[pdown85]

I managed to achieve pulling single frame JPGs off this web-cam as input to Zoneminder.
If I cron job it I manage to pull about 4 -5 frames every minute without overloading the Linux box too much. Not perhaps idea for motion detection (to put it mildy!) but it does give me at least a picture "stream" from an IP web-cam that is otherwise, as far as I can see, unusable as an input to Zoneminder.

[dagummace]

How did you get to those individual jpeg's? By URL?

[pdown85]

How did you get to those individual jpeg's? By URL?

Using mplayer, I do the following.

• execute a script using a cron scheduled task
  the script logs on to the web-cam
  retrieves a single frame image from Linksys WVC54G using mplayer
  copies the jpg image file to a Linux file-structure location
  configure ZoneMinder to use the "File" option to access the .jpg file

If you look at my web-site http://www.coulterfamily.org.uk in the Navigation panel under MyWebCam you'll find the set up. There is an example of the captured image: you need a manual refresh of the web-page to see the updates (but the image file is being updated in the background approx every 12-15secs), but the example Zoneminder montage page shows how it looks in Zoneminder. There are links to my crib notes on how I setup mplayer, and Zoneminder, and the skeleton shell script that does the capture. cron is executing every minute between and inside the script I do four captures (thus per minute). I found that to do a single logon to the Linksys and copy to captured image to the HDD takes of the order of 2-4 secs depending on system and/or nework load (the longest part being the logon). There may be ways to speed this up a bit but probably not by a great deal.
It's slow, it's clunky, it's far from ideal, but it works.

[MJN]

If you look at my web-site http://www.coulterfamily.org.uk in the Navigation panel under MyWebCam you'll find the set up. There is an example of the captured image

Which came first, the tree or the driveway?

Mathew

[pdown85]

Which came first, the tree or the driveway?

I think if it had have been the driveway I'd have tried to do a better job of stamping on the tree! (had I been around at the time of course ... I'm much too young!)

[Flash_]

pdown, congrats on finding something useful for this crappy thing

Do you mind posting your scripts to get the jpgs?

[pdown85]

pdown, congrats on finding something useful for this crappy thing
Do you mind posting your scripts to get the jpgs?

Congrats are really due elsewhere (http://majordomo.squawk.com/njs/blog/20 ... nksys.html): I just re-used/adapted the suggested method.

The key line that does all the work is:

Code: Select all

mplayer -nortc -nojoystick -prefer-ipv4 -nolirc -nocache -user USER -passwd PASSWD -frames 1 -vo jpeg http://your.cam.ip.addr/img/video.asf

although due to shared memory problems when using ZoneMinder (another thread in the ZoneMinder 1.22.x forum) I found I needed to reduce the size of the jpg captured, so I currently use:

Code: Select all

mplayer -nortc -nojoystick -prefer-ipv4 -nolirc -nocache  -user USER -passwd PASSWD -frames 1 -vo jpeg -vf scale=320:240 http://your.cam.ip.addr/img/video.asf

The rest of the script is bells and whistle ... mktemp for temporary working directories, looping a bit to acquire a number of images in each one-minutely scheduled cron job, cp moving the captured files about, bit of logging, etc. All a bit quick and dirty, but does the job.

The script and all my installation notes, etc for mplayer and ZoneMinder are available on a link from my web-site as noted earlier.

[Flash_]

Thanks for that, looks like something useful can come from this nasty nasty thing.

[bassmint]

I'm replying to this old thread in case anyone else stumbles across it looking for the solution to using these old cameras.

http://<ipaddress>/img/mjpeg.cgi?Speed=x

I use 15 for x

from this link
http://www.linksysinfo.org/index.php?th ... eam.12602/

Old thread, but for those interested, I got this working with firmware V1.21:

To switch the camera into MJPG mode:
http://camIP/adm/file.cgi?h_v_mode=jpeg&todo=save

Then access the (non-compliant?/funny) MJPEG stream:
http://camIP/img/mjpeg.cgi?Speed=x

where x seems to be the framerate.

For Motion users, apply the WVC200 patch, and access the stream as
mjpg://camIP:80/img/mjpeg.cgi?Speed=x

[ Not tested, but I would think to get the MPEG4 stream again you would do:
http://camIP/adm/file.cgi?h_v_mode=mpeg&todo=save ]