I have done it. I have made my Cannon
A550 a webcam at one frame per 5 min.
This is how it works. The camera has an EyeFi installed formatted with CHDK using an interleave program. The camera takes a picture, EyeFi puts the file on my computer, the computer notices the file on the computer and uploads via FTP to a website. Then I have a little HTML that refreshes itself.
The camera is a Cannon
A550 is standard, other than the EyeFi card and uses up the batteries in about 12 hours without a flash. I will set up a power cord in the future. I use CHDK and an interleave program (there are many to choose from) to take pictures every 5 minutes. I got a 2GB EyeFi (home) card for Christmas and had to cut a notch in it so the camera sees it is read-only and boots to the CHDK card. Although when I plug the card into the card reader on my computer I need to cover this slot with a piece of paper folded over it. I formatted the card using 'CardTricks' selecting "MAKE BOOTABLE" and format as FAT. Then you can copy on the appropriate camera's CHDK setup. Then I find the program I would like to run and copy that to the SD card's directory CHDKscripts .
When you install EyeFi you will be asked where to put the uploaded files. This directory I erase whenever my PowerScript uploads the picture to the website. I uploaded PowerScript from Microsoft and wrote a program to recognize if there is a file to upload, then it copies the file (to change its filename) then the FTP portion is executed. FTP is executed with a script to provide login, password, set to binary, put the file up and bye (to close the FTP connection). Then the program pauses for 300 seconds and does it again until the count in the beginning is reached. You can download and install PowerScript, free, from Microsoft.
The PowerScript is as follows:
echo "starting"
cd 'Documents and SettingsMyronMy DocumentsMy HTMLsdelco'
$i = 0
for(;$i -lt 450😉 {
$i #this line should be "dollar i plus plus" but that gets filtered out here.
$i
if (test-path 'C😁ocuments and SettingsuserMy DocumentsMy PicturesEye-FiIMG_*.JPG' ) {
Sleep 3
copy-item 'C😁ocuments and SettingsuserMy DocumentsMy PicturesEye-FiIMG_*.JPG' .cam3.jpg
sleep 2
$ftpstuff = cmd /c 'ftp -s:.delcocam3.txt members.cox.net'
date
del 'C😁ocuments and SettingsuserMy DocumentsMy PicturesEye-FiIMG_*.JPG'
}
sleep 80
}
echo "end"
The FTP script, in the example filename delcocam3.txt is as follows:
username
password
bi
put cam3.jpg cam3.jpg
bye
On the website I wrote HTML code to display the picture and to refresh every 300 seconds, to see if there is a new picture.
<html>
<head>
<META HTTP-EQUIV="Pragma" CONTENT="no-cache">
<META NAME="KEYWORDS" CONTENT="put keywords separated by commas here">
<META NAME="DESCRIPTION" CONTENT="brief description of your site goes here">
<script type="text/javascript">
var timer = setInterval("autoRefresh()", 1000 * 60 * 2);
function autoRefresh(){self.location.reload(true);}
</script>
<meta http-equiv="refresh" content="600;URL=/index.html">
</head>
<body bgcolor="#000042" onLoad="startClock()" text="#9999FF" link="#FFFFFF" vlink="#CCCCFF" leftmargin="6">
<p align="left">
<div align="left"><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="-1"><img name="campicture" src="cam3.jpg" border=1 alt="fish Cam" width="1024" height="576">
</font></div>
<h1 align="left"><font face="Arial,Helvetica,Verdana" size="-1"> Fish cam 3 </font></h1>
</body>
</html>
Now finally I have a webcam that will take a nice picture! I can even set it with a flash! I have been waiting years for this. And the total cost of the project is about $100. $60 for the camera and $40 for the EyeFi.
If you think this was helpful for your website, I would like to see your pictures.
corydoras@cox.net
hay ... don't they make a wifi picture frame?
