[kwlug-disc] Network / USB Video cameras

[B.S.]

I haven't any pan / tilt cams, but I use several IP and USB cams with ZoneMinder. (Thanks to John's presentation, many years ago.)

I've always found that wiki useful. I've seen talk of pan / tilt there, so there's definitely compatible hardware out there. (Even the IP cam's native web interfaces include such.) https://wiki.zoneMinder.com/Hardware_Compatibility_List

Motion is an alternative to ZoneMinder. http://www.lavrsen.dk/foswiki/bin/view/Motion/WorkingDevices

Like I said, don't have pan / tilt, but most anything I've run into largely just works. Biggest pain is only if you buy two USB cameras of the same make / model - unpredictable as to which one will have which name. 0 this time, 1 the next.

You can poke holes in your firewall to get to your cams web interface if you like. Or poke the hole to your on premise web server instead - keeps the cam only feeding one device, many viewers. I've one computer (P4) at home running USB cams - 5, I think, in monitor mode. (i.e. Just passes the video through, doesn't do anything with it.) Another heavier machine catches 3 IP cams plus the 5 from the P4. (All of which also means I can SSH in when I need to, and just read from it that way, too.)

I've always thought the problem with pan & tilt is you have to be watching / interested in the specific at the time. Inevitably something that you want to see will be out of frame.

I'll guess you're thinking of presentations (live viewing for watchers offsite) for this - so I'll suggest you get two cameras. One to stay full frame all the time. Picture In Picture even. (pan/tilt/zoom to speaker, PiP full frame.)

>________________________________
> From: Colin Mackay <zixiekat at gmail.com>
>To: KWLUG discussion <kwlug-disc at kwlug.org> 
>Sent: Thursday, February 18, 2016 7:13 PM
>Subject: [kwlug-disc] Network / USB Video cameras
>
> 
>Does anyone know of a relatively inexpensive video camera, either ethernet or USB (that works with Linux) that has pan and tilt functions? Zoom not required, but would be nice. :)
>
>
>The end product would be to be able to use it remotely via my BlackBerry or Android tablet...