Cali Kid Corals

Questions about setting up an aquarium webcam

Hi all,

I'm not sure if this is weird or not, but I have a desire to set up a webcam for my aquarium. I've rarely seen my tank during the day (I normally see it after 7 PM) and would like to be able to view it from work

That being said, I'm clueless about what I will need to set this up. I'm thinking that one of those wireless security cameras that stream to a private website would work, though I'm not sure how the resolution/choppiness would be. I don't need it to be HD or anything, but a smooth and continuous stream is a must.

Any suggestions would be welcome. Thanks all!

Mike
 
Well if you don't need very high resolution you could always simply have a webcam, and load up one of those "chat" programs (Yahoo, etc) one with a webcam feature, and set your program to "always accept" then when at work simply log on with another account and request a webcam.
 
Yeah the webcam route won't give you very good resolution clarity but it's a way to keep an eye on things. Ultimately regardless of how expensive you go on the camera side of things you'll be limited by your upload bandwidth on your internet, so you can typically have either really good resolution with low framerate or poor resolution with good framerate.
 
Thanks again Mike. The webcam I have is like 8 years old, so maybe I'll invest in a better one. I'm not sure what our upload bandwith is, but we'll find out.

I'll keep you guys posted on this. Might have to wait a week though.
 
speedtest.net

I'd stick with the old one initially just to see if you can get things going, it'd be a shame to pay for a new one if you can't get it working the way you want.
 
I have one setup at my apartment. Today my dogs are on it, check it out.

http://badbread.net/webcam/tankcam.html

I didn't think it was to hard to setup (but I'm in IT support so take that into consideration).

For internet I have Comcast BLAST! or whatever the f it is, it's their fastest residential plan. The video rarely lags at 352x288 running at 250kbps on each camera.

The camera's are a Logitech 9000 and a Logitech 5500, the quality of camera makes a huge difference. The 9000 has auto focus, auto whitebalance and some other auto stuff.

ActiveWebCam is the program I use, not the fanciest one out there, it's little finicky but it works solid when it works.
 
Thanks badbread!

That's exactly what I'm looking for, picture quality and all. Your dogs are too cute, especially the white one. What program do you use to monitor the tank specs?
 
The monitoring program is Myreef that works with the reefkeeper 2. Thanks! The white one is my gf's shitzu, she's a little bich but she's alright. :)
 
Haha. I've encountered two shitzu's in my life, both of them belong to my friend. The female is the most trusting dog I've ever met, the male will kill you if it can.
 
I'm curious can you use the webcam through MyReef without having a reefkeeper at all? The webcam hooks directly to the computer doesn't it? Seems you can sidestep the having a RK2 all together if you don't care about the status monitoring.
 
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