webcam streaming... help!

[REDVAN]

I want to get a webcam, and stream it to a website so that I can watch it at work during the day.

The reason for this is because our dog likes to climb out of her prison/playpen and I want to keep an eye on her, so the camera will be on her prison all day.

I specifically need advice on streaming the video: where can I do this for free, and if it is reliable? Has anyone had success with doing this via mac (my gf has a mac laptop, but it's old. I have a desktop but it's in another room and I don't want to run a USB for 50+ ft...)

Please give me any tips you have!

[dobbles]

i will give some advice, but its really old. several years ago i experimented with streaming a webcam from home. to stream the video, i used microsoft video encoder which was a free download.

then i used my own webpage to display the video. but my assumption is you could use any sort of hosted website but not sure of the bandwidth requirements.

[FanIn80]

Sorry, I only provide free webcam streaming advice to really hot chicks.

(Translation: I have no clue.)

[KTrain]

Does it need to stream or can it just upload a photo every 10-15 seconds or so? Most webcams have software that will use FTP to do this for you. You would then just need create an HTML page with an auto-refresh.

It would be much less strenuous on your bandwidth.

[Cliche]

http://www.memoryexpress.com/Product...0%28ME%29.aspx

Wireless G security cam, comes with software.

Otherwise, you'd have to do a search for "Freeware security cam software" and then maybe do a cable run with repeaters to enable a usb camera to be used.

Then there's the setting up of firewalls(only the port accessability) and user accounts to restrict your webcam unless you want it public.

And then there's the bandwidth cost estimation as well, especially considering the soft cap on bandwidth with most of the providers.

[Bownesian]

I have a Shaw account and was able to set my webcam up to stream out using Microsoft Video Encoder (google for download). All I had to do was then point a Windows Media Player to my home PC's IP address using a link that looked like:

rstp://123.23.12.3 or whatever my shaw account IP address is. (found via the ipconfig command in the Dos prompt). There was a bit of an issue with making my wireless firewall route the traffic out but it wasn't too much trouble.