Logitech strife - new webcam suggestions?

[fractonimbus]

Having run Cumulus for a couple of weeks and with Yawcam delivering online via FTP for 4 days now, my Windows XP laptop bluescreened twice today. The cluprit according to the bluescreen message was the Logitech driver LV302V32.SYS Apparently this is a long standing problem with Logitech webcams.

Does anyone know of a fix for this?

If I have to abandon the webcam, what suggestions do people have for a non-Logitech substitute? Must be able to handle a fair dynamic range in brightness, from bright sunlight to late twilight. Must have a reasonably wide field of vew - no point in looking at a small patch of the sky

DN

btw, the Logitech says it has a 42 degree FOV

[Gina]

Microsoft H5D-00003 Lifecam Cinema Webcam is the one I use for my weather webcam. Works well with Yawcam, seemingly unaffected by having the sun within the image area and good sensitivity (street lights visible a mile away). I have it mounted under the eaves pointing south. Protected from the weather in a plastic box with a circular polarising filter as an optical window - glued into the end of the box. More details in another thread in this forum.

I can thoroughly recommend this webcam. Good auto brightness range, good resolution (HD), good FOV in widescreen modes estimated at 45 degrees.

[hills]

ditto on camera and all points Gina raised.

[fractonimbus]

Great, thanks, I'll take a close look at that webcam.

DN

[fractonimbus]

Thanks for the great suggestion, Gina, Phil. It's an excellent little camera. Now online (while daylight lasts here) at http://www.dcnicholls.com/wx/images/sky.jpg I have it temporarily stuck on the inside of the double-glazed window with tape

And Yawcam recognised it immediately. We'll see how it goes.

DN

[hills]

Great stuff, I just caught the last couple of images of daylight, looks Good. I'll take another look tomorrow!

If you want a good weather proof housing I use one of these: http://www.jaycar.com.au/productView.as ... BCATID=582

They are quite long, but I cut mine in half, you can see a picture of it under "sensors" on my web page.

[Gina]

Yes, great, well done I've just bought another one

[nking]

I noticed in the spec -
Intel Dual-Core 1.6 GHz or higher and 1 GB of RAM (recommended: Intel Dual-Core 3.0 GHz or higher and 2 GB of RAM)

I just wondered if it will run ok on an old laptop Celeron 2.8 with .75 Gb of ram?

[fractonimbus]

Thanks, Phil,

That's a pretty professional looking set up you have. And a very interesting and detailed website.

I have been testing the Lifecam since dusk and its low light levels are vastly superior to the little Logitech. I have a live page set up at http://www.dcnicholls.com/wx/webcamN.htm which I'm leaving up for a little while. It has a black background to make viewing easier. You can see the orange glow on the clouds of the sodium street lights along Adelaide Avenue (1 km to the north of here).

Much better colour rendition than I get from my eyes! I'd expect to seen the moon really easily, based on experience so far.

DN

[fractonimbus]

I noticed in the spec -
I just wondered if it will run ok on an old laptop Celeron 2.8 with .75 Gb of ram?

I'm running it as a webcam (not streaming video) on a 5-year old Dell 6400 laptop with a Centrino duo processor running at 1.8 Ghz with 1 GB of RAM, on Windows XP. No problems so far.

DN

added: with Cumulus, Yawcam and the MS software running, the CPU is running at 12-14% of capacity.

[nking]

Yes, great, well done I've just bought another one

Hi Gina,

I was thinking of getting it from here http://www.amazon.co.uk/Microsoft-H5D-0 ... =de_a_smtd unless you've managed a better price.

DN - Thanks for your reply, I'm just going to get one and hope it works on my old laptop which runs Cumulus.

[Gina]

I was thinking of getting it from here http://www.amazon.co.uk/Microsoft-H5D-0 ... =de_a_smtd unless you've managed a better price.

That's where I got mine - twice Haven't had a chance to check the second one yet - came yesterday. I buy most things from Amazon - their service is excellent.

[Gina]

I noticed in the spec -
Intel Dual-Core 1.6 GHz or higher and 1 GB of RAM (recommended: Intel Dual-Core 3.0 GHz or higher and 2 GB of RAM)

I just wondered if it will run ok on an old laptop Celeron 2.8 with .75 Gb of ram?

Might need a fast machine for full HD streaming video but for single shot every couple of minutes or whatever, it's not necessary. I'm using an old P4 desktop running at a couple of gigs (forget the exact spec) with XP and also running Cumulus and a second webcam in Yawcam. It runs fine even at full res and 30sec interval in Yawcam but I run 800x448 and 2mins for my web site.

[beteljuice]

Hi fractonibus;

A couple of errors on your cam page.

You are 'refreshing' the cam pic with JavaScript but you are re-building the entire page with a <META every 60s.

Also the 'refresh' path to your pic is incorrect.

Code: Select all

// imgsrc = "sky.jpg";
// should be

imgsrc = "images/sky.jpg";

[fractonimbus]

Hi fractonibus;
A couple of errors on your cam page.
You are 'refreshing' the cam pic with JavaScript but you are re-building the entire page with a <META every 60s.
Also the 'refresh' path to your pic is incorrect.

Code: Select all

// imgsrc = "sky.jpg";
// should be
imgsrc = "images/sky.jpg";

Thanks, BJ, I have no idea why I left the code like that - the meta refresh was left over from much earlier, and I failed to realise that it was the meta statement doing the refreshing, not the javascript. Which I looked at again and it made no sense at all, borrowed in a hurry from somewhere else. I've rejigged it a bit but it's not refreshing as I had hoped. Could you take a look at it and see if you can identify what I'm doing wrong?

Thanks

DN