Steerable webcam

[Timothy Murphy]

Amadeus W.M. wrote:

>> Has anyone any recommendation for a steerable webcam for use with
>> Linux/Fedora?

> What's a steerable webcam? I use a pan-tilt-zoom Sony EVI-D30 like this
> one:
> 
> http://www.webcam-production.com/en/video_surveillance/sony_evi-d31.php
> 
> Video goes from the camera into a framegrabber card (e.g. BT-8XX) through
> a Composite or S-Video cable. It works with any v4l/v4l2 application such
> as tvtime, xawtv, zoneminder, even kopete with jasper, etc.
> 
> The pc sends commands (pan, tilt, zoom, grab image, apperture, shutter,
> etc.) to the camera through the serial port. It also comes with motion
> detection built-in, but I never use that. The commands are well
> documented by Sony, so you can write your own drivers if you prefer, but
> there already exist such drivers (search for "visca commands").
> 
> Note that this exact model has been discontinued, and superseeded by
> newer models. I'm sure you can still buy it at a price significantly
> lower than it used to be, but still on the order of a few hundred USD.
> It works very well though.

Thanks, that is what I meant by "steerable".

-- 
Timothy Murphy  
e-mail (<80k only): tim /at/ birdsnest.maths.tcd.ie
tel: +353-86-2336090, +353-1-2842366
s-mail: School of Mathematics, Trinity College, Dublin 2, Ireland