Put your webcam online through your web server

Posted on June 6, 2009 | Category: Informational, Installing, Networking, Server, how-to


This post describes how to capture images from a Logitech Quickcam for Notebooks and place them on your web site in real time. My configuration consists of Ubuntu Server 8.04 with a standard Apache2-MySQL-PHP5 stack. I started out paying $25 for a webcam from Amazon. Next,I installed a couple of software packages in Terminal.

sudo apt-get install webcam webcam-server

webcam-server &

That last step started up the software – it takes around 5 seconds for it to initialize. Next, visit your router homepage (e.g. 192.168.1.1) and Port Forward the default port of webcam-server to your machine. If you are just using it internally the service is found on http://localhost:8888. The program and related javascript are located at

/usr/share/doc/webcam-server/applet /your/web/directory/

If you want to change some of the variables, all of the pertinant file are in that location. If you have javascript on your machine and want to change the location of the service to your Apache installation, copy the above folder to your server and change the Java home variable.

I am still working on the installation to get it streaming instead of taking static images every time a user refreshes a page. If you have additional information or want to share your experiences with this installation, post a comment below.

I received this error on another one of my boxes: The solutions was to start webcam-server with the statement below.

No supported color palette found

export LD_PRELOAD=/usr/lib/libv4l/v4l1compat.so; webcam-server

Additional Resources

http://manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/gutsy/man1/webcam-server.1.html
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/webcam-server/+bug/179932
http://manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/intrepid/man8/v4l-conf.8.html
http://linux.bytesex.org/xawtv/ – web site for xawtv
http://www.aboutdebian.com/webcam.htm

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