Neat

Should be interesting seeing your progress.

What a cool

What a cool Idea!!!!                                            

Like Kevin I feel this is an interesting concept and I also will enjoy checking in to see your progress.

Dan

This should be interesting. 

This should be interesting.  I am thinking of doing something like this on my home layout. can you give any details on the camera and setup, pricing, availability and gottcha you have come across?

I tried looking at it from work and it did not appear to operate correctly, but it coudld be our corporate firewall.  I will try it from home later.

-Sean

Layout web cam

Sean,

my #1 use of the cam is looking at the layout from a different angle than beeing in the room, gives me extra info to ponder on how I will build things. Used a stationary cam but that didn't give me an overall view, so I had a look on Internet and found this one at a reasonable price. Pan/Tilt/(Zoom) cams range from around $100 to $10.000+

Got this one (Marmitek Robocam 11) for abt $120 at a Dutch internet shop, set-up is reasonably easy if you know how your router works, there are excellent websites on the subject if you don't. The cam has a server that shows a webpage when you log in. You have to download an Axctive-X component to be able to view the video, a lot of corporate networks don't allow you to do this.

Only snag sofar is the fluorescent lighting in the room, the cam is near the ceiling as are the tubes and I can't turn down the cam's sensitivity enough when the tubes are switched on. Got a 60 Watt bulb now that works ok, I will try to lower the cam somewhat to avoid the tubes' glare, or maybe place it in the center of the room instead of a corner. Downside is that it has a 330 degree pan range, so I would have to choose the 30 degree blind spot...

This model cam even has a GPIO port, so as a viewer you can switch on the room's light (or start a train and an event can make the cam to perform a task, i.e: opening the door can point the cam to the door etc.

Hope this helps,

cheers, Leo.

Very cool!  I was able to

Very cool!  I was able to view and move the camera around from home.  Works very well.  I really like this idea. It would be very easy to use this and JMRI as a server and run your trains from anywhere in the world.  Amazing tecnology we have going on now days!!  Thanks for sharing.