looking for suggestions: Camera to take a pic every 5 minutes or so

I'm making a little security cam sort of thing. I want some method of taking a still image every X minutes & cataloging them.

I'm guessing this would be done with a simple USB camera & then somehow grabbing of a frame of the video stream - is that right? Is the process for doing this documented somwhere? Any recommendation on cameras? Will any camera work? (I'm thinking cheap webcam sort of thing).

What if I want the camera to be a long way from the computer - 50-60 feet or more? Is there some way around this (I don't think a USB cable can be that long?)

Any suggestions, pointers, URLs would be greatly appreciated.

You must look for camera compat. in v4l (sorry, i can't put URL's until get points search for video4linux or v4l
Perhaps this devsec in sourceforge (the same) helps you to build your system

You could use something like zoneminder or motion.

Originally Posted by nelz You could use something like zoneminder or motion.

Ideal solutions for his application.. good call.

I know this is a Linux forum but I have a program - that never got much fanfare (that I'm aware of) for Win32 but I love it. Its a free program that SAVES snapshots when it detects motion - and you can control how sensitive and how frequently to snap shots during motion.

I've caught some interesting shots when I set it up before.
The file names when extracted is: Surveillance Scan II.exe

The zip I downloaded is named: sscanii.zip

I personally don't use it much - I don't have a need - but I have in the past and I keep it saved just in case. A real gem.

If you cannot find it - I'm sure the author would be happy to allow me to give you the file. Its freeware after all.

Jason P Sage

There is a simple program called "scrap" that will do what you want. Just Google "linux scrap"
John

Great! Thanks for the suggestions - I'll look into all of these.