I wanted to monitor my home using a webcam that I would leave running while I am out. The first thing I tried was using yahoo messenger because the new version has a broadcast feature. This works ok if the viewing device is a pc but not so good if you are using a android phone or iphone. The mobile client for yahoo messenger lacks the ability to view broadcasts. I then discovered a great piece of software called webcamXP that can be found
here. WebcamXP is capable of controlling my logitech orbit camera including its panning features. WebcamXP sets up a server on the pc connected to the camera that makes the images streamed from the camera available to the internet. It provides a web page interface that has controls for the camera, if your router is configured correctly and you have a public ip address then you can view this stream from anywhere. The only problem with all this is that the web interface uses iframes for the pan control panel. Iframes are not properly supported in most mobile browsers. I have tried it on android, opera and iphone with no success. To fix this I have written a custom interface that grabs the same urls as the code in the iframe to make the pan occur. Download this file
peep.html and open it in notepad, replace any xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx with your actual ip address and place the file in the webroot directory created by webcamXP. Now when you type http://xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx/peep.html in your phones browser, where the xxx... is your pc ip address, you will not only see your ipcam but you can move it too.
