Cam Capture Software

[bendejo]

I’m looking for a piece of software that will capture images from my computer’s camera, and save them to disk. I ideally would like to monitor activity in my room when I’m out. It would be nice if it had the option of doing a mid-quality image every five seconds or so, or continuous video.

I did a search and couldn’t find anything that suited my purpose, which I found strange as I figured this sort of thing would be common.

[bino]

I've used a readily available program called Conquer Cam. Does all that you want for free if you don't mind a watermark on occasional images. Paid version to remove the watermark is ten bucks. Search for it and you will find. Cool feature is that it can also upload to a website location via FTP and you can monitor your location from anywhere.

Another cool trick is to use skype. Create an extra user for your computer / camera, then set it to accept video conversations automatically. Monitor your place in real time.

[Crossy]

A Google for 'webcam movement detector' nets quite a few links, this one http://www.ugolog.com/ seems to do the trick and it's really simple, the downloadable version doesn't need a reliable connection to function.

[idierks]

You can also look at www.digi-watcher.com

Edited November 12, 2011 by idierks

[bendejo]

Thanks for the great replies.

I especially like the idea of using skype, I'll be looking into ways of using it simply as a video recorder.

[Crushdepth]

Try Yawcam. It has an option to take a snapshot at a given time interval.

[bendejo]

I just came across something called Prey (http://preyproject.com/) that can be quite handy.

I haven't tried it out yet but it supposedly will do webcam snapshots as well.

I learned about it from this report:

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/air-canada-aeroplan/1279837-air-canada-employee-theft-laptop-left-onboard.html