Active Webcam by PYSOFT Pro's Con's

[mantry 0]

Howdy, I know that Active Webcam hasn't received very good reviews by some of the people on this forum, but I, myself like I think maybe more who have stumbled onto this forum, now own it and are trying to make it do the job.

 

I purchased the DELUXE version ($89.00) several years ago and it has been preforming the tasks that I wanted for the most part.

 

Here is how we use it: We have a house and a camer that is mounted on the eve of the roof that looks down the driveway. With this camera connected to a cheap 4 port (1 chip) video grabber card and running the Active Webcam software. The tasks that it performs is:

 

Records 1 fpm 24 hours a day

Starts a new file every day at midnight

Uploads a frame of video 12 times/hour via FTP to our web hosting service so it can be displayed in a web page.

Watches for motion in a masked off area of the camera and if it senses motion then it does the following:

Switches to 1 fps recording

Sends me an email with 3 frames of video

Acts as a Webserver and we can either view live video from the camera or we can also playback recorded data. Granted this is all limited by performance of the CPU in the PC and data rates between the web browser and the PC in our home.

 

The CONS: Here is where the problems start:

If I try to use more than 1 camera then it throws the motion detection all off because my understanding is that on the cheap 1 chip video grabber card that I am using that it does a round robin sampling of each of the 4 ports. When it is doing this, there is a chance that it may catch part of a frame that contains part of camera 1 and part of camera 2. This is all fine and well unless you are trying to detect motion. Granted this will be treated as motion because the two frames are completely different from each other.

 

What I would like to hear is from people that are using this software and if it is working well, to describe a little bit of how you are using it and how well it is working. Or if you are having problems with it what are the problems.

 

I would specifically be interested in what video capture card you are using, how many cameras you are using, are you doing motion detection and other details.

 

I would also be interested if anyone is using this with cameras connected to an IP Video server (Analog camera connected to a device that converts it to protocol that is accessible across the LAN) and if you are using motion detection with that IP server.(I'm a little suspicious if the comparing of one frame with another to detect motion across a network is a good idea or not.)

 

Thanks again in advance.

 

Please try to keep it constructive and informative. Don't just blast it and say "This software is the pits....Get a real DVR....".

 

It was atractively priced for the application that I use it for, I bought it because I stumbled across it because it was at the time all the info I had.

 

I wish I had came across this forum before I started down this road, there is a TON of knowledge available here. Again, THANKS!!!!

 

Mark

[ipman 0]

Howdy, I know that Active Webcam hasn't received very good reviews by some of the people on this forum, but I, myself like I think maybe more who have stumbled onto this forum, now own it and are trying to make it do the job.

Mark

 

Hi Mark,

Actually the software is not bad. But their support is ...

 

BTW coupon code I found: ACTW-WJ3K-HAPR