Today I received my new infra-red webcam that I bought on eBay. I’m going to use it to monitor the nursery from downstairs.
It took a while to find a true infra-red camera as most advertise themselves as “night vision” which means that a light will come on when the illumination drops below a certain amount. This would be no good for the nursery! The model I bought has a light sensor that will turn on some infra-red LEDs, this light is invisible to the human eye but is picked up by the camera.
I plugged the camera in and it was immediately found by Fedora and the gspca driver. It appears as a zc3xx (vendor =0x0ac8, product id = 0x303b). Using the (free) Camstreams software I am now able to open the video stream to test the camera. Switching the room light off shows that the infra-red LEDs are working (see captured images).
The next step is to install some video streaming software so that I can watch the video remotely (downstairs). I would prefer to run the camera off my quieter and less power-hungry PC running Puppy Linux. I’ll let you know how I get on.
If you want to buy one then ask the eBay seller: benzuel
