Hi,

I'm working on a senior design project and one of the objectives is to control a video camera wirelessly through a PC. To be honest I have no idea where to start with this and hopefully someone can just point me in the right direction. I basically want to control a video camera wirelessly with the 4 arrow keys (up, down, left, right) from a PC. I've been searching on the internet for a while and all the results I was getting were for systems to buy. I'm supposed to build this myself, so I'm going to have buy some hardware components, but not a complete system. Some how through a PC's parallel port or serial port, I need to send signals to the video camera. Also, I'll either have to buy a software program or write one myself.

I appreciate any suggestions and or information on how to do this. Thanks.

 

Hi,

I have some experience with video cameras and I think in this case you can try to do this:

0. Use so called "IP Cameras" with WIFI to receive all commands via wireless module.

1a. Use PTZ (Pan, Tilt, Zoom) cameras, like AXIS 214 or in case if you want to do moving of camera yourself there is another option - 1b.

1b. Find some WIFI cameras with external outputs. There are plenty of them with 1 output, I know some SONY cameras have 1 or 2 output. Plus it is possible to add a WIFI module in many of their cameras.

2. Connect these camera outputs with some relays to 2 electric motors to move camera up and down, left and right.

3. Send a signal from PC on these outputs. Usually to control these outputs of IP camera you send them an HTTP command to switch ON or OFF the alarm output. You can send this command from your software to IP address of the network camera.

4. To get the picture from the camera you can use the HTTP command aswell or just get any compatible software for your camera. There is a list of somevideo monitoring software on http://www.video-home-surveillance.com/software-reviews/

5. From all existing cameras I recommend any of AXIS, SONY or Panasonic, because they are easy to command via HTTP in compare with DLink, Vivotek and ArecontVision. HTTP protocols of them I have found in the internet.

Good Luck in your work.