Baby monitor/live web cam

Question

We have four iSight camera enabled Macs in our house, an Airport network, fast cable Internet, and a hosting plan with iPower as well as MobileMe. I would like to set up a Mac in the kid's room so that I can monitor him from other parts of the house/workshop when he's sleeping and also so that my wife can look in on "us" from time to time from her office in town. It seems like this should be an easy thing to do considering all the tools we have available. I just don't have a clue as to how to do it. I read the info on EvoCam's website, but I was hoping that I was already paying for something like that with what I have.
Any help is greatly appreciated.

Answer 1

Hi,
It could be done with iChat.
On the Home Network the computer in the Child's room would need iChat to be set up with the Bonjour account Activated  (iChat > Preferences > Accounts).
Then in the iChat > Preferences > Alerts you would set the top item to Video Invite and then lower down the AppleScript option and then select Auto Answer in the Drop down list.
In iChat the Bonjour Accounts takes the Mac User that is logged in Address Book > My Card detail as the Buddy Name and broadcasts this to the other Macs.
You would need your Mac to have iChat's Bonjour Account enabled.
This does mean that each Mac needs to have a different User Logged in.
MobileMe Account names are valid AIM screen names as well
You may need to shorten the password to 16 characters as a MAx as this is the AIM server end Limit.
Family sub account names will not work. So you may have to register for either an AIM name or an @mac.com name.
Your wife would not be able to Call-In if you were already using Bonjour.
However with 3 Valid AIM names she could Text you and then you could Invite her to a 3 way Video Chat (Join an existing Video chat)
This would require that you had at least 500kbps as Upload as well as download to support the two stream of Video from home and Host it.
( A 1-1 Video chat can be managed with as little as 128kbps Upload.  For a 3 and 4 way Video Chat Apple says the min is 384kbps to be the Host  but you also have to allow for the fact there will be two Video streams from your end)
Evocam
Evocam gets the Video feed from the camera and snapshots it as jpegs.
These jpegs are then sent to a web page.
If that page is local to you (on your computer or on a another home computer) this posting and refreshing the page can make for a stuttering look "live" video feed.
You may also have issue as to whether your ISP allows you to Host a Web Server.  It is not always allowed.
You would also have to make changes to your Router set up to process Requests for the page to that computer that Hosts it.
If the page is on an External Server then the time taken to FTP the file up to the server adds more jerkiness.
I have version 3.5 which is not the latest but I don't read of any changes on that front on their site.
However it does provide the option of allowing more people to access it.
Koowy
Koowy is a Web Site that is free.
You go to that Link and enter a "room" Name.
This then creates a page (URL for you) that "Contains" the room.
Flash has to be Enabled on the Browser that is involved.
Once you are in the Room a Flash Pop appears asking you to Allow access to the camera.
(In some cases you may need to choose the camera type in the Tab for Cameras)
Once another computer or person has the URL of the room that can enter it and set up/Allow their Camera or just view the Stream.
Audio can be Muted.
As Baby Boomer says looking for older threads by mining the More Like This options will also produce answers.
8:37 PM      Thursday; July 14, 2011
Please, if posting Logs, do not post any Log info after the line "Binary Images for iChat"
 G4/1GhzDual MDD (Leopard 10.5.8)
 MacBookPro 2Gb( 10.6.8)
 Mac OS X (10.6.7),
"Limit the Logs to the Bits above Binary Images."  No, Seriously