Tom Gruber Live

I have finally gotten around to setting up a live webcam feed from my bedroom. The webcam I originally intended to use came with a Gateway computer my dad bought back in 2000 or so. It works fine, it’s even Intel-brand, but I was surprised how low the resolution was and realized it’s just old. I’d say the camera on my phone has maybe 3 times the resolution. Anyway, as an alternative, I figured out I can use my camcorder’s USB connectivity to function as a webcam, so that’s what I’m using.

The program I am using to feed the images to my site is open-source and available for free. It is called Fwink. For such a lite little program, it does everything I need and then some. It also has a few extras for overlaying images and text which is pretty neat.

I plan on turning on the live feed every once and a while. I noticed it was eating up server bandwidth yesterday pretty quickly so I’ve turned down the refresh rate and resolution for now. I don’t have enough bandwidth to run it all the time. Maybe for special occasions and live party feeds! Woo!