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A few days ago I ordered the webcam I planned on using for the beaglecam. Well it came in and i thought that the first order of business would be to test and see if it would run ok on linux.

surprisingly the answer was yes. it was a simple plug and play experience, didn't have to install modules or anything!

to test it out I browsed the web of a quick way of getting a frame off of the web cam and stumbled on this

[code]mplayer tv:// -tv driver=v4l:device=/dev/video0:width=320:height=240:outfmt=rgb24 -frames 1 -vo jpeg[/code]

Unfortunately, that did not work for me. first of all instead of v4l it needed to be changed to v4l2 as there was no compatibility layer for v4l1 (I guess).

After i got that working, the image that was returned was a solid green jpg.... wtf! I should have known there was some start up time but you would assume when I want a frame I want the first frame after it is fully running.

frustrated i decided to change the frames argument to return 10 frames and view the 10th image.

combine all that and i ended up with this script for getting frames

[code]

cd /tmp/cam

mplayer -msglevel all=-1 tv:// -tv driver=v4l2:device=/dev/video0:width=640:height=480:outfmt=rgb24 -frames 10 -vo jpeg

sleep 10

[/code]

thats it! Put that shit in a loop and let it run and you have a new image every 10 seconds.

There was a point of time last week where I wanted to get some coffee but I didn't want to be disappointed when I got there and there was not a drop left. wouldn't it be great if i could just check a website and see if there was coffee or not?

I thought about it and decided that i could easily make a computer to do that. There was a problem though, I don't think people around the office would really want a somewhat large desktop computer in the break room cluttering up the area, so I needed something small.

after searching for single board computers, I found them all to be a little too expensive for what I wanted to do. I remembered back a few months when i wanted this new handheld device that was completely community designed, ran linux, and was quite powerful, the Pandora. I also remembered that most of the development was done on beagleboards. For around $150 I got a relatively powerful computer packed into a 3"x3" form factor.

So the idea rolled around in my head for a little bit longer and I decided to give it ago, difficulty wise I think it will be pretty low. As soon as i get my beagleboard (it is on backorder now) I'll have to get a linux install on it, make sure v4l modules are installed, then compile mplayer/ffmpeg.

here is hoping I get it soon.