Live Streaming Video on my Treo!!!
A few weeks ago I was invited for a drink and found myself facing a Windows Mobile ‘opponent’ who did everything in his powers to convince me that his phone (I can’t call it a smartphone) was better than my Treo.
To the amusement of all present, 30 minutes of ping-pong demos ensued with the two of us going “Yes, but can your [device] do this and this and that?”. I was extremely annoyed when towards the end he smugly showed me a streaming webcam image of his baby’s cot at home for which I had absolutely nothing comparable on my Treo.
Today though this would be a completely different story because I finally found an extremely good and easy to use streaming webcam video solution (no audio) for my Treo thanks to an appllication called FireProducer.
The FireProducer package consists of the Video Server (FireProducer Desktop) installed on your PC to stream the video and the FireViewer installed on your Treo to view it. The only other thing that you’ll need is obviously a webcam from which to grab the live video.
Opening FireProducer on your PC, you’ll be presented with a few buttons and configuration options. The first is “Select Video Source” where you’ll have the option to choose either ‘File’ to stream an .avi video file (no audio) or ‘Camera’ to use your webcam. The second is “Set Output Quality” which allows you to choose both the video Quality (I left it at 100%) and Size (I put it at level 4 which provides me with a full widescreen image output – see screenshot above).
Next you’ll need to determine what the IP address of your PC is which is done by going to Start then Run then type ‘cmd’ (no quotes) then type ‘ipconfig’ and you will receive your IP information. As Firepad notes though: “If you are using a dial up connection, your ISP may give you a new IP address each time you dial up. So you will have to check each time. To obtain a fixed IP address, please contact your ISP.” I am assuming that you’ll have a broadband connection and a fixed IP address. Additionally, if FireProducer is installed behind a firewall and the handheld devices have to go through the firewall in order to connect to FireProducer, then the firewall must be configured to allow TCP/UDP communication on Port 4712 (also called ‘Port Forwarding’).
Once you have your IP address, click Start Server in FireProducer and launch FireViewer on your Treo. Then select the Options menu then ‘Open Location’ and write “ftsp://000.000.0.0” in the space provided replacing the zeroes with your IP number. Next, click the Open button and within 5 or 10 seconds you should see the live streaming images from your PC’s webcam directly on your Treo.
The live streaming video on my Treo (screenshot above) was coming in at an average 10 frames per second when connecting via reverse BT DUN (it should be about the same over WiFi with the new enfora Adapter) and at 1 to 2 frames per second using the wireless data connection. Although there was some pixelation the overall quality is nonetheless excellent and I was truly thrilled to get this up and running so quickly.
The standard FireProducer only allows one FireViewer client to connect to the live video stream at any given time but the company’s Enterprise Edition (priced at $10,000) supports unlimited simultaneous client connections.
Whether you want to check on the baby at home while you’re at a nearby restaurant, see what’s happening at the office or home from a remote location or while on holiday then there’s no doubt that you’ll absolutely love FireProducer.
Currently Firepad does not offer a trial version of the FireProducer Video Server but you can nonetheless download and install a trial version of the FireViewer to view a live video stream from their offices. All you need to do is select “Open Location” from the FireViewer menu and type ftsp://206.135.90.36 to view it.
Please note that unfortunately FireProducer is not yet available in the Treonauts Software Store. However, it should become available either tomorrow or early next week as a FireProducer Desktop + FireViewer bundle and I will update this post as soon as it has been implemented.
Treonauts love personal streaming media…
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Comments
Finally!!! I remember a few posts back you mentioned that we'd see something like this from Kinoma. I guess that were beaten to market...
One thing worth noting: most home broadband solutions use a router/firewall with NAT'ing. Thus you'll have a private IP inside your firewall/router (192.168.x.x, 10.x.x.x, 172.16.x.x) and a different public IP. Aside from punching a hole in your firewall for the port, you'll also need to know your public IP for viewing from your Treo. There are many solutions for this (including dynamic DNS, etc), but a quick solution is to go to "whatismyipaddress.com" or "whatismyip.com" from your PC. This will show you your public IP that you can connect to from your Treo.
Having just re-read this, one must wonder if the Producer s/w is required? I'm wondering what would happen if I just setup a regular webcam to stream over the 4712 port, then just used the Viewer to access it??? I have a nice d-link webcam here... I'll give it a try and post if it works...
And to do it for free you could just have your computer capture an image from your webcam every 5 seconds and save it to a folder that you can access via http and then check it and relaod it at your leisure... did i mention free?
You can also use WinVNC (with a dedicated IP address or software like No-IP) to do it for free. The logitech software that comes with my webcam allows me to see on my desktop (obviously) what the camera is capturing and I position that app say in the bottom right hand corner of my screen. I then connect to my computer from my Treo through WinVNC and position WinVNC to the portion of my screen where I stuck the web cam viewer. I can then see on the treo what my computer can see...voila!
Scotty - very nice solution. And it probably gets better bandwidth than a streaming device. I was just looking at VNC for PalmOS the other day. Normally I use ssh for all my linux boxes and TS for all the Windows ones. However I had to use TightVNC to remote out a Linux desktop the other day. I hadn't thought about using it as a webcam solution. Thanks for the idea. :)
Yeah that's great, but what I want to do is send a live video feed the opposite direction. I want to send a live video feed from my Treo to a Web site that others can see. That's a killer app! The other is just neat.
Killer or neat, you decide.
Does WinVNC work on PalmOS? It sounds like a windows app. What's the best PalmOS VNC Client?
Found a cheap version to do almost the same thing. Use the $10 software called ConquerCam. It has it's own server. Once set up with the server on, I VPN into my home network and hit the IP address of my server, xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx:8181 this then gives me the current picture from the camera, then everytime I hit the refresh button it updates the picture.
In reply to the comment by Mr.A.Davis, I would like to mention that; along with the referenced website http://www.tracemyip.com can also be used to see ones IP address.
It doesn't look like fireviewer can be run on a mac. Conformation on this would be great... thank you
Do any of you guys have ideas for this: My wife
wants to have a live video feed (wireless of course) coming from a camera mounted to her head feeding to a computer about 20 or 30 feet away that will be hooked to a projector during a art installation opening. A good option would be over wireless internet of course, but I am not sure if there is a signal there. Second option bluetooth (we have a macbook pro that has bluetooth 2.0). Would that work?
The bottom line: We don't have a bluetooth 2.0 handheld, so what is the cheapest option for getting one that would work with a plugged in camera and live video? Any ideas? Thanks!
i know Moyea flash video server,it provides services of streaming Flash videos and audios between the server side and client side.
woo, it is cool. if you want to watch the video on windows media player , some video conversion tool is needed.
http://www.best-video-converter.net
If you want to watch video on ipad as a mac user, ipad converter for mac is your best choice. http://www.movietoipad.com/ipad-converter-for-mac.html
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