Oculus How To Make a WebCam

Oculus 2.5.5
How To Make a WebCam

The first step in making a webcam isn't what you might expect. You must first write some HTML code in order to display your webcam image to the visitors of your web site. HTML code is instructions to a web browser that explain what to display, and how to display it.

There are a number of ways of creating the HTML code for your site. You can write the code from scratch. You can modify the code from an existing web site to make it display what you want. You can also have Oculus create your HTML code for you which you can then further modify if you choose.

Using the Oculus Setup Assistant you can have Oculus create a simple webcam HTML page and save it to disk, put it on the clipboard for you to paste into another application, or FTP it directly to your website. The code it creates is quite simple, but is adequate for many webcam applications. It includes a client-pull refreshing technique to refresh your web page while your visitor watches.

Once you have created or modified the HTML code for your web page, you must then get it onto the computer that hosts your website in the correct location. If you do not know where the web page should go on the host computer, you can ask your ISP or the administrator of the host computer.

Here's an example: The host computer for A Corporation is called acorp.com. When the user auser logs into the host, she is located in her home directory. The home directory contains a directory called html_public which contains all of the web pages for auser. If auser puts her web page called webcam.html into her html_public directory then visitors to her website will be able to view the page with the URL . Note: many host computers are set up in different ways. If you do not know where the web page should go on the host computer, you can ask your ISP or the administrator of the host computer.

Once you get the web page onto your website, you are ready to start sending pictures for the world to see. Oculus uses the FTP protocol to send pictures to your host computer. In order for Oculus to put your webcam pictures into the right place on your host computer, you must tell it the FTP path to get to the same directory that you put your web page. You can specify a full or relative path to the destination file in the Oculus Setup Assistant, or you can use the Photo dialog. If you do not specify the FTP path when using the Setup Assistant, it will try to determine where to put the pictures based on the URL that you had specified. Because many host computers are set up differently, this may not be adequate in your setup.

Once the preceeding is accomplished, Oculus will then push your webcam photos up to your host for the world to see!

After making your webcam work, you may want to customize it using some of the examples described in the other How To's.

Getting Started with Oculus
Oculus Documentation
Oculus How To
Oculus Reference
What's New?
Oculus Webcams
Oculus FAQ
Oculus Home
Home

Copyright 1999 Poubelle Software and International Web
Comments? oculus@poubelle.com

Oculus 2.5.5		How To Make a WebCam



		The first step in making a webcam isn't what you might expect. You must first write some HTML code in order to display your webcam image to the visitors of your web site. HTML code is instructions to a web browser that explain what to display, and how to display it. There are a number of ways of creating the HTML code for your site. You can write the code from scratch. You can modify the code from an existing web site to make it display what you want. You can also have Oculus create your HTML code for you which you can then further modify if you choose. Using the Oculus Setup Assistant you can have Oculus create a simple webcam HTML page and save it to disk, put it on the clipboard for you to paste into another application, or FTP it directly to your website. The code it creates is quite simple, but is adequate for many webcam applications. It includes a client-pull refreshing technique to refresh your web page while your visitor watches. Once you have created or modified the HTML code for your web page, you must then get it onto the computer that hosts your website in the correct location. If you do not know where the web page should go on the host computer, you can ask your ISP or the administrator of the host computer. Here's an example: The host computer for A Corporation is called acorp.com. When the user auser logs into the host, she is located in her home directory. The home directory contains a directory called html_public which contains all of the web pages for auser. If auser puts her web page called webcam.html into her html_public directory then visitors to her website will be able to view the page with the URL . Note: many host computers are set up in different ways. If you do not know where the web page should go on the host computer, you can ask your ISP or the administrator of the host computer. Once you get the web page onto your website, you are ready to start sending pictures for the world to see. Oculus uses the FTP protocol to send pictures to your host computer. In order for Oculus to put your webcam pictures into the right place on your host computer, you must tell it the FTP path to get to the same directory that you put your web page. You can specify a full or relative path to the destination file in the Oculus Setup Assistant, or you can use the Photo dialog. If you do not specify the FTP path when using the Setup Assistant, it will try to determine where to put the pictures based on the URL that you had specified. Because many host computers are set up differently, this may not be adequate in your setup. Once the preceeding is accomplished, Oculus will then push your webcam photos up to your host for the world to see! After making your webcam work, you may want to customize it using some of the examples described in the other How To's.

Getting Started with Oculus Oculus Documentation Oculus How To Oculus Reference What's New? Oculus Webcams Oculus FAQ Oculus Home Home		Copyright 1999 Poubelle Software and International Web Comments? oculus@poubelle.com