CamDesk Development Plans

Here is the place to post images, videos and downloads of your current and upcoming applications that you are working on.
24 posts Page 2 of 3
User avatar
mikethedj4
VIP - Site Partner
VIP - Site Partner
Posts: 2592
Joined: Thu Mar 25, 2010 4:36 am

Re: CamDesk 1.2 Underway!
mikethedj4
Each user of CamDesk would need an account to store the data (images) on the website, but can also choose between that or their computer.

I still haft to reconstruct the preferences window from top to bottom with this new recording capability that's going to be implemented.

I thought instead on having it take images on motion to begin recording that'll not only take blurry images, but if someone is running threw your home to steal something you may miss a frame that'll be very important. For example on June 21st my friend's college fund got stolen. Lucky for him he had a camera that caught the perpetrator, however this dude knew about the camera, and has something like a beanie or a white plastic bag covering his face.

image removed for security reasons...

This is the whole reason why I decided to update CamDesk's development, but not sure how I'd incorporate it into the python application via Linux as I'm still learning.
Last edited by mikethedj4 on Thu Jul 05, 2012 11:15 am, edited 2 times in total.
User avatar
mikethedj4
VIP - Site Partner
VIP - Site Partner
Posts: 2592
Joined: Thu Mar 25, 2010 4:36 am

Re: CamDesk 1.2 Underway!
mikethedj4
I'm currently working on a recording capability so CamDesk can record/take images for x amount of milliseconds (default is 3sec, or 3000 milliseconds) the files will be saved to your hard drive by default.

Now say you work 8h which is 28800s so before you go to work you start CamDesk to record, you come home 8 hours later, and stop it from running. Now if divide 28800 by 3 that will give you 9600 which will be the total amount of images on your hard drive. Remember the bigger the image, the larger the file size. If your house gets robbed you want a larger image to work with so you can catch the perpetrator. I'd recommend watching this film before proceeding.

So say you have a standard webcam like most people, and you have the dimensions set at 640x480. Now each file size will differ, but just as an example to understand the space you'll be dealing with on a day to day basis if you don't have a large capacity hard drive. Just as an example say every frame takes an image at 640x480 and the file sizes are all the same at 705KB. So in order to find out approximately how much space will be consumed on your hard drive from these files being taken we'll need to multiply 705 by 9600, which gives us 6768000.

1MB = 1000KB
1024MB = 1GB
1GB = 1048576KB

We can now go to Conversion Calculator and see how much space 6768000KB takes up in gigabytes, and megabytes.

6768000KB = 6,609.375MB
6768000KB = 6.4544677734GB

So just in one day running the webcam at a 3s interval for 8 hours just to work and back will consume about 6.4GB of your hard drive space.

Storing Images in The Cloud:
Now I've been thinking about CamDesk storing the images on the cloud. Eventually you'd only haft to pay $1 a month (via pay for storage, if you don't pay, you can't store the files online.) I'd haft to start with about maybe $2.5 or $5 for you to host, and eventually overtime depending on how many people will be hosting their files decrease the price to reach a broader audience, as well help me out with unemployment. I'd need unlimited hosting for webspace, and bandwidth. So if you'd like to helpout with this idea you can contact Michael on YouTube, Twitter, or Google+.

Now hosting your images online has both pros and cons. Although I've also been thinking about the recent violent derecho storm that hit, leaving 13 dead, and 3 million without power.

With events like this and Hurricane Katrina we can clearly see much our cities rely on mostly fuel for transportation, and even some electronics like a weed trimmer. Also remember that when these events occurred massive amounts of individuals lost everything, they rushed into stores for food, medical, and other resources. Not to mention hundreds of home robberies occurred. However lets say you made a wind mill, or grabbed the electricity from the air to power your laptop, or even small electronics like your smart phone, and now you can use CamDesk, but you don't have the cash to store your images in the cloud. While it has pros and cons these are things our development team hast to consider when creating CamDesk.

Here's some sources you may wanna checkout...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p5BecBtH97M
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VNXp_x-SjBE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XeCpLcjxOq4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iDfwHU7Cw6g
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Qx20LA4PM0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G43zl4fzDQg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bfv1uPBmR5g
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Am2MZ74BBn0
http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2012/03 ... tv-remote/
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/monitor ... cking-you/
http://www.scribd.com/doc/72271940/The-Logan-Act
http://www.theworldsprophecy.com/senate ... rown-food/
http://rense.com/general91/dehe.htm
http://www.scribd.com/doc/30618074/U-S- ... Gov365-com
http://iblue.hubpages.com/hub/Honey--Ci ... -for-cures
http://www.organicfacts.net/health-bene ... elion.html
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index ... 104AAoHSp6
http://www.naturallist.com/plantedi.htm
http://www.naturallist.com/plantmed.htm
http://www.naturallist.com/plantpoi.htm

Now CamDesk for Android's development isn't going so good, just like the Chrome extension isn't going so smooth either.

The problem currently is that originally when we tried CamDesk for Chrome we had a div display over the page content and added an anchor so when you hover over the div you would close it, but you aren't able to drag it, because we'd haft to have it set to drag the flash swf file which is used to show CamDesk, and if that's done you won't be able to choose allow or deny to function the webcam's display actions. Which essentially means you won't be able to run the webcam, but merely drag it, and will be stick with the screen to allow, or deny the webcam to run.

So the plan now is to use hotkeys to show and hide a div that'll be displayed in a layer type system so we can move, and use CamDesk.

If you're unfamiliar with layers (or z-index in css) think of it as a stack of paper. We'll have div1, or p1 (p1 meaning paper1), div2, or p2, and a1, for anchor 1 via the close button.

So p1 is the div that the webcam will be embedded in, and p2 is the div that will be set on toggle to show/hide via hotkey so we'll be able to move CamDesk.

Now one problem with this idea is that some people tend to change the hotkeys that function their computer, some websites use hotkeys, and you maybe running a program that has/uses global hotkeys like AltWindowDrag on Windows.

Although this isn't the biggest problem that we're experiencing. Our biggest problem with the CamDesk for Chrome development is that say I go to Google and I display the webcam, allow it to broadcast, and set it where I want. I do a search for, "DIY HHO Welder", but as soon as I get to the search results the webcam doesn't display, nor will it remain on the page when you change websites, or tabs, but it's still synced to the website you added it to. While some may like this I do not, and it's something that should be optional to choose from, as well as to choose to have it synced with each tab, and website, but currently we haven't figured out how that can be implemented into the application. So currently the CamDesk for Chrome development is at a pause until this is resolved.
Last edited by mikethedj4 on Fri Jul 06, 2012 10:30 pm, edited 9 times in total.
User avatar
Shim
VIP - Donator
VIP - Donator
Posts: 882
Joined: Wed Dec 14, 2011 5:02 am

Re: CamDesk 1.2 Underway!
Shim
do camdesk can record screen ?if not you can make a version for screen recording , it will be great !
Find my programs on Softpedia
User avatar
mikethedj4
VIP - Site Partner
VIP - Site Partner
Posts: 2592
Joined: Thu Mar 25, 2010 4:36 am

Re: CamDesk 1.2 Underway!
mikethedj4
mshimranpro wrote:
do camdesk can record screen ?if not you can make a version for screen recording , it will be great !
I don't plan on implementing that into CamDesk as there's CamStudio, plus I my goal is to make all versions to be the same, or at least as close to the same as all the others. Which I'm already gonna have a pain getting the Linux version the same, or at least close to the Windows version.

I've been asked this question sense the beginning of development, and I've been asked by a couple people (particularly the YouTube community) to contact the CamStudio developers, and ask them if I could add CamStudio inside CamDesk, but the problem with this idea is that CamStudio is coded in Visual C++, and CamDesk is programmed in VB.NET which means I'd need to convert the coding from VB.NET to Visual C++, and I just don't have that kind of time.

However what I could do though is launch CamStudio Portable threw CamDesk which would be a whole lot faster, but that would also mean the file size would be much larger than before. Not to mention not everybody uses CamDesk for screencasting which means that'll consume so much more space that some users wouldn't even want in the first place. So don't expect CamDesk to be able to record the screen.
Last edited by mikethedj4 on Thu Jul 05, 2012 11:19 am, edited 1 time in total.
User avatar
Shim
VIP - Donator
VIP - Donator
Posts: 882
Joined: Wed Dec 14, 2011 5:02 am

Re: CamDesk 1.2 Underway!
Shim
i really like to see a screen recording feature on camdesk :D
Find my programs on Softpedia
User avatar
mikethedj4
VIP - Site Partner
VIP - Site Partner
Posts: 2592
Joined: Thu Mar 25, 2010 4:36 am

Re: CamDesk 1.2 Underway!
mikethedj4
I'd like to thank #mandai for helping with the recording capability, as well as #MrAksel.

I updated the original post regarding CamDesk's development plans.
User avatar
mikethedj4
VIP - Site Partner
VIP - Site Partner
Posts: 2592
Joined: Thu Mar 25, 2010 4:36 am

Re: CamDesk Development Plans
mikethedj4
I tried recording video via motion capture, but unfortunately no luck so far. I'll continue to work on it, but no guarantee's it'll be implemented.

Currently CamDesk for Windows enables you to record/take photos via intervals you tell it to, but stores it on your hard drive. The plan is to take that, store it in the cloud, and each photo that gets uploaded you'll be able to view in a file manager inside CamDesk. PLEASE DO NOT GIVE YOUR ACCOUNT PASSWORD AWAY TO ANYONE! As you'll haft to have a password in order to view your files on your account.

Now if you only have 1 webcam, service will be free, but if you have more than one webcam you can pay $5 a month for unlimited storage for all your cameras on my soon to be server. Which is only planned to be built at the moment.

Now with that being said, cause it'll be going straight to my server that means that it'll no longer be open source. While some may not like that, and find it scary. I'll still make a desktop version where the photos can be stored on your hard drive, and deleted after x amount of space has been filled via photos. As for CamDesk for Linux it'll haft to be completely redone in order for these implementations to work properly.

Now does anyone have any suggestions on a way to make sure my server doesn't crash from being overloaded?
User avatar
Casirus
Codenstuff Elite
Codenstuff Elite
Posts: 258
Joined: Mon Jan 25, 2010 5:07 pm

Re: CamDesk Development Plans
Casirus
Well technically speaking you would need more than one server running with load ballancing with redundant power supplys, plus load monitering to keep an eye on the critical functions most likely some form of custom proprietry system to control the data on the server as well. cloud systems are a good idea but are a hastle to set up and to keep working, its basically all a matter of making sure the servers keep an eye on where everything is and whats going where. if you can do that then your on your way. i have worked with could systems before and yes they are good but can be a pain to work with if not setup right
Image
DraculCorp - Progress lives forever
We strive for progress to improve the world we leave behind.
User avatar
mikethedj4
VIP - Site Partner
VIP - Site Partner
Posts: 2592
Joined: Thu Mar 25, 2010 4:36 am

Re: CamDesk Development Plans
mikethedj4
I don't wanna spend hours working on that though. I'd rather just hire someone to do it, it'd save me a whole lot of time, but it's hard to trust someone to keep the users photos safe, and secure, and not sell them for profit, but I don't even have unlimited bandwidth, or anything on my server. Bytehost no longer allows users with free hosting to park ,tk domains. So I'm using 000webhost.
User avatar
Casirus
Codenstuff Elite
Codenstuff Elite
Posts: 258
Joined: Mon Jan 25, 2010 5:07 pm

Re: CamDesk Development Plans
Casirus
i will look for you mike but as far as i can see you will need either a windows or a linux box running a custom server software to control the access and move the files to the correct place depending on the user you could do it via php but with the refersh rate and such i feel it might cause issues with loads but give me a bit and i will look and see
Image
DraculCorp - Progress lives forever
We strive for progress to improve the world we leave behind.
24 posts Page 2 of 3
Return to “Work in Progress”