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Raspberry Pi as IP webcam

I noticed this Instructable the other day and had to try it since I had an old USB web cam laying around. I found that the instructions contained some inaccuracies, here are my steps:

sudo apt-get install motion
sudo nano /etc/motion/motion.conf

Locate and change:
Daemon = OFF to ON
webcam_localhost = ON to OFF
webcam_port = desired port number (defauls to 8081)

sudo nano /etc/default/motion
Change to 'yes':
# set to 'yes' to enable the motion daemon
start_motion_daemon=yes

sudo service motion start

The configuration file contains a number of settings to fiddle with, most are easy to understand.

IMG_1869

 

webcm

 

The port can be exposed on the firewall and all this can be viewed from external IP addresses over the web.

[update] Motion seem unreliable for my webcam, it stops working at random intervals and a deamon restart is necessary to get it back live. I am looking at mjpg-streamer now, it is much faster, but I get some scrambled images from time to time. link

2 thoughts on “Raspberry Pi as IP webcam

  1. Paul Webster

    I came across your post while thnking of having a go at this today (with an otherwise unused Logitech USB webcam).
    Did you try again with the recent experimental firmware updates that try to improve the USB handling?