Best way to host a webcam publicly?

Question

We have a house finch nesting on the side of our cottage, and I have a webcam trained on her. Using the excellent EvoLV package, I am able to expose the camera through a web interface, and I have a port mapping set up so friends and family (mine, not the bird's) can watch the nest remotely.

The problem is, that's a lot of outbound traffic. Often there are simultaneous connections. Also, sometimes my IP changes, and I'd love to have it set up on an external website.

I figure that if I had an external site, it could proxy my webcam feed and share it out, meaning I would need only one outbound video stream from my house even if there were many viewers watching on the site.

Any idea how I can set this up? I don't think a normal Apache proxy pass will do the trick, because of the streaming video and the need for a single connection from my house to the server.

I know there are services like Justin.tv that let you broadcast your webcam, but their setup doesn't allow me to control the rotation and zoom of the camera, and I don't like having ads on it.

Thanks!

Answer 1

Assuming you are using a PC, what you need is Yawcam. It has a ton of features, but the main one you will use is the ability to stream the video feed on a webpage. If you use this in conjunction with DynDNS as mentioned by @Wezly, you will have a static webpage that you can give out with the video feed in the middle.

Other features (from the site):

• Video streaming
• Image snapshots
• Built-in webserver
• Motion detection
• Ftp-upload
• Text and image overlays
• Password protection
• Online announcements for communities
• Scheduler for online time
• Time lapse movies
• Run as a Windows service
• Multi languages

---

Screens: (more here)

People viewing the stream:

View from a webpage (customisable):

Stream settings page:

Answer 2

I don't think you'll find an all-in-one service that can do this for you. You might end up spending more money trying to purchase the hosting etc than simply upgrading your broadband package.

One great tool you may be aware of is DynDNS; it allows your router to notify the DynDNS service of your current IP whenever it changes, and could allow people to access your webcam from a custom URL. They provide a trial service here:

http://dyn.com/dns/dyndns-pro-free-trial/