There are so many sites that claim have the same products or services we offer. If you are smart enough to notice the people who copy our stuff rarely have detailed pictures of products or have web pages that constantly change and worse, copy our content. Anyway our cam was down due to our move to our new shop. When we rewired the network and upgraded the servers, more cam issues cropped up. It has been down for over a year. Finally here we are in September of 2006. The cam allows you to look around the place and see us build stuff. This cam had something like 60,000 hits before it was put offline.
Equipment: Originally back in 1996, I used a Vicam USB ( which is now owned by 3Com) with the optional lens pack as a back up and did use and never will again a Supercircuits PC33 camera.The Super Circuits camera broke after 2.5 years of use. Supercircuits would not even cut me a break being only 6 months out of the warranty. They couldn't repair it and wanted to charge me $75.00 to send it to back to Taiwan just to get inspected. A warning to all people purchasing products from companies whose main product source is overseas with no way of making repairs domestically.It only cost $160.00 new. When you think of the small costs just to stock and swap out circuit boards in a camera you have to wonder were these idiots are coming from. We all know how cheap this stuff is and I can't imagine wasting time and money shipping cameras back to Taiwan when one can just swap out a circuit board locally probably less than the $75.00 inspection fee. The reason they do send stuff back to Taiwan is because they send alot of it back... get the picture? As of 2006 I am now I'm running a Panasonic Video Camera, purchased new for $73.00 on Ebay. It is hooked up to a AXIS 240 4 port video server pushing images to you, directly from our internal network. Watch out for more cams in the near future.
Software History and Extras: Everything I learned about cams I learned on the web. I went with Webcam32 software originally. The Streaming Cam uses a Transit RCM ( Robotic Camera Mount ) from Surveyor Corp. We use a pretty standard JPeg server push javascript routine. The RCM is currently not working due to crappy support from this company, which let their website go along with support of Webcam32 and the Transit RCM. You can't even call them up on the phone anymore! I'll get it all worked out in the next few months. Anyway, this allowed you to move the cam around the shop. I liked the demo version and ease of use. For some reason I cannot get the Axis server and RCM to communicate with one another. The people at Surveyor are clueless as well.
Cam Concept: For years people loved to hang out in the shop and watch me build transmissions. The problem is that it gets a little crowded at times, and I have to worry about some idiot sueing me if he trips over a transmission case. The BenchCam solves this dilemma and also is educational. You may pick up a few tricks of mine and may also see your very own transmission being built on the web. I also don't feel so lonely in the back of the shop and have started to shave more often.
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