Mowecam: Mobile Web Camera

David Kaspar — Mon, 04 Jul 2005 13:15:15 +0000

Update
Visit the Mowecam support forum to ask any questions.
What is it
Mowecam is a J2ME experiment with a camera enabled mobile phone and a publicly accessible web server.
The application takes periodical snapshots from the mobile phone camera and posts them to a web server.
The latest image is then avaible for inclusion in a web site, for example a web log (blog).
The usages are the same as for a standard web camera and can include security, watching a party progress, weather, baby monitor and many more.
Mowecam enjoys the freedom of not being dependent on a computer, nor any hard wired Internet connection. If you are within GSM network reach you can start broadcasting photos from your location.
Requirements
A modern Java enabled mobile phone with a camera.
The mobile phone needs to support the Mobile Media API (and being able to take snap shots which excludes SonyEricsson T610 and T630).
Mowecam has been developed and tested on SonyEricsson K750. There will be problems on other mobile phone models but many of them can be worked out if you let me know.
Usage
First of all download the application to your computer and install it as you normally do. This may be via infrared, Bluetooth or similar. Certain phones require both the jad and the jar file, others require the jar file only.
Due to tighter security in the new J2ME version, you will be asked to confirm when the application is about to take a snapshot and when it is trying to connect to the internet. Check the manual of your phone to find out how to change the permission settings for Mowecam to “ask once only” (or else it will not be able to send images without you confirming it can go online).
Go to the settings page and enter a unique key. This will later be used to identify your image when you retrieve it via a browser. An email address is often unique and I recommend to use just that. If you are worried about the email address ending up somewhere where you don’t want it (a spam data base), add a few letters or numbers to it. FYI, the unique keys are not stored anywhere, instead a hash is being used.
The other setting is URL endpoint which is where the mobile phone will post images. Use the provided URL: http://www.davidkaspar.com/mowecam/postimage.php (this is the default URL in the application). If you have your own web server you can instead upload the post image PHP script (below) to your own server and the postage images will stay there.
The refresh rate is in seconds. Please note that each image is around 5KB and will incur costs on your mobile bill unless you are on an unlimited data plan.
Use the following code to include the image in a HTML page: . Replace [unique_key_here] with the unique key you have provided in the application settings.
License
This is the first version of the Mowecam and only binary code is provided (mainly due to the source code being in such a mess).
The code has been developed on Netbeans 4.1 and its excellent j2me development kit.
It is free to use and to distribute as long as this license notice is provided with the binary.
As always with free and beta software it is provide without any warranty and the developer(s) cannot be held responsible for any bad consequences of running the application.
Download latest version
Mowecam (This URL should also work for OTA, over the air, installation if you type in the URL in your XHTML capable mobile phone)
Mowecam: Post image PHP script v 1.0, released under GNU General Public License.
Credits
The application architecture is inspired by Midlog made by Rawsocket.
The application is using a hash algorithm from www.partow.net
The application is using Base64 code from kobjects.org

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Mowecam: Mobile Web Camera