This picture is a typical at 640 X 480 dpi.
There are two webcam designs highlighted, the Axis 2100 network camera . - a great indoor camera that is also an HTTP server & FTP client/server ($285 - buy.com), and the video capture & PC combo.
The Axis 2100 network camera is a complete standalone solution. At the core of the camera is a Linux operating system with a Boa HTTP server. The camera with a static IP address can host a web page and send the image via FTP or E-Mail (SMTP) to another site. There are two modes of operation, sequential and alarm mode. Sequential mode is used for continuous image uploads/display. The alarm mode, when integrated with sensors (motion, infrared, door contact, etc.), only uploads an image during an alarm condition.
The video capture & PC combo WebCam is relatively simple and cheap. The major components that make this work is the video grabber [Hauppauge ImpactVCB video capture board Model 64405, ($66 w/shipping) http://www.hauppauge.com/html/impact.htm ] and the Dorgem Webcam is free[ http://dorgem.sourceforge.net/ ]. Dorgem is a webcam capture application for Windows 9x and up. Any Video for Windows compatible webcam (or other digital camera) is supported. The Dorgem software recognizes "the camera" as Hauppauge Win/TV video capture driver.
Another component is the video camera. Since this WebCam is just being used as a test, the camera being used is an RCA VHS-C Model CC180 camcorder. When you take the tape out, the camcorder acts as a video camera. The camera is believed to have 215K pixels (lost the manual). If you are going to do this more professionally, get a better camera. The picture shown is 640 X 480 pixels = 307.2 K pixels. So part of the image is being interpolated.
Philips LTC 0450 ($250.20) seems like a decent camera, Environmental Operating Temperature: -20 °C to +50 °C (-4 °F to +122 °F). They put heaters in the outdoor enclosures for all cold temps. There are many other cameras (Toshiba IK-643A $222.00, Panasonic WVCP244 $179.00, Sony SSCDC314 $184.00) with good specs.
The video grabber can be used to make digital videos. But watch out, a 20 second 320X240 video, 30fps takes up 46 MB (15 bit color), AVI file. Using 25 frames per second, 320X240 pixels, YUV12 compression, you can fit an hours worth of video (< 600 MB) on a CD in MPEG-1 format. Small, but looks OK.Follow this link to get to our corporate home page!