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Help: How would you put a webcam on a truck and stream it’s output to the web?

Screen shot 2010-12-22 at 17.55.47.png

A good friend of mine is intro trucks. Big, big, big into trucks. So much so that he runs the highly popular Truckblog.co.uk site.

Ben’s got a question for you all. Any suggestions? Have a read:

Ar Mr MacLeod, I have some thing for you and your technical wizard friends to think about. Is it possible to put a webcam in a truck that delivers goods all over Europe and stream it live onto www.truckblog.co.uk for free or a very small cost? Now I know we can put a camera in the truck but it’s the hardware and the streaming bit that’s confusing me.

Is it possible does any one want to help??

I know some of you are cyber and mobile pioneers so any thoughts would he appreciated, Ewan has my email.

Sorry to post this on here EM but you are the man!! I hope you and the family are all well and prepared for Christmas.

Ben

My initial reaction is that doing live streaming in Europe would be — frankly — an absolute arse, because of the crazy data roaming costs across Europe.

However it might not be too crazy to run some kind of webcam that uploads a photo every 10 minutes, or every 60 minutes.

Three UK used to do a mobile video camera that would work remotely — or that you could dial into from your video phone. However I think what Ben might need is something a little bit more automated. You could certainly do this with a netbook sat on the top of the truck dashboard with it’s webcam pointed outwards.

Our you could probably rig up a mobile phone — or an iPhone — to upload a photo every hour, provided you connected the phone to the truck’s internal power. That would probably work.

What do you think? Any ideas for Ben?

6 COMMENTS

  1. A mobile phone … or an iPhone? Seriously? You mean to say that a) a mobile phone can do it but b) iPhone is obviously not just a mobile phone, but something else, unique and special?

    How about this challenge: Help, how do you get MIR to write a half-decent article?

  2. There’s an Android app called Time Lapse, and a wide range of devices to choose from. The Sony Ericsson range have very capable cameras. Set the interval to 10 mins or what ever suits. It offers a range of 1second to 60 minutes. Hooking in Picassa or an email script shouldn’t be too hard to do.

    Though this option is no longer available in the UK. The 3 network “3 like home” is still available in Austria and other EU territories. This tariff would keep the roaming charges to a minimum. A pure data SIM with enough bundled data for this could cost in the region of €20-30 per month.

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