Use Laptop Cam On BI?

[Illya_Kareoke]

It just occurred to me that it would be cool if I could use my forward facing laptop cam with BI. I have a hidden SSD so if someone did break in and take my server, it would get them on cam.....just a thought.

 

[Kawboy12R]

Yep. There is an option for usb camera for type.

 

[Illya_Kareoke]

Thanks Kawboy, that was easy.

 

[Kawboy12R]

Oh, now that I think it over more, my advice assumes that the laptop is the computer running BI. I think it has to be a local USB cam. I've done it on my current server to have a cam in the computer room and I've run BI on my laptop and used the built-in cam in addition to the network cams. I'm not sure how to use a separate server to record a separate laptop cam over the network. I haven't tried to do that yet. I'm not saying it can't be done but I haven't tried it and my previous advice doesn't apply.

 

[JMartin]

I did the local laptop cam with Blue Iris running on the local laptop when I was first investigating BI.
But now that you mention it... I think I'm going to add a simple USB webcam to my server in the studio now that I've committed to it... not a bad idea.

 

[Q™]

There are several utilities out there which you can run on your laptop which will allowit to server a usb type can and probably a builtin laptop cam, such as...

http://www.yawcam.com/get.php

http://www.icamview.com

Icamview probably isn't what your looking for but a little Google work will get you what you need.

 

[Illya_Kareoke]

All I know is it worked on my Surface 3 being used as a server. I run 2 fps so the CPU load isn't too bad.