Add Public .JPG Address
Hello! I have a random usage question regarding adding a public webcam to SecuritySpy. There are two webcams in town that I would like to add to my list of cameras just for the sake of watching them out of curiosity and checking weather conditions since I work inside of a building inside of a warehouse which means no windows.
Anyway, there are two cameras that I'm interested in adding and they are both simple web addresses and the cameras save an updated .jpg file every five minutes. There's no login or camera information. Just an extremely simple web address to a .jpg file that updates from the camera every five minutes. Is there a way to add a .jpg web address as a camera? Is anything like this even possible?
The benefit of adding it would be that I wouldn't have to keep another browser window open and refresh manually every time I want an updated image.
I hope this isn't too strange of a question/request. I'd be happy to know if this is already possible.
Anyway, there are two cameras that I'm interested in adding and they are both simple web addresses and the cameras save an updated .jpg file every five minutes. There's no login or camera information. Just an extremely simple web address to a .jpg file that updates from the camera every five minutes. Is there a way to add a .jpg web address as a camera? Is anything like this even possible?
The benefit of adding it would be that I wouldn't have to keep another browser window open and refresh manually every time I want an updated image.
I hope this isn't too strange of a question/request. I'd be happy to know if this is already possible.
Comments
Best,
Justin
- In the Video Device Settings window, create a new network device.
- Set the device type to "Manual configuration”.
- Enter the address, e.g. example.com
- Select "HTTP” from the Format menu.
- Enter cameras/cam1.jpg as the Request
The main problem with this is that SecuritySpy has a minimum frame rate that you can specify in the Video Device Settings window of 1fps. So it will be requesting a new frame very second, which is wasteful if the actual image updates only every 5 minutes.
In a future update I'll see if we can modify this field so it can accept a fractional frame rate, so that you can specify, for example, 0.1 fps for 1 frame every 10 seconds and so on.
The current lowest option of 1fps means I'm making 60 queries to that URL for every image update. At some point I'd think state IT people might make notice of the excessive requests from my IP address. Yes, this is probably an unusual use case, but it would be a welcome feature addition.
You may recall I had a question awhile ago about frame limiting a remote Foscam that was being graciously hosted on a neighbor's wifi (therefore needing bandwidth conservation), but I solved it via a supported Foscam custom URL query. Having that built in as a standard SS option for all cameras would be useful.
Thanks.