I originally started thinking about setting up a web accessible video camera about four or five years ago.

Among the things I wanted to use the camera for was to view our horses over the Internet while away from home.  Being the techie that I am I thought setting up an standalone video camera that I could use over the Internet would be really cool thing to do as well. 

The day my cable company drove up one lovely afternoon to tell me they were now taking orders for high speed cable Internet was a glorious day indeed. No more nasty, slow, expensive satellite Internet for me.  Now I had a beautiful limitless web world before me full of video possibilities, large file downloads and who knows what else. 

After researching the topic at length I took the plunge and I purchased a network video camera.  I settled on the wireless Linksys DCS-2100+ MPEG-4 camera.  It had purportedly good video quality, was wireless, and most importantly did not cost a lot of money.   Of course, what you might consider a lot of money might be different than my idea at the time.  I think the camera's cost was in the neighborhood of the $200-$300 dollar range.   It had a built-in web server had motion detection, and sound. 

The price and the fact that the camera was MPEG4 were really the biggest issues I considered. Incidentally, MPEG-4 is a video compression format which allows for better quality video requiring less bandwidth.  MPEG-4 is very useful if you are going to try to move video over a wireless network or internet connection and have it still look decent.

The wireless camera worked marginally well on my old 802.11b wireless network.  I used an Netgear wireless B access point.  The video was a little choppy and slow even 20 feet away from the access point inside the house.  I worked pretty well right next to the computer, which was near the access point, but nowhere else. 

Obviously, this would not do as I wanted a web cam for watching something much more interesting than my disheveled morning face staring back at me from an odd angle.  Beside that fact, if I wanted a simple video camera that plugged directly into my computer and only worked when I computer was on, I could have saved a lot of money by purchasing a basic web cam.  Instead, I chose an autonomous network video camera with built in web server.  "No PC required," was the sales pitch I think.

After moving the access point and the camera around the house for a while I decided that the image quality issues I was having must be a function of the network connection itself and not the quality of the camera.  I did upgrade the camera and the access point's firmware and upgraded the camera software on my PC to no avail.   Along the way, the camera died.  The lights came on but nobody was home.  I was able go get D-link to replace it but it took a while.

After getting back on the horse, so to speak, I bought a second WAP.  I chose the Linksys WAP54G (802.11g).  It was supposed to be fully backward compatible with the 802.11b wireless protocol.  My video camera was wireless b so this was necessary.  After installing this and configuring it I began more testing.  There was a little improvement in video quality but not much.

More web research revealed that I could swap the factory installed Linksys antenna for a third party antenna with more capability.

Linksys Wireless Access Point with third party 2.4-2.5 GHz 3dBd gain omnidirectional antenna

There are a number of different types of antennas.  One choice you will need to make is whether to use omnidirectional or directional antenna.  Without getting too technical, omnidirectional means that the wireless signal radiates from the antenna in a circular shape like a donut.  You would want this type of antenna for uniform wireless coverage throughout an area such as the inside your house.  However, if you want to focus the wireless signal, you would want to use a directional antenna to direct it toward something like a camera for example.  Directional antennas essentially beam the concentrated signal and also reduce interference as well.

After installing this new omnidirectional antenna, my video quality was superb!

Many hours of updating and tweaking hardware and softeare settings had finally paid off.  I could watch my wife watch TV in the living room while I was in the office with nothing more than a power cord to the camera.  My entire wireless network was much stronger.  I could even connect on my laptop from outside with a nice signal.

I never know when to quit.  Perhaps it is something with my childhood or whatever but when things are humming along smoothly it must mean that its time to take it to the next level. This camera did not look over my horses, my driveway, or my arena.

The camera was kind of boring and useless in the house.  I tried pointing it outside the window toward my pastures but things were so far away and there were inevitably buildings and trees in the line of site.   I moved it around from room to room and eventually realized I needed to be closer to the action. 

You don't really realize how wide your angle of view can be with a standard fixed length camera lens is until you look through it.  The things I wanted to see were unrecognizable dots in the distance and all that boring stuff such as my lawn was taking up the whole frame.

I did not want to watch grass grow.  Coming up next...Getting closer to the action, and more importantly watching horses.  Link to follow.

Links for more information:

Wikipedia's entries for omnidirectiona antenna, directional antenna