Insignifica Webcams

I've always been fascinated with webcams - the concept of anyone on the internet being able to see certain exhibitionists, as they do something, anything, or nothing, intrigues me. I got my first webcam shortly after getting my first non-hand me down PC back in 1996. It was a black and white Connectix Quickcam, one of those eyeball-looking ball cams. It took the following picture, way back when:



It didn't take the best pictures, and my computer wasn't good enough for it to provide good video, but I was on my way - I had my own webcam on the internet! I had an "always on" connection to the internet 2/3rds of the way through my freshman year of college and afterward, as well as web space, so the cam was born. My roommates weren't particulrly happy with being on cam all the time, however, so I had to take care to only point it at myself. At some point in 1998 I purchased a color Connectix Quickcam. It took marginally better pictures:



At least they were in color. I packed up the old black and while model, and only used it occasionally, for projects, testing, etc. I think I ended up giving it to a friend of mine, and I haven't seen it since. It didn't matter; I was using the color cam now. It was also cool because it's outer casing was black, as opposed to the old one, which was white. That was cool, for some reason. Living with friends and girlfriends meant that I didn't have the cam on all the time; I did have it on quite a bit in college though, offering updated stills (like I have now) as well as "server push", an interesting web technology that sent pictures as quickly as the host and client could handle. The downside to this was that they were pushed from my computer directly to the end user, meaning my computer and connection had to handle the various streams. The updated stills were (and still are) uploaded to my server every 30-90 seconds, and end users plucked them from the server.

The Color Quickcam died sometime in late 2000 or 2001, and became permanently out of focus. It would also, occasionally, "flash" different colors, brighten/darken automatically, or stop working all together. While artsy, it wasn't very useful as a webcam. Eventually, I decided to cannibalize it, to see how they worked. They were basically a very small camera/lens unit attached to a circuit board, with a good number of wires leading off into the "main" cable that plugged into the computer. The spherical shell was just for show, it could have been in a considerably smaller package. About the same time, I remembered a novelty sipper cup I had gotten in Las Vegas, at the Star Trek Experience. It was the head of a borg. It was crafted from molded soft plastic, and was hollow. Inspiration struck, and the BorgCam was born:



The Borg head had an "eyepiece" that looked like a camera lens anyway, I cut it up and affixed the lens/circuit board into the hollow space via a hole in the bottom. I had to fudge with it quite a bit to get it to stay, but eventually it did, though slightly rotated off-center. It had all the earlier malfunctions of the Color Quickcam, plus some new ones (it would often just stop working for no particular reason, then start again weeks or months later). It was artsy, in a technological kinda way, so I started calling it the "Artcam" as opposed to the "Borgcam", also because you can't tell it's a Borg head from the image.

I still wanted a "real" cam again, though. Lucky for me I won some cash on Wheel of Fortune in 2001, and bought a video cam with some of my winnings. The Panasonic PV-DV100 Digital Palmcorder is an awesome digital camcorder. I knew, however, that I wouldn't be using it to film stuff often, there are only so many family gatherings, parties, etc. you can tape before you start getting annoy with either the cost of the media or the realization that you'll never watch them. I wanted the cam in case there was something I needed or wanted to tape, however, and since I wouldn't be using it most of the time, I turned it into a webcam. Here's a picture of that cam:



It took very nice pictures:



In February of 2002, Frys was selling cheap webcams with silly rebates, making the cost around $5 after mail-in rebate (I wonder if I'll ever get those...). I purchased four - very simple video input technology, but the price was right. One went up immediately as the CheapCam, and one went to work as the WorkCam. I now had four cams on the site; the Livecam (the Pv DV100), the Artcam (the Borg head/old Color Quickcam), the Cheapcam, and the Workcam. My friend and boss Joe decided he wanted one also, so I put one of my other new cams into his office, to round out the cams that I have on insignifica.org now. While in his office, it was often pointed at me, and at the very least was in the office next to me, so I felt inclined to put it up on my site). The forth new cam purchase went to Chris Clark, and is up as his workcam.

What does the future hold for webcams on insignifica? I have no idea. I'm not opposed to getting more, I like the whole idea of very cheap, almost disposable cams for quantity's sake. As soon as I move into my own place, I'll likely spread the current ones out a bit, maybe put one pointing outside my front door, into my garage, out my window. I'd also like to build more Borgcams and some artcams that do different stuff.

Feel free to send any comments or questions to michael@michris.com. Thanks for reading.