We are in the process of completing a nursery for our soon to be new baby. I plan to place a camera or 2 in the room for viewing from our bedroom with an extender.

I am trying to find information on a 3rd party add in for VMC that I can use to view my Linksys WVC54GA wireless camera. I would like to add this to my home network and view it over multiple extenders. What are my options if any?

 

Thanks for any help.

Kyle

You can use mControl. It has a limited number of cameras you can use, but the linksys camera is one of them.(but you'll want to double check).

mControl also lighting control and things like that. It works pretty good. Just google mcontrol, and you should find it.

mControl is a bit of an overkill if all your looking for is camera support.  I use NetCam which is a free Media Center Plug-in, check out the link below. (The dev will work with you on supporting your camera if it's not listed as supported)

http://mce-plugins.ch/

Thanks for the help. I have looked at mControl but currently I dont have any use for all of the other features. Thats not because I don't want to, just because I havent made that step yet. Eventually I would like to try my hand at the automation thing. For now thought the netcam plugin looks like a winner.

 

Thanks again.

Kyle

After you set it up, post back, just wondering how well it works on a extender (my wife is pregnat and I have been thinking of the same thing).

The cameras are ordered and should be at my house tomorrow. I will let you know as soon as I have some info.

Thanks

Kyle

I can give my feedback, I have used a Trendnet Wireless IP camera and a Linksys Camera with this program.  The program was a little slow to load but worked great and looked great. It also worked on my Linksys 2100 Extender however the video window was limited 320x240 regardless that my main Media Center Computer showed the full window at 640x480. This was a result of running 1080p on the Media Center and 720p on my extender. No matter if I selected the higher resolution of the camera on the extender is would still show the lower resolution. Besides that little anoying bug the program is really cool.

My cameras arrived today and I have had a little time to work with them. The netcam software was not able to accomplish my goal. First of all I was not able to get it to install correctly onto my Vista Ultimate x64 machine. It would error every time I ran the installer but after some investigation I found that my camera was on the "Does not work" list. I guess the WVC54G is supported but not the WVC54GCA.

I installed the mControl trial v2.1 and the camera setup was pretty straight forward. I get video but the viewing box is larger than the video and even at its highest resolution 640x480 there is still empty black around the video. It doesn’t prevent them from working it’s just kind of annoying and ugly. And this is just my opinion but I think the mControl interface is horribly ugly in general. A little bit of polishing would go a long way with the stuff. From my limited time messing with it and everything I have read about it I would say the functionality of the software is top notch but it could be prettier.

I will continue working to iron out all of the details but that is what I have so far. 

Update - OK so I shouldnt have been so quick to judge. I guess mControl is not fully functional on an x64 machine. So the ugly interface I was looking at is the mce 2005 version and not the interface made for vista. Does anyone know a timeline for the 64 bit release of mControl?

 

I too am in the Media Center (Vista 32bit) and new parent category and would like a video solution for the nursery. Netcam looks fine for my needs, but I'm wondering if anyone has an infared solution working, e.g.:

http://www.geeks.com/details.asp?invtid=NIGHT-WIRELESS&cat=VID

Since the primary time we want to look in on him is at night, can't see how a standard web cam will do us much good.

Thoughts?

I use the Gadspot NC1200 for the nursery and another for my 3year old daughters room, works good and also has night vision. I have done some simple programming using an Axis plugin to create a web interface to show the 2 cameras MJPEG output and can also select one or other by using the remote control arrow keys. It also works on the xbox360 (you can make the video bigger to fit different video resolutions). Was going to take the programming further, but havn't had the time.

 

The Y-Cam Knight looks to have a good spec and includes auto night vision, wireless and a good price, has anyone used this camera before?

mynameiskyle:

My cameras arrived today and I have had a little time to work with them. The netcam software was not able to accomplish my goal. First of all I was not able to get it to install correctly onto my Vista Ultimate x64 machine. It would error every time I ran the installer but after some investigation I found that my camera was on the "Does not work" list. I guess the WVC54G is supported but not the WVC54GCA.

I installed the mControl trial v2.1 and the camera setup was pretty straight forward. I get video but the viewing box is larger than the video and even at its highest resolution 640x480 there is still empty black around the video. It doesn’t prevent them from working it’s just kind of annoying and ugly. And this is just my opinion but I think the mControl interface is horribly ugly in general. A little bit of polishing would go a long way with the stuff. From my limited time messing with it and everything I have read about it I would say the functionality of the software is top notch but it could be prettier.

I will continue working to iron out all of the details but that is what I have so far. 

Update - OK so I shouldnt have been so quick to judge. I guess mControl is not fully functional on an x64 machine. So the ugly interface I was looking at is the mce 2005 version and not the interface made for vista. Does anyone know a timeline for the 64 bit release of mControl?

Due to issues outside of their control(zwave,x10,insteon,etc control adapter drivers), I would be surprised to see a X64 Mcontrol server anytime in the near future.  They do make a X64 client though.

I'm using netcam to see if people are in my driveway. It is kinda slow though. I wish I could put the stream in the bottom corner of my tv though. That would be a awesome feature.

Is there a dvr  option  that would  work in  visa media center?

Anyone found an app that works with the Linksys wireless cams yet?  MCE Netcam does not, mcontrol is a little overkill, and does not work 100% yet for me.  I will only show still pics, in a small box, not what the wife wants.