» Blog Archive » How To Embed A Linksys Wireless-G Internet Home Monitoring Camera

How To Embed a Linksys Wireless-G Internet Home Monitoring Camera

18th June 2008, 08:00 pm

It seems many people are searching Google for the code to embed a Linksys IP camera into an html web page. I did this using the Linksys cab file and embedded it basically the same way they did on their user interface. In this example I am using a Linksys WVC54GCA camera. I am also assuming your camera is up, functional and you know the IP address. If you are planning on accessing it through a firewall, you will need to know how to access this and how to configure port forwarding on it. Ok, here we go!

The first step is to download the cab file from your Linksys camera. You will want to place this in the same directory as your html document. Enter the URL listed below in your favorite web browser, and of course substitute the “YOUR. CAM.IP” with your camera IP address.

http://YOUR.CAM.IP/img/LinksysViewer.cab

Ok, now download (right click and save as) this file and edit it with your favorite text/code editor. Use that handy find and replace feature, and replace all instances of YOUR.CAM.IP with the actual IP address of your camera. Save the file in the same location as the cab file you obtained in the step above. Be sure to save it as an .html file so you can test it. If you have done these two steps correctly, you should be able to open this html file in a browser and see the camera stream. Now, you are able to build the body of your page or place this code in the body of an existing page.

Alright, so you have this working and you have your page all snazzed up like mine. The next challenge is to setup a dynamic DNS service, since most consumer DSL and Cable Internet subscriptions do not have static IP addresses assigned. This Linksys camera includes a free trial subscription to a dynamic DNS service, but I opted to use one that is free and does not expire (no-ip). Whatever you chose to use, should provide a name. (ie: blahblah.no-ip.org) You will now need to edit your html page again and replace all instances of your internal IP address with this dynamic DNS name.

Next you will need to setup port forwarding on your firewall/router. The standard web port is 80. If your ISP blocks incoming requests on port 80, you will need to use the alternate web port feature found in the camera admin interface. On your firewall interface you are looking for a screen that is maybe labeled virtual server setup, port forwarding or pass through. In this setup you will tell the router to direct incoming traffic through the firewall to the internal IP address of your camera.
Firewall Passthrough Rules
Assuming you already have a web hosting account somewhere, you should now FTP both the html document and the cab file up to your hosting provider. Call a friend or connect to your neighbor’s unprotected wireless and test out your new URL. You will probably not be able to test this out while on the inside of your network because of the dynamic DNS pointing back to the external IP of your router. Your request packets are not originating from the outside, therefore the router will not redirect them back to the internal IP. Well any way, test this from some other internet connection. If you have gone through these steps correctly, you now have a web page with your embedded Linksys IP based camera stream that will open on an Apple, Windows and Linux browser.

8/6/08 Update
While working with Mike (comment below) I discovered that the text file I have posted above needed to be changed (beyond the find and replace) if the camera was using the alternate web port. The mpeg stream would not work in Internet Explorer with :1024 assigned in the IP variable. I have made a change to the text file, which should allow you to use find and replace as posted above. Keep in mind if your ISP, in Mike’s case Comcast, blocks port 80 (inbound) you must use the alternate port cam feature. When you do your find and replace the IP will look like this xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx:1024 or whatever the alternate port is. We got’er done though and Mike now has a critter cam on his site.

Good Luck!

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181 Comments

RikTek:

Thanks for the post. I have mine working when the file is on my computer, but when I send it up to my web host I get a java script error and no video. I have replaced the local IP with my router external IP, and opened port 80 into my local cam IP, but it still does not to work. Any help would be great. I sort of lost you on that dynamic DNS part, but it should work with my router IP right?

Thanks,
R.J.
19 June 2008, 9:15 pm
admin:

Ok, so it works on your computer, but not on the net?

Verify the external IP of your router. Since you are not using a dynamic DNS service, you will have to verify your IP often. A dynamic DNS service would resolve a name to your home network, so even if the IP changes you can access it using the given DNS name. However using the IP will work, but you will have to check it and make changes to the HTML page accordingly.

Are you trying to view it from outside your network? The firewall pass-through will not work if you are already on the inside of the network.

From an outside network, type the IP of your router (external) into a web browser. If things are configured correctly on your router, you should see the Linksys admin page. If you don’t this could mean your firewall is not passing through, or your ISP is blocking incoming requests on port 80. Verify your router setup, if you are sure it’s correct you will have to use the alternate web port feature on the camera. Enable this to use 1024, you will then need to setup the firewall pass-through on the same port.

Just to be clear on this pass-through setup, you are specifying internal IP of the camera as the destination. The image I have posted is pretty poor, as my DSL router is junk. I will grab a screenshot of a Linksys and post it the next time I am on one.

Good luck!
20 June 2008, 7:12 pm
RikTek:

I got it, thanks for the help! I guess Verizon does block port 80. I set it up on port 1024, and added the no-ip.org client to my comp. One thing I don’t like is when people are on my cam, my internet slows to a crawl! So I unplug it when I game.

Kick A$$ Help!
25 June 2008, 8:58 pm
Glen:

This worked fine once I got an html editor.

I think this is using the mjpeg and not the mpeg4 for streaming? If this is correct is there a way to change the html file to use the mpeg4 instead?

regards,
26 June 2008, 3:53 pm
admin:

I should have mentioned, you can use notepad.exe. When you save the file if it saves as a .html file, you can right click and select open with notepad.exe. NVU is a decent free GUI editor and Bluefish is decent free code editor, but notepad will work as well. Free is good!

As for the mpeg/jpeg question, there is a variable you can set on line 24 (var vmode = “mpeg”;). It looks like the file I posted is already set to mpeg.
Change var vmode = “mpeg”; to var vmode = “jpeg”; if you wish to switch it to jpeg. You can see a bit further down if the variable is set to ‘jpeg’, the camera path is set to ‘/img/mjpeg.cgi’ If the variable is set to ‘mpeg’, the camera path is ‘/img/video.asf’.

I hope this helps,
Mark
26 June 2008, 4:50 pm
Darrin J. Calcutt:

How about helping me with my WVC200 camera?
2 July 2008, 7:48 pm
admin:

I don’t have that cam and I can’t seem to get to your link. Here is what you can try:
View your video using the Linksys page.
View the source code, copy and paste it to an html file on your desktop.
Do a search for .cab, make note of the path.
If the path is /img/viewer.cab then enter http://Your.Cam.Ip/img/viewer.cab in your browser
Save the cab file to the same location as the file you created with the copied code.
Open this file in your browser, if it works, you can now start removing html code from the body of the file. Leave the header code alone unless you can filter through the java.

I hope this helps,
Mark
2 July 2008, 10:37 pm
tbolt:

Can you give me some guidence as to why one XP machine with IE7 will stream video from the cam and another XP machine with IE7 will not?
Thanks in advance.
4 July 2008, 6:04 am
Ultra Technology Solutions - » Blog Archive » How to Embed a Linksys WVC200 IP Based Camera:

[...] posting the instructions on how to embed a Linksys WVC54GCA IP camera, I was asked to help out with a WVC200 (Wireless-G PTZ Internet Camera with Audio firmware version [...]
16 July 2008, 11:00 pm
mike:

I do not know how to write html. I got the cab file as per your instructions but when I put it on my web page nothing happened. Could you send me an example of what the html should look like with the cab file please.

thanks

mike
3 August 2008, 4:21 pm
admin:

Hi Mike the html file is already linked right off of the page along with the instructions of how to edit it using find and replace in notepad. Is your cam behind a firewall?

http://www.ultratech.us/cam-code.txt

Just rename the file to something.html then you will need to replace your.cam.ip with your internal cam IP to test it locally. Next your need setup your firewall if you are using one, and replace the IP with the external IP of your firewall.

Do you know if you are behind a firewall/router? If not send me the IP of the cam, and this will tell us.

Mark
3 August 2008, 6:42 pm
Ultra Technology Solutions - » Blog Archive » Allow Internet Traffic In Through Your Firewall For IP Cam Access:

[...] posting my how to on embedding a Linksys WVC54GCA cam into a web page and helping people with theirs, another article [...]
7 August 2008, 7:41 pm
Mike:

Mark, I really appreciate your help. If you’re ever in MD I will buy you a Sam Adams!
9 August 2008, 9:49 am
Marijke:

With this code the cam only works on my pc but not on the net. Am I using the wrong IP number? I have a static IP number. (85.223.*.*) When I use the cam with the linksys page it is working correct.

greetings from the Netherlands.
9 August 2008, 10:16 am
Mark:

Hi Marijke, I am not sure what the problem was, but please check your email for an attached file. I have it working here. Don’t forget you need that LinksysViewer.cab file in the same directory.

I tested it on both Firefox and IE 7, it seems to be working fine. Nice dogs by the way! You must have a pretty decent Internet connection as the stream was pretty smooth.

Take care,
Mark
9 August 2008, 10:40 am
Marijke:

Hi Mark,

Thank you so much for helping me…!! It is working fine now. I’ve put it on my website as a popup. Take a look if you wish: http://www.decibels.nl

BTW: I have a very fast internetconnection since last week. I’m on glassfiber-cable now and it has up and down stream of 100 MB/s. Also our TV is very fast now…;-) Just kidding ofcourse…but I must say the TV gives a very clear view.
Thanks again for your help.

greetings from the Netherlands.

ps: I’m looking to your cam many times but so far I was not able to see your wolf-hybride. Just curious to see him because we don’t have them here.
9 August 2008, 11:19 am
Mark:

Hi Marijke, I will try top lure him over (food always does the trick) and capture some video of him. He looks pretty mange now because he has a bunch of pitch on his back. He is a different dog, still very distant from people, but part of our family just the same. He is an outdoor dog for the most part, but does come in when the weather is extreme. My wife rescued him from some people who didn’t understand that he is different. I have attached a picture (in your email) of him (without the pitch).

I am watching your cam now, it looks like a windy day there. Your dachshunds look like the are having fun with each other. We are getting a kick out that one eating your flowers. My son thinks they are cute.

Take care,
Mark
11 August 2008, 8:17 am
Mike:

Mark
I just wanted to thank you one more time. I am really having fun with my cam. I think I’m going to get a second cam to aim down at the lake. I’ll let you know how it goes.

Thanks again for all your help,

Mike
11 August 2008, 7:42 pm
Mark:

Hi Mike, I have been on your cam a couple of times and finally saw some critters today. You have those squirrels coming right up to your door. Let me know if you need a hand embedding your next cam, it won’t take as long this time now that we know port 80 is closed. Keep in mind you will have to pick a different port than 1024, since the critter cam is already on it. You can use your same no-ip.com name resolution also, so you won’t have to set that up again.

Mark
11 August 2008, 9:22 pm
mike:

Hi Mark
I went out and bought the 2nd cam today. You said I could not use port 80 or 1024 to show the cam. What port should I use. Would it also be easier to put a seond link on my web page like you did for the first cam?

Mike
16 August 2008, 1:19 pm
Mark:

Hi Mike, try 1025, then you need to set your firewall up to forward that port through to the IP of the second cam. In your Comcast FTP interface you will see a folder called site. Within that you will see the cam file I sent up there. You can download that file, change the name and do a find and replace for 1024 to 1025. Then upload that second file (with a different name). You can then create a link off of your first page just as I did, but be sure to change the URL to reflect the new page name.

I will be on later if you need a hand, I will fire up MSN.

Mark
16 August 2008, 4:00 pm
mike:

Mark
I have my 2nd cam in thanks to your help. I am having a terrible problem with my cam monitoring utility crashing continuously. The cams take turns going dead also. Any suggestions. Is there an alternate monitoring software utility? I am using vista home basic and xp on the other computer.My router is a lynksys wrt54gs.
17 August 2008, 8:46 pm
Mark:

Hi Mike, your two cams have different IP addresses, correct? I don’t use the software that was included with the cam, so I don’t have much experience with it. Does the software crash with one just one cam running? Did you ever have the lock up issue before you installed your second cam?

I will be on the messenger for a while tonight.

Mark
18 August 2008, 7:11 pm
MarkG:

There is no need to use Linksys plugin to stream video in MJPEG format and/or limit browser to IE. The simple solution provided on http://www.jdotsoft.com/HowToWebcam.php.
27 August 2008, 3:45 pm
Mark:

Hi MarkG, the only thing lacking would be the sound, correct? Most of the time I have my sound disabled anyhow.

Thanks for the tip,
MarkJ
27 August 2008, 4:15 pm
Joe:

Do you know if this will work on the WVC54GC (not GCA) camera? I tried it but the linksysviewer.cab file did not appear to exist. I spent a WORTHLESS hour on online chat with linksys and didn’t find out a single thing!! Thanks, Joe.
28 August 2008, 6:33 pm
Mark:

Hi Joe, the file I have provided will not work with your cam, however the code should be very similar. If you view the source of your embedded video page and save it off. You can then start tweaking it, by changing the path as I have done in this example. The source will also reveal the cab file you need. Once you have the code working from a stand alone file, you can start removing the Linksys colors and tables.

“Would you be liking to ask the Linksys support more questions today sir?”

You can try this to obtain your cab file http://Your.Cam.IP/NetCamPlayerWeb11gv2.cab (replace Your.Cam.IP with your cam’s IP address) It has worked with other site visitors who have the WVC54GC.

Good luck,
Mark
28 August 2008, 7:01 pm
Joe:

Hi Mark, Wow! Ultra (pun intended) quick response!! Thanks, I will try that out. Joe.
29 August 2008, 8:12 am
Ultra Technology Solutions - » Blog Archive » How To Embed a Linksys WVC54GC Wireless Camera Into HTML:

[...] posting my instructions on how to embed a Linksys WVC54GCA camera, a few people contacted me about the WVC54GC camera. This cam is very similar, but lacking a few [...]
30 August 2008, 10:39 pm
JasonMR2:

Hello! First, thank you for posting your solution.

My page displays ok but there is an error on the page, line 19. It is not a big issue for me but I am trying to view this page on my iphone. Just wondering if you or anyone else has had success viewing cams on the iphone?
31 August 2008, 10:09 am
Joe:

Mark, Thanks again. I just started goofing around with the source from the cameras webpage and was getting some sort of error. I hadn’t gotten back to it and noticed you posted a new file. That one worked perfect! Thanks again, Joe.
31 August 2008, 3:56 pm
Mark:

No problen Joe, I think this cam is only going to work on IE. This is one draw back to it.

Mark
31 August 2008, 4:33 pm
David Manson:

Hi

Any idea how to get this working with the latest version of opera?

DM
1 September 2008, 2:56 am
george:

Hello – I can get this working, but it won’t stop asking me for a password on the page where I have it embedded. Anyone have any ideas? I don’t see anyone else having this problem.

Thanks,
George
george at dirtygreek dot org
19 September 2008, 9:22 am
Mark:

Hi George, I assume maybe you have the “Only users in database” option selected on your cam (under the Admin > Users section). Try changing that option to “All users”. This should take care of it. Are you able to view the video directly on your cam without using a password?

Mark
19 September 2008, 4:19 pm
Ben:

I’m unable to download the html code. It seems like the like is down… Could you help me out Mark? Thanks
25 September 2008, 2:56 pm
Ben:

Mark,

It seems like the link to the txt file with the html is missing. Could you email it to me or repost it. Thanks
Ben
25 September 2008, 5:11 pm
Ben:

Sorry about the double post. The first one was not there a minute ago.
25 September 2008, 5:13 pm
Mark:

Hi Ben, right click on the file and select save as. If ytou are using explorer it might change the extention to html, simply change it back to .txt

http://www.ultratech.us/cam-code.txt

If you try to open it in explorer, explorer tries to render the page instead of prompting you to save the file. I have attached it to this message for you. Open it in Word Pad rather than Notepad if you are using windows.

Good luck,
Mark
25 September 2008, 5:32 pm
randal:

to utilize the dynamic dns, do you have to have the utility installed on your computer and running all the time to work? I often have my computer turned off during the day. The linksys camera came with the tzo.com service and it seems they have a utility embedded in the camera to recognize ip changes. Can we use those setting to work for no-ip?
7 October 2008, 12:48 pm
randal:

The tzo setting does work. First year is free, each year thereafter is $19.99/ year. As far as I can tell though, you can have only one camera associated with each account. So if you have five cameras, you would have to pay that fee for each one. I think no-ip lets you have 5 hosts per account. As I travel, i wanted an option that would allow me to have access to the cameras even if the ip changes and my computer is not on. I wonder why linksys would make the DDNS settings within the camera propietary to TZO, or is it?
7 October 2008, 4:08 pm
Mark:

Hi Randal, i am not sure on that one. I was already using no-ip.com before I purchased the cam. I can tell you that your machine does not need to be on all day, or even every day. In the last month my external IP change only twice. What happens is when your machine is on it basically updates the no-ip name record with your current IP. The name will continue to resolve to this IP even it your computer is not on. Let me know if that TZO setting does work, as this would be better than having a client run on a machine.

Mark
7 October 2008, 5:53 pm
Marco:

thanks from italy tomorrow i try and so i post my site

grazie dall’italia
18 October 2008, 5:56 pm
Manny:

Dear Admin,

First, thank you for such a wonderful tutorial. It was simple to follow and implement.

I have one issue that hopefully you can assist me with. I have the WVC54GCA camera and I can see the video stream but no one on the outside can. Please try: http://www.enduroxsystems.com/camera.html

What I did: I setup the camera and configured the settings. I uploaded the LinksysViewer.cab along with the camera.html file (that I edited replacing all ip-addys with my no-ip.org addy that points to my home) into the same directory on enduroxsystems.com. I’ve opened port 80 on my router and told it to point to my cameras internal ip address. My ISP is NOT blocking port 80 and I’ve even tried port 1024.

When I visit the site above (http://www.enduroxsystems.com/camera.html) I can view the stream, but when a friend tries to view it they cannot and only get a blank screen. I’ve tried it on the computers at work and get the same results. I’ve also turned the power on and off during that time on the camera as I know it only supports 5 users (even anonymous users) at a time. Please review and assist me if you can. Thank you again for your time and any assistance you or a member of your blog and provide!

Sincerely,
Manny
23 October 2008, 9:33 am
Manny:

Sorry about the typo in that last sentence. I meant to type: “CAN PROVIDE!” instead of “and provide!”
23 October 2008, 3:02 pm
Manny:

I bow down to Mark for his unbelievable support and experience with this type of IP Camera Setup. He was able to pin-point my problem, which was me not having the default gateway and DNS server addresses set. Oops!

In case there are others out there with a similar problem. If you manually set the IP address of the WVC54GCA Camera, make sure you enter not only the IP Address, Subnet Mask, Default Gateway, but also enter at least one DNS server address.

Example Settings:
IP Address: 192.168.1.30
Subnet Mask: 255.0.0.0
Default Gateway: 192.168.1.1
DNS 1: 192.168.1.1
DNS 2:

Many thanks again Mark!

Sincerely,
Manny
24 October 2008, 7:32 am
Ben:

Thanks for the post. I have been thinking of how to input the video into a possible website but haven’t found much info till today. I actually have the Wireless B cameras from years ago. But all the coding is the same. I have 3 of the cameras, and a diff port assigned to each one, is that the easiest way to do it or is there a better way? Now on to how to make a web site using my dynamic DNS??
15 December 2008, 5:00 pm
Mark:

Hi Ben, yes I would leave them on 3 different ports and setup forwarding through your fw/router to each one. You can make the site as you normally would and host it anywhere, you then call up the video using your DDNS name in the html of the page. You may have a problem embedding all three streams on one page with this code, so I would start with one.

What model is your cam?

Good luck!

Mark
15 December 2008, 5:16 pm
John Traynor:

Hi Mark. I just tried this and am having a hard time. The HTM

I am away from home but my cam is accessible

I can send you my parameters if you don’t mind?

Thanks

John
31 December 2008, 5:07 pm
Antimidas:

Thanks for the easy to follow tutorial. We have had several break-ins in the neighborhood and I bought one of these cameras so far for testing. I had previously used the D-Link DCS900W, but that is no longer supported and I seem to have lost my installation media. But since it only handled WEP on 802.11b, it needed to be replaced to keep from having to reduce my security on my network.

My goal is to go purchase an additional 8 cameras to set up through the house for monitoring, but the obvious issue with cameras within the house is forgetting that they are there. One then runs the risk of mass publishing less than desirable material on the internet of one’s self (if you know what I mean). Nobody needs to see that.

I have a wrapper within my Joomla site that this code runs in. The menu link for it does not appear unless I am logged in to the site. But that will not keep users from getting to the page directly. Would you know how to secure that page so that only a properly authenticated user would be able to access it? Or would a better solution be to use the user database within the camera?
1 January 2009, 5:21 pm
Antimidas:

Thinking towards security, I have come up with a scenario where it might be possible to hack someone’s camera even if they do not follow the steps here to create a web page. I have secured my public pointer for the time being using a .htaccess file, but if the LinksysViewer.cab file is static between cameras, one could theoretically create their own web site that will browse for potential IP addresses and modify your HTML to tap into their cameras. All they would need is access to the CAB and the HTML file in a location they could access. they could then create a simple javascript to probe IP addresses for port 80 results that follow the familiar format and voila! Or am I overthinking in my paranoiac way?
1 January 2009, 5:50 pm
Mark:

Hi Antimidas, I believe you could pass the authentication through on a web page however this could be grabbed as well. Now when you say hack, you are talking hi-jack your camera stream correct? They would not have access to the admin side of things without that proper authentication. I did have a guy who had my camera image posted on his page, I contacted him and let him know and he removed it. He even claimed that my kids running around were his.. LOL.

If you have “Only Users in Database” enabled and create a viewing user, I think you will be prompted with a login prompt. You could also use .htaccess to protect your html page, just to keep people from finding your home IP and poking away at things. Hey, I wonder if you make the realm nname the same on your .htaccess if you would only have to authenticate once, providing the database user name and password were the same as your .htaccess user? This way both would be protected, but you would only have to authenticate once….. that may be worth trying.

We did have the cam pointing inside for a while and the wife and kids got creeped out as you just don’t know who is watching. And yes you do tend to forget that people might be there.

IT sounds like you answered your own question.

Happy New Year!
1 January 2009, 7:33 pm
Mark:

John, I tried to email you, but it bounced. Go ahead and send your details to anyone(at)ultratech.us I will take a look.

Mark
1 January 2009, 7:34 pm
John Traynor:

Thanks Mark

I think I had a Java restriction which was causing me problems. Now I have the page up with streaming video, and I just have to pretty it up

Thanks again for your hard work!
2 January 2009, 6:22 pm
Mark:

LOL, thanks John, I didn’t even have a chance to help you. You figgured it out yourself! The fishtank is a great idea, there is always something going on. Do you want me to post a link to it under “links of Interest”?

Good job!
2 January 2009, 7:33 pm
Matt:

Excellent write up and example, thank you!

One question for ya though.. Any thoughts on how to extract a still snapshot (jpg)? I’d like to have a scaled-down snapshot on my page, with a link to the actual video stream.

Thanks again!
4 January 2009, 12:41 am
Antimidas:

These things are working out great. I purchased two more because that was all I could find at my local Best Buy. That puts me at 3 currently, but I definitely plan to expand to the full nine in the near future. The following information might not be appropriate for this site as it does not deal with creating a web site, but they might be useful to the others of you with cameras in a security configuration.

I did have to make a couple of modifications because I was recieving hundreds of emails per day. FTP is an option, but I like the ability to quickly view the video on my iPhone rather than having to check the FTP site every so often. Here are the cnages made to reduce false positives.

With the white balance set to automatic, the camera would periodically adjust itself for what it figured was the best reception. Using the administration web interface, go to the Image section and change white balance to the appropriate setting. I still get some changing of lighting conditions throughout the day which trigger the sensor, but far less than the default setting.

Under the motion detection section, click on Set Sensitivity Area and reduce the area within which to detect movement. You can set three detection windows per camera. I was able to block out pet movement on the inside cameras and plant movement on the outside facing ones. Now I detect and record every car going down the street, but not the neighbor’s flag blowing in the breeze. I have had no false positives during daylight hours.

While in the Set Sensitivity Area page, the default sensitivity for each detection window is 50% by default. I moved these to about 75% (toward the minus sign) which has helped tremendously with false positives from lighting adjustments made by the camera. I still get an occassional false positive and have not tested these settings at night, so I might have to tweak them to make them even less sensitive.

With these settings, I was able to configure email to send 5 seconds of video and reset after 1 minute of detection without getting bombarded with emails. 95% or more of the emails sent so far are legitimate motion event triggers.

I hope these help others who are using these for basic security applications.
4 January 2009, 2:54 pm
Antimidas:

Matt,

Concerning the creation of a JPEG. I am not sure how to do that, but I do see in the HTM code provided that you can change the size of the viewer window. Look for the following line:

id=”LinksysViewer” width=”640″ height=”524″>’+

You should be able to adjust the size there and provide a smaller video feed rather than the JPEG if that would suit your need. An alternative would be to use the security software to take a single snapshot of something interesting and scale that down for your use. Perhaps someone else here would know how to generate the JPEG each time the page is refreshed.
4 January 2009, 3:00 pm
Antimidas:

I found an answer to your JPEG issue Matt. From http://www.myhomeserver.com/?page_id=71

Snapshot image: Another feature that we really appreciate is the ability to get a snapshot JPG image from the camera by going to a simple URL. This was something that was lacking in the older WVC54GC cameras and was one of the most common questions on the Linksys support forums. This is a feature that is very handy if you have a cell phone or mobile device that does not support streaming. We use a simple URL format http://MyName.MyLinksysCamera.com/img/snapshot.cgi that takes the current image and feeds that JPG image back to the browser. This option should allow you to view a current still image from the camera, no matter what browser or device you are using.

You should be able to embed this in your webpage to pull a current JPEG. I am not sure about resizing it though. Perhaps that can be done in a call to the CGI.
4 January 2009, 3:37 pm
Mark:

Thanks for all of the info. Antimidas, post anything you feel is relevant. All information is helpful I feel. As for making the size stick, I wonder if you set it under the “image” section of the admin area if it would still for the snapshots also? I assume it will.

Mark
4 January 2009, 5:16 pm
Matt:

Wow – thanks Antimidas, good find!

The snapshot.cgi looks like it will work perfectly, it actually does return a 320×240 image, which is exactly what I was looking for. This must be the “pre-save” image that is presented to the user if they were to click the Snapshot button.

It’d be great if somebody with the skill level (i.e., not me..) picked up one of these and came up with some decent 3rd party firmware. I use the 3rd party firmware in my Linksys router, and I bet extra features you can get out of it would be quite decent.

Thanks again!
4 January 2009, 5:28 pm
Antimidas:

You are more than welcome. I am going to have to hack into it and see if I can find some other CGI goodies hidden in there. I hope I can find a way that it will let me pass the login parameters over from a trusted IP so that I can leave security enabled on the cameras, but use single sign-on from my website to pass authorization to the device user table. I am guessing that it is some form of CGI parameter that is being passed, but time will tell. My guess is that some of the less mainstream users of the camera have found a way to do this for subscription sites. Maybe someone out there has also found a way to turn of the ASP requirement so that the controls do not show in IE.

As for rewriting the firmware, that is way beyond me. I am a lowly IT Director and not a programmer. I bow to their superiority. I have several developer friends, however, that I will try to convince to take a look at it. No promises.

Assuming our benevolent moderator has no qualms, I have bookmarked this page to post any results to these comments sections. If he would prefer, I can mirror them over to my own site once I have time to do a full write-up on the device.
4 January 2009, 6:23 pm
Antimidas:

Have I said lately that I love Google? I have found a way to connect to secure vide without prompting for username and password. They are instead passed through the URL.

http://$user:$password@yourcameraip:port/img/video.mjpeg

Replace $user with a camera user name
Replace $password with the camera password
IMPORTANT – Make sure that there is a colon between the parameters and that a @ symbol immediately follows before the IP address or DNS.

Adapted from: http://mainstreetanswers.org/wvc54gc.php

I have not been able to get this format to work in IE7, but it works perfectly in Safari. Maybe my IE just needs to be closed and re-opened. Now the trick would be to encode it in a webpage so that it cannot be seen as the parameters are passed plaintext.

I will keep ooking for other tidbits.
4 January 2009, 6:54 pm
Antimidas:

Last post for the day. I promise.

According to Microsoft (http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;LN;834489), the functionality of passing user names and passwords through URL’s has been disabled due to security concerns. The linked article has suggestions for using cookies, Urlmon and Wininet functions for coding this in a way that maintains security, but your humble author does know have the know-how to do these. Nor do I believe that Joomla (my platform of choice) has a workaround for this browser dependent issue. I will try to pose the question to the Joomla and PHP communities to see if there are any suggested ways of passing this information in IE.

In the meantime, the only workaround for IE users is to provide users with the user and password and have them save them to their machine. Not a valid solution for my needs. Fortunately, my primary machine is a Mac and I am the only user of my site to have access to the particular pages.

For those in similar situations, Safari loads the video perfectly without revealing the username and password in the page even if the user right clicks. Perhaps they can go to their cache and see the details, but I have not tested that far. I have not tested any other browsers not mentioned in this post, so use at your own risk.
4 January 2009, 7:38 pm
Mark:

Hi Antimidas, since it is just you that will be viewing your cams youc could disable that IE security feature.

Find or create this registry entry and set the DWORD value to 1

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\ Main\FeatureControl\FEATURE_HTTP_USERNAME_PASSWORD_DISABLE

I am with you on finding a better way. I think you can pass it through as a variable in the html file. Notice if you enable authentication and view the HTML this variable var lpp = has a value and that value looks like a password hash. I have not tried this myself, but will if I have a chance tonight.

Oh yeah thanks again for taking the time to post. I have been short on time recently, so its nice when others step up and tackle some of the questions. I too am an IT director, but also do side work.

Mark
4 January 2009, 8:09 pm
Matt:

Well both you & Mark have done a great job digging into this camera’s abilities.

I have a weather station website, and ideally what I’d like to do is to be able to have a webcam image displayed there. Problem is, I don’t really want to open up the video to everyone, but unfortunately you can’t have it both ways, and I haven’t found a way to get around it. Ideally I’d like to be able to either have the webcam directly ftp a snapshot every x minutes, but would settle for it allowing open access to an image file hosted by it. Currently I’m trying to fudge the Motion Detection so that it always detects motion (with an interval of 5 minutes), but it doesn’t appear to be working that well.

Matt
4 January 2009, 8:18 pm
Antimidas:

Breaking my promise.

True, I could do that, but I would have to do that on every computer I use. As my job causes me to work from 16 differrent customer sites on occassion with customer’s computers, circumventing IE default settings is not a risk that I am willing to take. I wonder if I could use WireShark to read the hash in the lpp field and pass that through.

I did clean up your code a little bit on my implementation. They would be simple modifications for anyone reading this to make. The var dw_mpeg section has the URL hardcoded instead of calling the variable as in the var dw_jpeg section. I also modified the var dw_push for the time being to include the username and password. Is there a way to call the ipadd variable for this as well?

I wonder if the entire thing could be compiled as a single js file to hide everything in there. But that is me thinking out loud. As I said – not a programmer. My last programming experience was QuickBasic 4.5.
4 January 2009, 8:23 pm
Antimidas:

Matt,
I have a suggestion. Use the snapshot image as referenced previously and set your page to refresh every so many seconds. The code would look something like this.

I have not tested the above code, but that is my best recollection on how to do it. I am not sure how you would get a larger image though. Perhaps I will figure that out in time.
4 January 2009, 8:34 pm
Antimidas:

Ooops. It stripped out my html code.

In your html head, try using the following text in brackets

meta http-equiv=”refresh” content=”600″

In the html section, insert an img tag to point to the snapshot.cgi file.
4 January 2009, 8:35 pm
Mark:

Antimidas, you can give this a try. Log directly into the cam as a viewing user. Find the var lpp = ‘bWplbywpbnM6cnVzdGFuZzMwMg==’; (of course your hash will be different) value. Place this in the variable section of your html. This seemed to work for IE, but not Firfox. With IE I was not prompted for my user name and password. If you have your html file protected with .htaccess then this would give you a singled authentication with IE.

It seems to not be working in FF.

Mark
4 January 2009, 8:41 pm
Antimidas:

That worked for me as well. It does not work in Safari either unless you modify the dw_push variable to prepend the username and password. Perhaps there is a way to reconstruct this variable to pass the lpp value as with the other two variables? I will give it a shot, but I really suck at stuff like this.
4 January 2009, 8:54 pm
Mark:

Antimidas, I just tested my idea of using the same realm in an htaccess file and that did not work as I had hoped. Maybe you already tried this one. Maybe you could use a combination of your URL://username:password and the lpp hash in the html code. This way it should work with either browser.

Hey, by the way I just checked out your site. It looks great! I have one Joomla site still, but I have switch most over to Wordpress. My Joomla site nees some attention (http://www.craveguitar.com/)

Matt, I have code that will take the latest ftp image and rename it upon a page load. This would allow you to have the latest ftp image load on a page. Antimidas’s meta refresh should work just fine also, and would be easier to implement.

Have a good night guys!

Mark
4 January 2009, 9:10 pm
Antimidas:

Well, I have tried all sorts of things with the dw_push to send the hash, but apparently that relies on the asp to decode it and does not seem to work in Firefox or Safari. the only way to fix it for those is to include the user:password@ in front of the URL. As a note, when I load it with that code and right click, I have the option to save the mjpeg, but not to view source. So my solution would be to use the lpp for IE in the previous two variables and the user:password@ for the dw_push. At least that is my temporary fix.

Thanks for the compliments on the site. I don’t get to spend as much time on it as I would like and need to someday upgrade it to 1.5. The problem is the last time I tried I lost the database because it would not ocnvert and it is far too much work to re-enter everything.

I will check out your site shortly. If you need some assistance with it, feel free to email me privately and I will give you some assistance. I am assuming you are the admin of this site and would therefore have access to my email address. If not, let me know.

As for Matt’s issue, the FTP might be preferential for him as it should be the 640×480 image rather than the scaled down one provided by the CGI.

I am through with this for the night. All cameras are now dark anyway. And my dog is bugging me for attention.

Thakns for all the assistance!
4 January 2009, 9:21 pm
Mark:

Antimidas, in the html code you will notice that the lpp variable is tacked on to the URL for both jpeg and mpeg versions
"http://'+ ipadd+ '/img/mjpeg.cgi'+ ' '+ lpp+ ' '+ brow+ '">' +
4 January 2009, 9:21 pm
Matt:

I’ve currently got the snapshot.cgi inserted in my page (http://weather.mateo-f4.net). The problem is I can’t come up with a way to hide the address of my webcam.

Mark, I’d be interested in taking a look at that code and see if I can implement it on my web host (I do not use in-house web server). If I could only set a filename for the ftp upload from the webcam, and have it over-write!

Thanks!
Matt
4 January 2009, 9:21 pm
Antimidas:

Mark,

Yep. I did notice that. I was able to harvest my lpp value from IE. I modified the entry in the var statement and it works fine in IE with both options. I also modified dw_push to hardcode the user to make it work in Safari and FF. All options are currently working.

Matt,
Your best bet is to use the FTP option that Mark discussed in one of his most recent posts. You can then pull from there and resize. This will enable you to use FTP located on http://weather.mateo-f4.net so that the source appears to be local rather than to your home computer. Just configure the camera to FTP the image to http://weather.mateo-f4.net in a subfolder and then configure the page to load the image from that FTP location. You can specify the size of the image in the img tags.
4 January 2009, 9:27 pm
Mark:

Hi Matt, actually I think the FTP image is labeled with some sort of time-date naming convention. I have not had mine set up with FTP for a while. They do not overwrite each other, the images pile up quite quickly. I started this for another user on the WVC200 page and sent him the script to pull up the latest image. To keep things clean, I was going to add a delete funtion that would delete all of the older images once the most recent image had been renamed. This is done in PHP, so you should be all set.

I will take another look at the delete funtion and finish it up so you can see how it works. Other people might find this handy as well.

Mark
4 January 2009, 9:34 pm
Mark:

Hi Matt, here is what I came up with.

Create a directory on your web host’s server (img, upload, etc) place this file in it. You will have to fill in the full directory path, this is one from Godaddy.com. If you plan on having any other files in this directory, besides this and your images, you will have to add the file names to the if statement != (not equals). I would not, I would use an include to call this image into your main page. This is the directory you will want your images uploaded to also

Ok here is the code, BTW I am not a programmer either so please don’t flame me on my own site. If someone comes up with something better please just post it.

I could not display the code becuase Wordpress we stripping out some of it and trying to display the image. Here is a link to a text file.

Setup your cam’s FTP and give this a try. Let me know if you need a hand getting any part of this going I have it working here on my site and will leave it going. It keeps the images cleaned up, and always displays your most recent upload triggered by motion.

Click Here For Demo

Good luck!

Mark
7 January 2009, 9:40 pm
David:

WOW, this is just what I was looking for, number 3 on my Google search too. I see how it works, but I am not sure how to get that image into my page. I am not sure what “include” means? Also, anyone using this script, if you place it in a directory with a bunch of other files, you better have a backup, becuase they will get deleted! This one was my own fault, as I did not read your comments before I started playing. I did have a backup, so whew….. Anyhow if you could elaborate on this include, that would be great! Thanks for all of the great info!

Dave Small
8 January 2009, 3:04 pm
Paul:

Thanks for the great guide I have a question though.
Why does it look different in Firefox than it does in IE (ie in IE resolution settings, etc are visible but not in Firefox) is it possible to get it to look the same as it does in Firefox when viewing in IE?
9 January 2009, 5:21 am
Ipnotik:

Hello,
my problem is a continuos linksyviewer.cab installation request (as an activex control) into internet explorer7
what it could be ?

Ciao,
IPK
19 January 2009, 8:25 am
phil:

When i download the cab file and try to save it as html all i get is a bunch of garbage (not html), any suggestions?
21 January 2009, 4:23 pm
Mark:

Hi Phil, when I put this URL in my browser address field I am prompted to download. (http://YOUR.CAM.IP/img/LinksysViewer.cab ) of course use your cam ip. You could try a diferent browser, if you are using IE, then try Firefox. The other option would be to create an html link to this address (of course using your cam IP) then you could use a right click (ctrl+click on a Mac) and save target as.

Ipnotik, are you getting this on multiple machines or just one?

Mark
21 January 2009, 6:09 pm
phil:

when i put in the address with my ip it starts an automatic save of the cab file asking me to open or save it, i have done both saving the cab file and then again saving the cab file as an html doc. Same thing happens when i download it with fire fox. What am i actually editing? Is it the Cab file that is being downloaded?
21 January 2009, 6:15 pm
Ipnotik:

Hi Mark. I fixed the problem by replacing the cab file from my camera with the cab file coming out from YOUR camera. Thank you !
22 January 2009, 2:45 pm
John:

Hi Mark. Pardon me if I missed this but can I zoom / enlarge the video stream in my website?

Website is under construction, I am having issues with the background image and color…… Also appears different between Mozilla and IE. IE loads the media and camera controls and mozilla just loads the streaming media.

John
30 January 2009, 4:00 pm
Ipnotik:

Final result: http://www.ipnotik.com/Ipnotiks_space/Webcam_Meteo_Rieti.html

Thank you all!
31 January 2009, 5:12 am
Paul in KC, MO:

Dude .. this is working great, thanks for the post … got the embedded image working great on my site. I was working on this, and working on this, and frustrated, then and it all became clear with your post. Thanks a bunch. Works great with my Linksys Wireless-G “Internet Home Monitoring Camera” (WVC54GCA) that I picked up at Best Buy for $120.

I did add this line of html to remove margins because I have mine as an inline frame, and black has my background color.
15 February 2009, 2:13 pm
Mike:

Thanks for the article
Is there a way to embed this (without the sound etc controls at the top of window) and in a 400×300 size?
Eg on this page => etherington.com/eggs
currently at http://www.etherington.com/chickencam.html
Thanks
Mike
24 February 2009, 9:19 am
Mike:

Bit more ….. on firefox the cam seems to work fine (although I did not manage to download the file in step 1 from the cam.)
However in IE users get an error which I posted here => http://www.etherington.com/camerror.jpg
which says windows blocked the software because it can’t verify the publisher.
Any suggestions welcome.
Thanks
Mike
24 February 2009, 11:01 am
Erik:

Hi,

Mike, I had the same problem as you have, the partial solution fo me was te us the correct cab file. My camrea uses LinksysMLViewer.cab, and I forgot to change that in the html. After changing the message didn’t return ,but the camera also stil didn’t wok in IE. Firefox goes fine.

I also own a WVC54GC camera for that one i use another script also found on this site. This one only works in IE.

Erik
27 February 2009, 8:14 am
Erik:

Hi,

I ‘ve got my problems fixed, turns out Linksys ha changed their script a little (downloaded from the cam). After a littlebit of tweaking it works fin in both IE and Firefox. I can send the tweaked script if you like.

Erik
28 February 2009, 3:22 am
Mike:

That would be great – I have mine working just trying to fig out how to embed it in the page I mention above. In IE you get a big black box and a menu around it, in FF you just get the video. If I embed that in my /eggs page it will not work in IE unless I can strip the stuff around the video. My email is my name at the domain mentioned.
thanks
Mike
28 February 2009, 6:47 am
Paul:

Hi, is there any way to change resolution to 160×128, so when html page opens I have smaller video?
4 March 2009, 2:21 am
Ultra Technology Solutions - » Blog Archive » Providing Technology Solutions That Will Evolve With Your Needs:

[...] last modified time. For thos of you that are new and looking to embed the camera stream check out How to Embed a Linksys WVC54GCA in and HTML Web Page. Bookmark and Share: sociallist_9b4154b1_url = ‘http://www.ultratech.us/ultra/?p=466′; [...]
4 March 2009, 8:14 pm
Erik:

Mike, I tried to send you an mail, but it fails to reach you. probably I am using the wrong adress. Please send me a mail instead. The adress: info@design75.nl.
5 March 2009, 4:56 am
Daryl S:

Love your site. Very Informative.
We have our Linksys cam working well and viewable through the internet using a dynamic DNS name service. Our final goal is to get the streaming video embedded in our wordpress blog. We followed your instructions above and have the cam-code html working from our local computer with the LinksysViewer.cab files, but how do we upload those .cab files to WordPress so this will work in our blog?????
Many thanks once again.
-Daryl & Molly
7 March 2009, 11:12 am
Antonio:

Dear Mark

I tried to use user and password like this:

http://myname:mypass@192.168.1.115/img/video.asf

but it doesnt work.

Do you know how ?

Thank you.

Antonio
7 March 2009, 8:09 pm
Mark:

Hi Antonio, the ability to pass a user name and password has been disabled in IE for a while now. This Microsoft page outlines how to edit the registy to enable this ability. http://support.microsoft.com/kb/834489

I am not sure in firefox, have you tried both?

Mark
8 March 2009, 8:34 am
Mark:

Hi Daryl and Molly, well there a couple of ways to do this. On my daughter’s site I did embed the stream right in the blog. ( http://www.diaryforteens.com/mydiary/?page_id=79 ) I would need to reduce the cam size in order for it to fit in her theme correctly. If you look at the embed file you have working you will be copying *most* everything from between the <head> </head> tags and pasting into the header.php file (Appearance, Editor, header.php) I say most everything, becuase you don’t want the html title tag and the document type, as those should already be in the header file. You want to past basically the <script> tags and everything in between </script>. Next you will create the post that you wish to have your stream show on and paste the <script> tags and everything in between </script>. that is found between the <body> </body> tags. I think I put this write in the post’s body.

This might be easier to explain in an actual post, so let me know if this does not make any sense.

On my page ( http://www.ultratech.us/cam.html ), I simply made my html page look like my wordpress theme as I did not want to mess with my theme templates at the time. You will notice both streams access the same cam.

Let me know if you get stuck anywhere.

Mark
8 March 2009, 8:55 am
Mike:

Guys
Any ideas what has happened here? This was all workgin fine for about a week and now, for no apparent reason teh page won’t even load. The device is seen by the router, I can login to it wirelessly but the embeded vid in this page just stopped dead.

http://www.etherington.com/chickencam.html

Any ideas welcome
thanks
Mike
8 March 2009, 12:36 pm
Mark:

Hi Mike, is the blue light on? Several people have reported dead power supplies after only a week or so of use. Did you have your cam’s IP set to manual? If not, it could have picked up a different IP off of DHCP. If you can’t access it over wireless, you could try plugging it in to ethernet. While plugged into ethernet, try using the software that cam with the cam, this can help locate the cam’s IP if in fact it changed.

Good luck,
Mark
8 March 2009, 1:08 pm
Mike:

Yes I can login to it fine – it’s all on and working from the setup stuff – wired or wireless. I checked all the IP settings and all seem fine and just how I left them. It’s just from the web psge – it won’t even load. Really odd as I have not changed anything.
8 March 2009, 2:33 pm
Bill:

Hi All

I have been reading this thred and the ones on the linksys form and there seems to be a new version of the CGA version Cam and none of the pervious files work

By using some of all the different files and the one from the cam I was able to get one to work with the real IP I have yet to get it to work with the domain name but still working on it. (not really a code person so this is not easy LOL )

Just wanted others to know there is another version out there…. I will post files when I get them to work
10 March 2009, 9:55 pm
Mark:

Hi Bill, I think a couple of other people have mentioned that Linksys changed their code. I don’t have access to one of the *newer* cams. If you your’s is online, send me the URL and I will see if I can come up with revised code that will work with name resolution.

Sorry about the delay in getting back to you.

Mark
11 March 2009, 4:24 pm
Bill:

Mark

Please eamil me at the address your system has I am not ready to make the cam public just yet and I will send you the code I have that works local (modiffyed from the cam) as well as the cam addy.

Thanks
Bill
12 March 2009, 9:38 pm
Bill:

Ok All

I have a newer cam and the html code in the cam is different but Mark’s code still works. I was testing wrong so all info here is still valid. Thanks to Mark for all the good info and the help to see what I was doing wrong .
15 March 2009, 2:58 pm
Tony:

Is there a way to reduce or remove the thick black border around the video?

Many thanks,

Tony.
15 March 2009, 4:03 pm
Tony:

What I should’ve asked is, with the Linksys resolution set to Auto, is there a way to reduce the thick black border around the video?

Thx.
15 March 2009, 4:05 pm
Bill:

Hi Tony
I have to guess that what you are saying is when you set the cam to auto it is using less than 640 X 480 since the only time I see a black border is when the res is less than that.
I guess the real question is why is it less that 640 X 480 ?
17 March 2009, 5:38 pm
Noah:

What a great site. Everyone is so helpful.

My question is can the 5-user limit be hacked? I need to have at least 20 simutaneous users viewing the video feed. Is this a limitation of the actual hardware or just a stupid block that Linksys has put on their product. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks!
21 March 2009, 8:55 pm
Shex:

I wanted to thank you guys for all your comments and suggestions. i have a little girl on the way and both familes are in other states. i picked up this linksys home cam and it works great but i wanted a more user friendly interface. thanks so much for putting in the time to figure this out and helping our families see our new addition remotely. the page works just as it should!

Cheers!
22 March 2009, 2:21 am
Mark:

Hi Noah, I have looked for a “way in” to this camera’s setting also. I have not found any alternate firmware or SSH hacks for it yet. One thought might be to try and point your users to a proxy and then have them connect to a cam. I have not tested the limit, so I am not sure how it keeps track of the connectios. If the cam limits by IP addresses, the proxy will make the cam think all connections are from one IP. If this works, then you can either send out the URL which will direct your users to the proxy and then to your cam or you could embed the stream on a web page with the proxy chain URL. (exmaple: http://www.yourproxy.com/proxy.cgi?html40l&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.craveguitar.com)
I think you may find that the performace will be greatly reduced with 20 users. Using one of the free public proxies will also reduce performance, as they are hammered by hackers and kids trying to evade content filters…. LOL. If the proxy does work, you might consider setting up your own, and locking it down so it only points to your cam.

Another option would be to use the script I have setup HERE which will upload and embed the most recent image based on motion. You could crank your motion sensativity up, set your upload interval low and have a 60 second meta refresh on your page. Yeah, I know it’s not video and there is no sound, but it would give an up to the minute snap shot (when there is motion).

***********************
Hey Shex, congratulations!

Mark
22 March 2009, 7:05 am
Tony:

Hi Bill:

Yep, the size is set to Auto and there is a black border, which does not happen at 640×480. What I’m trying to do is get a smaller size w/o the black border as I want to view four camera videos from four different cameras on one web page without scrolling down. Thx.
22 March 2009, 9:26 am
Guilhem:

Brilliant article. Thanks a lot.
22 March 2009, 11:02 am
Noah:

After working hours into the night and chatting with linksys, I found that is IS possible to stream video to as many clients as you want.

After setting up Multicast in the Linksys Advanced Setup, configure your router to forward your alternate web access port (1024 default?), Multicast video port (2240 both TCP and UDP) to your camera’s local IP address. From there you need to embed this HTML code in place of your existing src:

http://Cam IP or DDNS Name/img/video.asf

No ports specification is necessary. Now streming to more than 5 users works like a charm. No audio, tho. Still working on streaming that as well.

Here is the full sript:

var msgVar=”";
function init()
{ set_Video(); }
function set_Video()
{
var cf = document.forms[0];
var vs = document.getElementById(“v_play”);
if (vmode != “”)
{
vs.style.display = “block”;
}
else
{
vs.style.display = “none”;
}
}
var vmode = “mpeg”;
var ipadd = ‘192.168.0.20′;
var lpp = ”;
var brow;
if (self.location.protocol != “http:”)
{
if(ipadd.indexOf(“:”)>0)
{
ipadd = ipadd.substring(0, ipadd.indexOf(“:”));
}
}
var dw_jpeg = ”+
” +
”+
”+
”+
”+
”;

var dw_mpeg = ”+
” +
”+
”+
”+
”+
”;
var dw_push = ”;
function dw(message)
{ document.write(message); }
if(isIE()) { var brow = “IE”; }
if(isNS()) { var brow = “MZ”; }

function doPlay()
{
if(vmode != “”)
{
if(isWin())
{
if(isIE())
{
if( vmode == “jpeg” )
{ dw(dw_jpeg); }
else
{ dw(dw_mpeg); }
}
else
{
dw(dw_push);
}
}
else
{
dw(dw_push);
}
}
else return false;
}
var is_auto_reload = true;
function reloadOnErr(obj) {
if(!is_auto_reload)
return;
setTimeout(“eval(‘obj.src = obj.src;’”, 800);
}
var is_admin = false;
function chkAdmin()
{
if(!is_admin)
return confirm(msg_admin_config);
else
return true;
}
function doStop()
{
if(isIE())
{
document.LinksysViewer.StopPlay();
}
}

Be sure to replace “http://External IP or DDNS Name” with your actual IP or DDNS Name!
You will also find a local IP address in the code (192.168.0.20), but I do not believe this has and effect, as mine is working great externally.
Hope all this helps to clarify.
Good Luck!
22 March 2009, 11:23 am
Noah:

Turns out it will stream audio as well. I had it disabled on the admin page.

:\
22 March 2009, 12:41 pm
Mark:

Hey Noah, great find! I just logged in to mine, it’s funny because even though I have seen that setting, I never even really looked at it. Setup > Options > Multicast RTP/RTSP (for others who may be looking for it). It seems also that using multicast should use less bandwidth than having 5 viewers pull down separate streams?

Thanks,
Mark
22 March 2009, 2:09 pm
Tony:

Hi: when I embed my video into my site, the video resolution always comes up as Auto. How do I set it to be 640×480?

Thanks – this forum is a great resource.
23 March 2009, 10:22 am
Daryl & Molly:

Hi Mark,
We got stuck attempting to add webcam into our Wordpress blog. There wasn’t a place to edit header.php. They have an option for editing the CSS but wordpress support group says you can’t edit the header.php. Thanks for your advice!
Daryl & Molly
28 March 2009, 2:54 pm
Mark:

Hi Daryl & Molly, are you hosting your own blog or using wordpress.com? If you would host your own, you would of course have full access to all of the theme files. Appearance > Editor Templates off to the right only shows your CSS file?

Mark
29 March 2009, 7:28 pm
Bob L:

Mark:

Thansk for the help yout page was very helpfull. I do have aquestion is there a way to remove the contol(s) are from the stream? I don’t want to see the size selection, etc…

Bob
3 April 2009, 12:23 pm
westoz:

Hi, great forum

Just a quick question.. is there a way to break the connection for any clients currently connected after a set period of time ie 60 secs of viewing the live stream. I was hoping to conserve bandwidth usage a little. Reducing the cams image settings to the lowest possible settings for ‘live’ viewability still consumes approx 500kb/s of bandwidth outbound to the WAN. Any help on this would be great. Cheers
4 April 2009, 12:54 am
Skeeter:

Great site, I just purchased my cam earlier today, in the past I had a veo cam linked to a web page, so I knew there had to be a way to do this with this cam, so im here. Whom ever wanted to remove the camera controlls from the video, its in http://YOUR.IP/stdlib.js, if you remove this line from yout html code, then the video will not load.
29 April 2009, 5:33 pm
john:

Hello Everyone,
Let me preface with “please excuse the noob”. I am building a site for a friend and need to position the video exactly within a placemarker and am struggling. The site is going to stream from a home “tiki bar” and this is my main hangup at this point.
Thanks a million,
6 May 2009, 2:40 pm
David Gibbons:

Hi John, why don’t you construct a table and place the code that resides in the body, which actually places the cam image on the page within one of the cells? This should allow you to place it where you need it.

I will checking in on the tiki bar when you get it up in running!

Dave G.
6 May 2009, 3:45 pm
Mallycat:

Hi, Like many people, I want to do this. However it seems that the linked txt file http://www.ultratech.us/cam-code.txt has some corrupt data in it. Does anyone have a clean version?
15 May 2009, 4:22 pm
Mark:

Hi Mallycat, use Firefox, right click on the link and do a save as. Then open it with Wordpad instead of Notepad if you are using Winblows. Notepad is not recognizing all return characters, as I have modified this using a Linux text editor.
Good luck!
Mark
15 May 2009, 4:49 pm
Skeeter:

JWestoz Just right click on the link you posted and select save as blahblah.html , then open that with notepad and edit it, save it again as .html
15 May 2009, 11:15 pm
Pablo:

Hi, I’m using the control NetCamPlayerWeb11gv2.ocx, I want to view only the image, without the buttons zoom, size selection, etc. Do you know how to manipulate the control ocx for do this.
27 May 2009, 7:15 am
John:

I used your code to put my aquarium on line. Thanks.

Now I brought it with me to Paris, thinking I could use it as a webcem. However, I don’t know if I can access it from my PC.

Are there any instructions for accessing it when you are using a hotel wifi router?
4 June 2009, 10:09 am
Lingnau:

Really great article, works like a charm, this was great help.
21 June 2009, 8:58 am
Fishman463:

A bit of help please. Followed your instructions exactly, but when I preview, I just get an empty page. The control is there, but it is blank. The cam can be accessed here:

http://fishman463.isa-geek.net:1024

I can get to it just fine on or off network, but nothing in the page.

Any advice you can provide is much appreciated.
22 June 2009, 9:48 am
paul:

FishMan I am getting video image fine.
22 June 2009, 1:39 pm
TB:

Fishman463 – your site works just fine – when using Internet Explorer a “install ActiveX” yellow bar appears at the top – you just install that control.

I would not point your camera at an indoor location without password protecting as you are now allowing the whole world to observe your home – please fix immediately. With Linksys you can setup Users with passwords and only they can access the video.
22 June 2009, 1:47 pm
Guilhem:

Hi Fishman463,

the URL you give works perfectly on my side.
We can see a table, a black dog and a sofa with a pillow.
Perhaps you can try it with another internet browser?

BR
22 June 2009, 1:47 pm
Fishman463:

Paul – I know – I turned it off just for this test.

Paul, TB, Guilhem – it must be my browser. I tried from another box and I can see it fine too. Will check settings. Thanks everyone for the quick responses.
22 June 2009, 2:39 pm
Antimidas:

I can see a picture as well. My guess is that you might be trying to use the same URL from within your network without a DNS entry in your hosts file to resolve to the proper internal IP. Or are you having problems accessing it externally?
22 June 2009, 2:41 pm
Mike Etherington:

Hi – I figured out why my cam simply stopped. I just used the IP address on the day I set it up and being dynamic it just changed. Obvious really.

One thing I’ve seen a few questions on is how you can control and “pretty up” the display. I have not seen any answers so wondered if there were any top tips on …

- controlling the size in IE vs firefox (see etherington.com/eggs in both and you’ll see what I mean)
- removing the black border in IE if you reduce the size
- removing the control buttons in IE

Appreciate any pointers.
ta
Mike
3 July 2009, 4:54 am
paul:

Mike has to be the way java is hanfled in each browser. My camera pages only show the buttons in IE and not in Chrome.
3 July 2009, 2:20 pm
paul:

One other note, the video seams to steram better in Chrome than IE 7 or IE8
3 July 2009, 2:22 pm
Mike Etherington:

Yes I realise this – the question is can I do anything about it. I don’t know coding well enough to see if the script provided allows better control by browser type – IE simply sucks with this.
3 July 2009, 4:10 pm
Mike Etherington:

Specifically is there a way to resize the resulting image to say 400 x 300 (ish) so that the video fits inside that same sized box? On Firefox it does it automatically but on IE the box resizes (When i change the dimensions in the script) but the video does not resize as you can see (etherington.com/eggs). It’s a bit frustrating – any help is greatly appreciated.
thanks
Mike
12 July 2009, 5:11 am
Chris:

Hey Mark,

This has all been a big help…but I’m almost ready to share with everyone but I can’t get the embedding to work.

- IP Cam (WVC54GCA) is up and running.
- Can view video from LAN and WAN addresses using localhost and my DDNS name to my home router.

Problem is…when I make the HTML file from your example…and I replace “YOUR.CAM.IP” with my DDNS hostname…I save the page…upload it to the webserver…and all I get is the page…with a box with a red X in it. If I go to the hostname directly…the Linksys page does open and the ActiveX controls install and we’re rocking…just not if I attempt to embed the control.
It’s not attempting to install ActiveX controls or anything.

Only forwarded port is port 80 to the IP of the camera on the LAN. I didn’t change anything else.

What can I do to fix this as I see your camera is working great.

Thanks a ton!!!
15 July 2009, 11:05 pm
paul:

Chris did you copy the CAB file over tot he same directory were you put the html? Also you can not use an internal ip (LAN) for your links, the external world (WAN) cant get to those.

paul
16 July 2009, 9:48 am
Adam:

I’m trying to find a way to upload the streaming video to my hosted site and let users view it from there. I have darwin streaming media server loaded but really don’t know how to set up the relay. Any help? Thanks. If this works it will be one more aquarium on the internet! Two actually when I get the big one up and running next week.
20 July 2009, 11:00 pm
Leanan:

I followed the instructions to a T, and it works beautifully on Firefox… but IE doesn’t seem to like it. I just get a box with a red x, no prompt to install anything, so I don’t think it needs active-x controls. I noticed that there was a change made, were we supposed to do something other than a straight search and replace if you are doing something like http://www.my-camera.com:1024 ?
21 July 2009, 11:09 am
knoxie:

Hi

Big thanks for the guide on embedding the cam, got it sorted in no time at all, had to change the port from 80 to 1062 but other than that it works just fine. You are right for the money this little camera is amazing, I have had no disconnection problems it hasnt froze or locked up once. The only thing that is a little flaky is the motion detection, the pop up window for the motion detection window only works in IE it doesnt show any info in all the other browsers that I have tried?

Also the detect a specific region doesnt seem to let you draw on the image to select a certain region? have you managed to get this to work? the help file doesnt really cover it? other than this slight gripe it is a superb cam for the money, the supplied lead was too short so I extended it to make the cam more usable in different locations.

Big thanks one more time for all your hard work, I recommend this cam to anyone, the picture quality is good and its still usable even in low light, I have been comparing it to much more expensive cameras and its picture quality holds up with them easily and they cost 2-3 times as much!

Cheers oh and if you can help with the motion detection slider and selection issue that would be great? maybe another tutorial oh by the way your back yard looks amazing, so pretty!!

Thanks

Knoxie
22 July 2009, 6:19 pm
paul:

Adam all you need to is create a web page and have a link to the camera, your firewall will need to allow outside access to the camera via port forwarding, I believe this is covered up above. http://www.gamblin.net/cams/front/

http://www.gamblin.net/cams/back

paul
22 July 2009, 6:57 pm
Adam:

Is there a way to send the stream to Darwin Streaming Media Server? I’m trying to set up the cam but keep my home ip hidden.

Thanks for any ideas…
Adam
28 July 2009, 10:14 pm
paul:

Adam, only if you use a domain name check out dyndns.com you can get something like adam.dyndns.com, of course all one needs to do to get the ip is to do a nslookup on the domain name and they will get your ip. for instance if you go to command line and type in nslookup gamblin.net you can see my ip for my web server, you can not see the IP’s of my cameras because of the routing or forwarding my router does to each camera.
29 July 2009, 8:50 am
Dago4sho:

HI, I used the tutorial above, worked great. I have a couple of questions tho. First of all, my camera is only working on Safari, firefox, etc… IE just shows a red x as if the cab file hasn’t loaded. Are there any suggestions for this? Also, as far as the DNS is concerned, I have business class internet. I’m not sure but I do believe I have my own static IP, I should be able to use that instead of a third party one?

Thanks.
11 August 2009, 5:20 pm
Mallycat:

I have used the code provided here (and some other code) to produce a pop up version of the streaming image (ie it is in a browser without menu bars, scroll bars etc. feel free to use and copy if anyone wants it.

I think I may have something wrong with the cam_popup.html file as it has some sort of warning message in the bottom left hand corder of the browser window. It works though. If anyone can tell me what is wrong, I would love to know.

http://matall.freehostia.com/cam.txt
http://matall.freehostia.com/cam_popup.txt

You need to edit the ipaddress data in both files to make it work
12 August 2009, 9:57 pm
Mallycat:

sorry, one more thing. the first cam.html file opens the second file cam_popup.html You then just need to close the first browser. There are some tricks to close the browser automatically, but I had problems with these with IE 8. Instead of mucking around, I just close the first browser myself.
12 August 2009, 9:59 pm
Dago4sho:

Is anyone else having a problem with IE? Cam works on Safari, and Firefox but no IE.
1 September 2009, 4:42 pm
paul:

If its not working in IE, its you security settings because the cam uses activeX controlls, mine works in IE, but I have much better results in firefix and safari and chome.
2 September 2009, 11:16 am
Dago4sho:

So, basically no one will be able to see this feed in Internet explorer without adjusting their security settings? There is no way around this?
2 September 2009, 2:53 pm
paul:

No some will see it, some may not, can you see mine? You can also put a note n the web site saying best viewed in Safari or what ever.
2 September 2009, 7:18 pm
DC:

Quite a popular thread here…
I still have a question about showing more than one cam on a page. Anyone have the html code for this?
Thank you.
16 September 2009, 4:40 pm
paul:

Ive tried it several different way and havent had any luck. But what I am thinking of trying it to embed 2 tables and link one table to my front cam http://www.gamblin.net:1025/img/video.mjpeg and the second table to my back cam http://www.gamblin.net:1024/img/video.mjpeg. I dont know if it will work but its worth a try.
17 September 2009, 8:28 am
Wamy:

Hi,
I’m currently trying to embed my camera in a webpage. Works great under FF, AND under IE using the ActiveX.

Here is my last problem :
On FF, only the video is displayed – no control etc.
ON IE, since it uses the activex, it’s adding controls and buttons that I don’t want !

I think that there is probably a way to give a or something like that, but can’t figure out where to find a list of the parameter…

Any idea guys ?

Thanks !
Wamy
17 September 2009, 10:01 am
Wamy:

whoops…i had some html code included in my post…, but it didn’t work

I was saying : I think that tere is probably a way to give a param name with value to false, that would hide those controls…?
17 September 2009, 10:03 am
Wamy:

Found the solution by my self. I’m actually using the Axis activeX, which is a lot better than the Cisco one.
Using that activeX, I am able to retrieve the feed from the Linksys camera and display it.

Wamy
17 September 2009, 10:51 am
Hoss:

First of all, thanks for the great site Mark! Your instructions work well for single cam setup.

DC…I am in the same boat as you. I have multiple wvc54gca cams that I’d like to display on a single web page. Displaying 1 cam is working great. Anyone have the code to make multiple cams on a single web page work?
17 September 2009, 9:09 pm
pedro:

tenia configurada la camara cambie el pc , al tratar de entrar nuevamente pidio instatalar el activeX y para mala fortuna la licencia que traia caduco y window no me deja hacer nada no puedo ver la camara que puedo hacer

vale decir que no entiendo mucho pero me aplico

atte
pedro.
de ante mano gracias por el foro que da una posibilidad de solucion
22 September 2009, 2:37 pm
Asad:

Hi,
Nice site!

Can any one help me, I have few cameras attached to my websites for live coverage. But they they are not visible in IE. First it asks to install a plug-in then says LinksysMLViewer.cab is not signed. Any Idea?
Thanks in advance

Asad
23 September 2009, 11:11 am
Asad:

here is the link of my site
http://www.asadinc.com/trans

Asad
23 September 2009, 11:12 am
Mallycat:

Regarding the cab file not signed.

This is an IE security setting. Go to Internet Options\Security\Custom Level
go to Download unsigned activeX controls and set this to enable.
Go back to the browser and it should install. Once installed, go back and reset this setting to disable.
I think this is the one. If not, try the other similar controls – one of them fixes this problem.

Matt
24 September 2009, 2:36 am
Roland Legere:

I have the WVC54GC not the “CA”
so http://YOUR.CAM.IP/img/LinksysViewer.cab won’t work for me.
So how can I get the code to embed a Linksys WVC54GC camera into
an html web page?
Old Nam vet who is totally lost here. Help?
3 October 2009, 5:37 pm
Jonathan Donnell:

This does not work for me at all, though by changing the code from your example (http://www.ultratech.us/cam.html) it works for me though I want to add controls onto the website i.e. move the camera left right up down etc.

Can you possibly provide me with additional support for this please. Regards Jonathan
3 November 2009, 11:45 am
Derek:

Hi, thank you for your assistance. It really is a great help. I have got the cameras working on firefox. However, I cannot get it working on IE or Chrome or Safari – can you offer any assistance on this?

Secondly, do you have a script to view more than one camera on the same page? Lastly, is there anything specific that eeds to be done to view this on an iphone?
13 November 2009, 12:53 am
Cormac:

I have two of these cameras, and individually they work fine. but with both switched oh they freeze the router. I have tried to change ports on each camera from port 80 with the software provided, but the changes are not being made to the camera settings.Is there a file i can directly access to hand code the changes to the port settings. Changes to other settings work fine but not to the port number.
8 December 2009, 1:43 am
Mike:

Windows 7 no longer displays my cam as it says it cannot verify the publisher and so blocks the image.
Anyone else found this? Is there a solution?
Thanks
Mike
13 December 2009, 5:59 pm
ovi:

Hey, can you tell me what is wrong with the camera, what is the black image on the upper half of the camera ?

Thank you.
16 December 2009, 12:42 pm
Mike E:

The new Windows 7 systems do not allow my cam to work – complaingn about the publisher being unknown so IE simply blocks it. anhyone else found or resolved this one? I use the linksys-cam.com dns thingie.
thanks
Mike
17 December 2009, 7:28 am
Jake:

Hey Mike Im trying to set up a simple web cam feed on a windows server, any chance you could contact me on msn and help me walk through setting this up? Its been a nightmare and Im hoping your code will be the final answer!
6 January 2010, 8:11 am
jerry a:

any tried this with the newer WC80N ?
8 January 2010, 2:25 pm
Kevin:

I’m working on a website and I want to change the height and width of the movie file. I changed it in the source and it doesn’t seem to be working… any suggestions?

Thanks,
Kevin
4 February 2010, 7:10 pm
Bill Cain:

Hello Mike,
I just found your site thru another place I was looking for info on my camera.
In your article you said “The first step is to download the cab file from your Linksys camera.”
Where is this file and how do I download it.
Everything else seems clear to me as to what to do.
Thanks for all the help on this.
11 May 2010, 10:51 pm
Mark:

Hi Bill, this is the URL. Use the IP address of your cam. I have heard that the URL on new cams might be different also.

http://YOUR.CAM.IP/img/LinksysViewer.cab

This is right at the very top of the page.

Mark
12 May 2010, 6:54 am
Bill Cain:

Hi Mark,
Well, DUH —
I read this on the site, but I guess I did not read it!

(http://YOUR.CAM.IP/img/LinksysViewer.cab)
Sorry to make you repeat yourself because it did not register in my brain.
/*Thanks*/ for your time and trouble. You have good information on your site.
Bill
12 May 2010, 9:46 am


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How To Embed a Linksys Wireless-G Internet Home Monitoring Camera

Linksys WVC54GCA Review

Our Linksys WVC54GCA Embedded in HTML

Our Linksys WVC54GCA Embedded Directly Into a WordPress Blog

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