Why did we go to a Paying Membership WebCam Site?: Well, to make a long story short, too many people were taking our webcam images and using them on their own webcam webpages. In otherwords, they were stealing our cam images and in the process using massive amounts of our bandwidth which we pay a monthly fee. After upgrading several times to higher and higher bandwidth hosting plans, it just got way to expensive for us to continue paying for on our own. Only a few of the outdoor webcams are now Free. The indoor webcams are now membership only webcams and can only be viewed if you become a member of TC HomeCam. All funds received will go towards paying for internet bandwidth.

Location: We live in the State of Minnesota, USA., which is south of Canada, east of North and South Dakota, north of Iowa, and west of Wisconsin.

How Did All This Start: Mostly as a home security camera system to monitor our home and property while away at work, on vacation, etc. Currently, Sixteen cams are now operating 24/7. Each of the webcams take a snapshot picture every 10 seconds

Computers Used: Three computers; all running Windows XP.

Webcams Used: 16 Creative Labs NX Ultra CCD..All of them are just USB webcams if you can believe that. In the past, we have used; Logitech Pro 4000 CCD webcams and also Creative Labs Webcam Live! CMOS webcams.

Webcam Placement: Upstairs Living Room, Computer Desk, Kitchen, Dining Room, Downstairs Living Room, Swimming Pool, Front Yard, Back Yard, and the Driveway.

Webcam Software: WebcamXP - (webcam_xp_v4.10_beta.zip). Before that we tried ConquerCam, SpyCam by Bill Oatman, and also WebCam32.

The FTP Connection: Just using a simple Cable TV Broadband Line and FTP'ing the webcam images up to the Internet Service Provider (ISP).

Computer Knowledge: Trust me, we know next to nothing about computers and were able to get our webcam experiment up and going after a very short period :) Basically, lots of messing around to see what worked and what didn't. lol.

Anyway: That gives you an idea of how we put together the TC HomeCam site.

If You Have Any Questions Or Comments:
Contact Email Is: tchomecam@charter.net

TC HomeCam
July 7th, 2011