Webcam security camera software that runs as a service

Posted by hurfdurf on Super User See other posts from Super User or by hurfdurf
Published on 2011-06-16T19:36:24Z Indexed on 2012/07/07 9:19 UTC
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I've been looking for Windows webcam software that will run as a Windows service without any user login. The goal is to use the webcam as a cheap security camera and log the results to secure networked storage (windows share, not FTP). The requirements are:

  1. Motion detection
  2. Video capture
  3. Runs as a service (should start recording immediately after reboot)
  4. Nice to have: Round-robin storage, e.g. 10Gb limit, oldest files overwritten/deleted when space gets low

I've read the other webcam questions but still haven't stumbled across anything suitable.

Evaluations thus far:

Title              MotionDetect       Service      Snapshots   Video   SpaceLimit  License
Yawcam             Yes                Yes          Yes         No      No          GPL
WebCam ZoneTrigger Yes                No           Yes         Yes     No          Commercial
Dorgem             Yes                No           Yes         Yes     No          GPL
AbelCam            Yes                No           Yes         Yes     No          Commercial
Logitech           Yes                No           Yes         Yes     No          Paired with camera
IspyConnect        Yes                No           Yes         Yes     Yes         Free
SecureCam (SourcefoYes                No           Yes         Yes     No          GPL
AbelCam            Yes                No           Yes         Yes     No          Commercial
Active WebCam      Yes                Yes(?)       Yes         Yes     Volume Free Commercial
WebCam Surveyor    Yes                No           Yes         Yes     No          Commercial
WebCamsPy          NA                 NA           NA          NA      NA          GPL

Camera: Logitech Webcam Pro 9000
Windows 7 32-bit
WebCamsPy failed to initialize so couldn't be tested

So far, the contenders:

  • Active Webcam comes the closest, and claims to run as a service, but i haven't been able to get it to record after a cold boot even though a service is running.
  • Yawcam can be set up as a service but doesn't record video.
  • IspyConnect has exactly the type of space limit I want and looks great, but doesn't run as a service (seems also to be a bit of a cpu hog)

Any other suggestions? I'm locked into Windows so can't use linux Motion, which looks almost perfect. Any pointers to rich Windows webcam/motion detection libraries out there that could easily be turned into a command line program would also be appreciated.

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