People love to watch webcams. To capture the
constant stream of thousands of people marching
in “real time” was our goal. To accomplish this,
we decided on using popular webcam technology,
and the growing availability of wireless cafe
“hot spots” along the parade route.
Here’s how it works…
On January 18th, setting up our webcams
was then as easy as can be. Once we
secured an internet connection, we then
enabled the webcams and started uploading
pictures to the brightpathvideo server and
to indymedia. We put out a message on
our site that anyone was free to use the
images on their sites, so as to increase the
exposure of this event. Because the wi-fi
signal travels at least 300 feet, we were
able to set up one of the cameras outside
on the sidewalk, to get better shots. A 164
amp tractor battery, with a dc laptop power
converter, powered the sidewalk laptop all day.
Here is the full text of the article in case the link goes bad:
http://www.brightpathvideo.com/802.htm
How We Did It 802.11b and J18
.
How brightpathvideo.com Used 802.11 Wireless “Hotspots”
To Live Webcast The Jan 18 Peace March In San Francisco
I had no idea that setting up “live webcams” during the January 18th
peace march in San Francisco would receive about 603,000 hits.
The idea to try this sprang from a desire to show the world, and more
importantly, the mainstream press, that many thousands of
diverse groups of people attend these marches. I, like many others
who attended the October 26th peace march in San Francisco,
were disappointed to see crowd estimates from the SF police and the
press, far below the nearly 100,000 that many observed there.
Even the New York Times had to print a retraction of an earlier
grossly underestimated crowd estimate for the October march in
Washington, DC.
People love to watch webcams. To capture the constant stream
of thousands of people marching in “real time” was our goal.
To accomplish this, we decided on using popular webcam
technology, and the growing availability of wireless cafe ” hot spots”
along the parade route. Here’s how it works.
To start with, we downloaded a good piece of software from
Webcam32
Their site contains all the info you need on webcams and how
to set them up. A little HTML knowledge will be helpful.
The cams themselves are the garden variety webcams you can
purchase for under $40 bucks online or in places like CompUSA.
We used laptops with wireless network pci cards installed…this is
the famous “wi-fi” connectivity everyone is talking about these days.
We logged onto 802.11 hotspots.com for a detailed directory of “hot
spot” cafes & locales around the country. We found at least a dozen
of these places on the entire length of the parade route on Market St.
in San Francisco. These hot spot cafes charge a small amount for
using the connection, which is usually dsl or faster.
The week before the march, Gabe and I walked up and down Market St.
testing the wi-fi connections and looking for the best camera locations.
On January 18th, setting up our webcams was then as easy as can be.
Once we secured an internet connection, we then enabled the webcams
and started uploading pictures to the brightpathvideo server and to indymedia.
We put out a message on our site that anyone was free to use the
images on their sites, so as to increase the exposure of this event.
Because the wi-fi signal travels at least 300 feet, we were able to
set up one of the cameras outside on the sidewalk, to get better shots.
A 164 amp tractor battery, with a dc laptop power converter,
powered the sidewalk laptop all day.
Key to getting the word out about these cameras, was a week’s
worth of emailing webmasters from the international indymedia system,
as well as many other peace activist groups and webcam lists.
As people people passed our cameras, many expressed a keen
interest in what we were doing, and some even volunteered their
time helping us for a few hours.
The most important help came from a cast of young volunteers,
my son Gabe, Eli Mendez, Kena Hazelwood, and Cory Sturdevant.
For the next peace march, on February 16th, we plan to do more of the same
and perhaps add another webcam with an overhead position.
additional thanks go to the web team at sf.indymedia.org
John Parulis, webmaster