Feature request - web management interface

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skypanther
Posts: 4
Joined: Fri Mar 28, 2008 11:00 pm

Feature request - web management interface

Post by skypanther »

My Yawcam-powered birdcam is a hundred+ feet away behind my barn. It would make things so much easier for me if I could make configuration changes to Yawcam from the computer inside my house. It would be a lot less disturbing to the birds, too! A browser based management interface would be fantastic. I'd like to be able to change the page designer text, streaming quality, access web cam config settings, etc.

Thanks,
Tim
tellmewhy
Posts: 425
Joined: Tue Dec 11, 2007 11:19 am

Post by tellmewhy »

I realy don't understand this.
I think if access Yawcam on the computer (the one where the web cam is connected to) you can change all the settings you like.
Or i must misunderstand this and you want to access the computer when you are outside the house.....
Peter_Smith
Posts: 1
Joined: Fri Jun 20, 2008 3:38 am

Post by Peter_Smith »

I understand it.

I was kinda wondering about this as a possiblilty myself - if you're installing Yawcam onto a dedicated webcam server, particulaly if in a remote location, you won't want to leave it permenantly connected to a monitor, keyboard and mouse. Fine for most use, until you want to change the settings.

The key point here is that Yawcam saves all settings in XML files in its folder in Program Files.

One very quick and simple, but horrible way of changing settings would be to share Yawcam's Program files folder over network. You could then open Yawcam's configuration files in Notepad on any other computer on your network and alter them yourself.

However, this could be very confusing and difficult, particularly if you don't understand XML.

My solution would be, (if this functionality was not to be built into Yawcam later) would be to make an administration area myself.

It would be possible to install Apache (a webserver service) and PHP onto the machine, and then create a PHP script which could then modify Yawcam's XML files, whilst providing a simple administration interface.

I'm assuming that Yawcam loads all of the settings into memory on startup, so changes to the XML file wouldn't be picked up until Yawcam next started running. So the PHP script would need to either send a kill process command and then start Yawcam running again (I have succesfully managed to use PHP to run a batch file to start Yawcam running), or simply send a restart command to Windows to reboot the computer (if Yawcam was set to run at startup).

Sorry if this doesn't make any sence to you at all. I know it wouldn't mean anything to me 3 years ago, but I'm kinda hoping someone will know what I'm on about :D

If I ever get round to writing a script to do this, you'll be the first to know.
Flopper
Posts: 12
Joined: Wed Jun 25, 2008 3:34 pm

Re: Feature request - web management interface

Post by Flopper »

skypanther wrote:My Yawcam-powered birdcam is a hundred+ feet away behind my barn. It would make things so much easier for me if I could make configuration changes to Yawcam from the computer inside my house.
The easiest way to do that is to install some kind of remote PC control, like VNC or even the Remote Desktop from XP is you are using that.

There are many many free ones out there, so use Google to find some to your liking.
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