Webcam Holmes User's Guide

versione 1.00

Summary


What is Webcam Holmes?

Internet is full of images taken by webcams around the globe. Some of them are showing traffic status, some others point to beautiful places. With some you can check snow quality in your preferred snowboard location, with others you can take a look at your sourvellance cams.
Lot of times, checking this webcams from the pocketpc is difficult and boring (pages not optimized for small screens, incompatibles javascripts etc), without considering the connection cost: you want see only the webcam, no also all the other unuseful things in the page like banners, menu, other contents and images etc. And, worse of all, if you have a traffic tariffation, you will pay also for them!
So, Webcam Holmes was born for this: helping you in consulting ip webcams in a very simply, elegant and efficient way. More, you can add new webcams and share them with your friends, because social network is important!

System requirements

For properly run, Webcam Holmes needs .NET Compact Framework 2.0 and SQL Mobile 3.0 installed on your device. Windows Mobile 2003, Windows Mobile 5 and 6 supported. Normal, square and VGA screens supported, both in landscape that in portrait mode.
And, of course, Webcam Holmes needs webcams that save images on Internet (on in a local lan) in gif, jpg, bmp or png format. No flash or activex webcam supported, at least until now.

Main window components

In this window, you can manage the list of webcams and select what observe.
1) Webcams group selector: webcams are arranged togheter, for a better organization. After choosing a group, the webcams list is populated with webcams from the group choosed. You can add, rename a delete groups.
The special group "Z.. Automatically inserted webcams ..Z" cannot be edited nor removed. New versions of Webcam Holmes will put new webcams in this special group.
2) Webcams List: here you will find a list of webcams, sorted alphabetically, like in a bookmarks list. You can add, edit and delete webcams from this list.
Fullscreen button: Choose a webcam and then tap on this button to "watching" it in fullscreen mode.
Add webcam button: Tap on this button to add a new webcam
Edit webcam button: Choose a webcam and then tap on this button to edit its properties (name, image's url, refresh time)
Delete webcam button: Choose a webcam and then tap on this button to delete it.

Main window menu

File - Language: choose the program language
File - About: information about this program
File - Help: open this guide
File - Exit: quit from Webcam Holmes
Webcam - Fullscreen: Watch webcam images in a fullscreen window
Webcam - Add: add a new webcam
Webcam - Edit: edit properties of selected webcam (name, image's url, refresh rate)
Webcam - Delete: delete selected webcam
Webcam - Copy: copy selected webcam in memory
Webcam - Cut: cut selected webcam in memory
Webcam - Paste: pasta webcam in memory into selected group
Webcam - Export: save selected webcam in a file. Send this file with your friends (with bluetooh, by mail or in aother ways), so also them can watch at the same webcam.
Webcam - Import: create a webcam from a webcam file (created with Export command) and put it in the selected group
Webcam - Share: Notify the author of Webcam Holmes about the selected webcam. No other information are sent (like device id, your personal information etc).
Sharing with the author your newly discovered webcams is the way you have to improve Webcam Holmes. In fact, more webcams are present, more useful it will became. Every new release, new webcams discovered by users will be added. This is the power of social network! Your help is very very important, don't forget!
Group - Add: add a new webcam group
Group - Edit: edit the name of selected webcam group
Group - Delete: delete the selected webcam group (should be empty)

Add/Edit webcam window

In this window, you can setting a new webcam or modify properties of an existing webcam.
Name: the name of the webcam, same that appears in the webcam list of the main window
URL: the URL to the image of the webcam.
You shouldn't put the URL to the page that shows the webcam, but only the URL of the image. For knowing this URL, in your browser open the page that show the webcam, right-click over it and choose "Image properties" or something similar (depend on your browser). Now, copy the given address and open it in a new browser window. If an image appears, you are in the good way. The last check to do is the image refeshing. Wait some times (second or minutes, depend on the webcam) and then press the browser's "Refresh" button. If a new image is showed, the URL is correct, and you can put it in the URL box.
Refresh: time to wait, in second, before reloading the webcam image. For example, if the webcam's image is refreshed every minute, put 60 in this field. Pay attention to this value: lesser it is, more band Webcam Holmes consumed

Fullscreen window

In this screen, you can observe the webcam image, refreshed every time interval you specified in the webcam properties.
You can also do the followig actions:
Pause: Pause the webcam's image updating.
Play: Restart the webcam's image updating.
Zoom In: Zoom in the current webcam's image.
Zoom Out: Zoom out the current webcam's image.
Snapshot: Take a snapshot of current webcam's image.
Close: Close this window.
If the actions panel cover some part of the image, use the button to hide it. Restore the panel with button.

Conclusions

Do you like Webcam Holmes? Have you some suggestions or you wanna partecipate in the developing process? Do you want translate it in different languages? Write an email to devel@rainbowbreeze.it!
Do you find Webcam Holmes useful and want support my work with a little donation? Go to RainbowBreeze.it site and click in the "Donate" button. Thank you!

And remember: Webcam Holmes is a free software, 'coze 0p3n_s0urc3 Rul3z!

Alfredo Morresi, Webcam Holmes' developer.