Introduction
Welcome to the James Franck Insitute network camera, jficam.uchicago.edu, funded by the Chicago Materials Research Center. The purpose of this camera is to facilitate interactions with the growing number of remote collaborators in the Center. When remote participants wish to participate in a local meeting the camera can be hooked up in the meeting room. Then the remote users can see speaker, audience, and visuals, under their own control. The remote users see and control the image with their web browser, after giving a password. See also the page on the MRSEC conference phone. Mac users look here.
How to manipulate the camera remotely
Once you are viewing the camera's web page in your browser, you can click on the controls to look where you want.
- Click on image to point camera. The clicked point moves to the center of the image.
- Control left-right pointing by clicking on the bar at the bottom
. Clicking in the center of this bar makes the camera point straight ahead. Click on the arrow to the left of this bar to make nudge the camera to the left, similarly for the right arrow.
- Tilt up and down using the vertical bar on the right side of the image.
- Zoom in to view a small part of the field by clicking on the right zoom arrow above the image. Zoom out using the left zoom arrow.
- Move to the home view or preset direction and zoom by clicking the H button in the lower right corner.
- Use the select menu at the left to select a preset view.
- In the upper left corner is a button marked admin. It's for controlling global camera settings and requires a special password.
Using the camera for your meeting in JFI
The Axis 2130 network camera is about the size of a large grapefruit. It can be used in most JFI rooms with ethernet ports. This includes the data ports in the back of E123 and 223. To use it, one just plugs in the ethernet cable and then the power cord. After a minute or so, the camera is visible on the web. Its IP address is 128.135.186.51. It can be used as-is on the 128.135.186 subnet. It can be used anywhere by resetting its IP address appropriate to the location. This would require admin access. See "Operating from other subnets" below
The camera doesn't pick up sound. Use the phone to communicate with the remote users. Or enable your computer for audio communication.
At the moment the camera and its documentation are with T. Witten, who can also reveal the viewing password to trusted people.
Operating from other subnets
From Tom Indelli, May 2012 about using the camera in EB041 basement conference room
I wouldn't be able to get the hostname changed for you soon enough, so you would have to provide your committee member with an IP address (e.g. 128.135.29.x) instead of "jficam.uchicago.edu". I believe that 128.135.29.129-128.135.29.254 are in the range of IPs usable in the east sub-basement. As a temporary solution, you could have the camera's IP address changed to 128.135.29.200 (I'm not familiar with the JFI camera, but I'll be glad to try it out of Tom Witten is unable to). Just make sure to switch it back to its current address (128.135.186.51) after you're done.
Troubleshooting
When we take the camera to other rooms in the building, we sometimes have to change its web address. See "operating from other subnets" above. So if http://jficam.uchicago.edu doesn't work, try
The camera support site says their camera needs certain browsers when being viewed from a mac. It works with Mozilla or Firefox. It doesn't work fully with Safari or Internet Explorer. These latter browsers can manipulate the camera, but not show the video image. Safari seems to think that the video image is one huge still image that never finishes loading. After several minutes, this huge image can use up too much memory and require you to quit Safari.
When I tried to view jficam, I was asked to load an active-x component. Is this normal?
Yes. The camera senses whether your are using a windows internet explorer browser. If so, it provides a plug-in to make viewing smoother. These cameras have used this feature for some time, and it appears to be stable and work well. After you give your permission, the camera sends this plug-in to your browser. It remains in your computer for future use.
Image flickers or doesn't display completely
We have noticed this problem with Macintosh running under System 10, especially with Internet Explorer. The Safari browser doesn't seem to work at all with the camera. We found that the Mozilla browser works fine.
JFICAM made my browser freeze!
We apologize!. This happens to us too when we use the Safari browser on a Mac. For some reason this browser treats the video picture as a huge still picture which never finishes loading. If you stay at the site for more than a minute or two, your memory gets full of this partially loaded picture and your browser becomes unable to respond. JFICAM just doesn't work with this browser. 3/4/2005
The "admin" button doesn't work
The admin button requires a special password. It's for those who are in charge of the camera, not for viewers
I only see a new picture every one or two seconds
With a good internet connection, the image refreshes ten times a second. But with a slow connection, it refreshes slower. On an SBC Yahoo DSL connection from Chicago, the refresh rate was found to be a bit slower than once per second. Response to control clicks was correspondingly slow. The camera can be set to send smaller pictures more frequently. This resetting requires admin access.
I suspect a problem. Is there another working camera I can compare with?
Another camera from the same maker is installed at the IRB construction site and other construction sites. See the University of Chicago construction site for links to these cameras.
Further features
T. Witten August, 2003