Just bought a webcam for a little self-initiated project on Linux – setting up Motion its free CCTV command line offering… A little deep delving of knowledge and a lot of text editing and the free software is remarkably useful. A little more delving and you can get it to upload files and email on movement too – pretty cool.
Then the cheap webcam… It has a screw down base – excellent. A bendy neck so you can adjust its angle – lovely. A mic in a separate neck too – well actually no its in the head of the unit they haven’t threaded it into the mic holder! Oh and the focus it um well it looked like modern impressionist art! – the focus ring so stiff that you cant adjust it normally….. thankfully of the four screws that hold it together they only put two in and neither under the quality control sticker? hmmm not a great sign … two screws to hold the pcb to the chassis … that means even when you can get enough force on the focus ring to turn it (large clamp) the board detaches from the chassis! OK un-mount the board and adjust the focus – not brilliant but kind of expect quite a bit of tear on movement after all its cheap. Re-mount the board and Oh there’s the mic floating around the inside of the chassis on one wire! – the other is also floating around the inside just not soldered to anything! guess that could do with fixing too?
Guess it was too cheap – “not worth sending back” is the price so the technology bin beckons!!!
