Binary for Veo Observer Snapshot tool
In “Deconstructing the Veo Observer Net Camera” I showed a simple program that uses the Veo SDK to grab a snapshot from the camera and store it in a JPG file. Since I posted this information I received numerous requests from people to help them to compile the software and make it work in their environment. I decided to change the tool slightly and post the binary for this updated tool. You can download it here: veo.zip (~ 150 KBytes)
The zip-file contains the veo.exe program plus all required DLLs. The source directory in the zip-file also contains the sources for the tool. A number of command line options are required to configure the snapshot tool. Most importantly the “-i” option will tell the tool where to find the Veo Observer Camera (IP-address or hostname of the camera).
Here are all options:
c:\tmp> veo.exe
Usage: veo -i <veo ip address> [-s <veo port> -u <veo user> -p <veo password>] <output file>
-i specifies the ip-address/hostname of the Veo Observer Camera
-s specifies the port-number for the Veo Observer Camera (default 1600)
-u allows to pass the username for camera access (default ‘admin’)
-p allows to specify the password for camera access (default ‘password’)
-v verbose
The output file will hold a 640×480 JPEG snapshot from the camera after successful execution.
If you have questions/comments, please contact tobias-at-kahunaburger.com
c:\tmp>
So, if your Veo is configured for IP-address 192.168.1.200 and you changed the username to “veo” with password “secret”, you would use the following command to get a snapshot in file “snapshot.jpg”:
c:\> veo.exe -i 192.168.1.200 -u veo -p secret snapshot.jpg
Update 6/16/2004: Werner Kraemer is using the executable above to capture images from his Veo camera on a regular basis. Those images then end up for friends/family on his personal web site. He sent the following email to me with some details on how to enhance the qualiy of the Veo snapshots:
Hi Tobias,
I have in the meantime installed an ‘image sharpener’. This may be of interest to you and your website community:
With the image being captured at 640×480 I assume that that everyone agrees that the image is not of the best quality. Driven by this quality issue I looked for command line executable image sharpening routine which I found at www.imagemagick.com. They provide a FREE image manipulation system with many routines including sharpening. The input parameters are convolution kernel radius and sigma (full control over the resulting image sharpness).
With these imagemagick modules stored in the directory of the same name. I constructed a batch file ‘veo.bat’ and collocated it in the same directory (important since the dll references will work in that configuration)
Here are the steps executed in veo.bat:
1) c:\veo\veo.exe -i 192.168.1.103 -u admin -p password c:\a.jpg
I am calling your routine2) convert.exe -sharpen 3×2 c:\a.jpg c:\a.jpg
then execute the convert routine from ImageMagick with the ’sharpen’
directive3) convert.exe +raise 10×10 c:\a.jpg c:\a.jpg
and for a little trivia fanciness the image outline is framedThen I went into the Windows XP scheduler (under the Accessories > Systems
Tools > Scheduled Tasks and generated a scheduled call to the veo.bat file every 10 minutes. On my website (hosted on my home computer) www.wormatia.com I can now display a reasonable looking image to my family in Germany overlooking the view from the back of my house overlooking the valley.This view has its own problems since the sky is generally brighter than the lower foreground the camera’s imaging sensor saturates and yield a vertically btreaking image in bright sunlight. I will let you know of the results of my next project - designing an inexpensive gradient filter to minimize the sky effect.
I hope this was interesting enough to read.
Best Regards
Werner Kraemer
Thanks Werner!
Update 8/12/2004: Finally I have a perl module that allows capturing the images from the Veo Observer Network Camera on any platform. See this entry.
Fan-tas-tic!!!
This works absolutely perfect!
Thaks a lot. Here are my (first) comments:
- it would be great, if I could tell the program an interval for saving pictures, e.g. with increasing filenames (pic001.jpg, pic002.jpg etc.), or even better, with a time/date-stamp-filename
- a direct ftp-upload would be perfect
- a longer logging-in-time could improve the image quality (in my case the images are a bit too bright)
- some more options, maybe like resolution or tilting
best wishes for the future
Puki
P.S. Do you realize, that your tool ist exactly what the Veo-user-world was waiting for? ;-)))))
Hello,
I tried your nice tool, but it always shows an error:
C:\VEO>veo.exe -i 192.168.1.5 -u admin -s 1600 -v -p password test.jpg
Logging on to camera at 192.168.1.5:1600 using username=admin
Taking snapshot and saving it as test.jpg
Unable to take snapshot - error code 2
What could be the reason for this ?
Greetings
Franz
Well done- I use this with homeseer to take regular shots to display onto a website.
Well done- I use this with homeseer to take regular shots to display onto a website.
Tried this, getting error code 14 on one camera and error codes 20,3 and 5 on a second camera - what I’m really after is something to just run on linux.. anyone know where I can find it?
It works great.
I would like to ask a favor - could you let me (us) know when you update this to include additional options (the most important for me personally a timer - I would like to run this thing every 10 second or so to update the same file).
You may want to offer this to the community as a priced shareware. For those of us who are not into programming this may well be worth it.
Thanks for the great work and sharing it with us.
Best Regards
Werner Kraemer
follow-up to my previous comment.
Since urgently needed, I implemented a batch file (such as ‘veo.bat’) containing the run command for the veo.exe executable along with the switches as you described them. I than (under Windows XP – should work on 2000 as well) a scheduled task (Start>All Programs>Accessories>Systems Tools>Scheduled Tasks) to run once every minute.
I am hosting my own website under IIS 5. Now all interested parties can view the website simultaneously with these update properties.
Thanks again for getting me started. Any updates – please let me know.
I got this utility and it works great for Windows! Configure once, start, and minimize to the system tray. It automatically takes snapshots at the interval you selected, and archives them into directories by year,month, day, and hour.
http://www.gatorware.com/Snapshot.asp
Pretty cool tool!
james
James, share this veo snapshot utility to the
other veo users too
Sorry, it’s only $14.95, just buy one!
Bill,
I downloaded your veo tool, works great. Thanks.
On another note, is the blog your running here freeware? I’d like to setup a blog on my website but haven’t been able to find anything this simple.
Thanks,
Ken
ken_elkern@hotmail.com
p.s. are you reading this on your TIVO? I assume you have TIVO series 2. My TIVO 1 probably won’t do email or media center.
How to recover my lost password from Veo Observer
madmag - you go to the veo.com website and look at the Knowledge Base for your camera. For the wireless observer, the second entry answers your question: http://www.veo.com/Observer-Wireless/kb_answers.asp?question=2
Someone please write a new firmware for this piece of crap! I would if I could… I can’t believe Veo would release such a buggy firmware with no sign of support or upgrades.
Half the time I can’t even login to the camera because of script errors, even though I’ve run the activex cleanup utitility. It seems the onboard web sever fails every other request, for example, the HTML is served, the next request (image) fails, etc… this may also explain the script errors since the HTML references .js files.
Also they advertise this thing with a guy monitoring his home from work, well tyhe Veo uses port 1600 for video and most companies (including mine) block port 1600! You can change the HTTP port but you cannot change the damn video port! Shame on Veo. How can a company like this stay in business?
I have some other cheap ass chinese network cameras which perform 1000 times better than my expensive Veo Wireless Observer at a fraction of the cost.
How Veo Observer camera works with no pc reqd. I bought this camera 2 yrs ago. That time there was no facility or software for no pc reqd. I saw on veo.com, now they advertised as no pc required. I tried veo tech support no answers from them. If anybody can let me know will appreciate
Email : rmistry12@yahoo.com
Bought veo obsever camera 2 yrs ago. At that time this camera was not working with no remote pc required. Now they advertised the camera with no pc reqd. Did wrote to tech support for number of times, nobody answered me. Can I anybody can help me how this camera works without pc reqd at remote.\
Raj
email rmistry12@yahoo.com
I set Raj the follwoing response:
Raj - you will need a PC to do the initial configuration of the camera. There’s a serial cable in the kit with the camera that is used to connect to the camera and run the Veo Setup utility. Once you told the camera which wireless network to use and how to connect to the network, the PC is not required any more.
I have a problem with Observed Xt firmware, the website link is damaged for the last version (2006).Anybody can help me.
Thank You.
Sorry my mail comercial@deinco.com.
Thanks
Hi,
can anyone give the pinout of the serial cable?
I’ve lost the cable and i need to configure a cam.
Thanks
Hello. As mentioned above I can’t use port 1600. Does anyone know how to change it ? the utility mentioned at the start of this thread had a parameter could this be used to change it ? perfectg_uk@hotmail.com please if anyone knows. The veo.com site doesn’t work for me at all.
I have a wireless(WiFi) Veo Net Cam.I lost the software to access it. Where can I find software?
I may have what you looking for here http://www.gamblin.net/Veo/