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LOOK MA, NO PC!

A $55 Webcam
by Steve Freyder, David Helland, & Bruce LIghtner

Start • Hardware Design • Picking a Camera • Cheap CMOS Cameras • PicoWeb Server Hardware • Firmware Functions • Software Design • PicoWeb Firmware • Java Applet • Smile • Source and PDF

Hardware Design

The project demonstrates how to make an inexpensive, low power, low cost web camera with off-the-shelf parts as shown in Figure 1. No PC is needed to provide the web server functions and Internet interface. All functionality is provided by a tiny 8-bit Atmel microprocessor as part of the PicoWeb server.

Figure 1ıA toy camera is combined with a tiny web server to give you an inexpensive webcam that can be accessed from anywhere on the Internet.

The camera used in this project is a toy camera sold by Mattel as the Barbie Photo Designer ($59) or the Nick Click ($29) digital camera. Which one you choose is up to you. If you like pink and have money to burn, go for the Barbie camera. If you are cheap (like us) and donıt mind a purple camera, buy the Nick Click.

Both cameras are low-resolution (160 ı 120) CMOS-based color digital cameras with RS-232 serial interfaces. Both come with noisy software that allows the pictures to be integrated with Barbie or Nickelodeon cartoon characters into a variety of output formats. (Turn off your PC speakers if you check out these at work!)

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