I tried to find a PHP class to control the new camera, and I couldn’t find one… so a little packet sniffing later, I was able to figure out how it’s little Java applet communicates with the camera. Anyway, I spent a few minutes to make a PHP class to control the camera, so if you need one, here you go (it hasn’t been extensively tested, so it probably has problems… if it does, leave a comment)…

So here’s a basic PHP script that uses the class to take control of the camera, set the pan/tilt/zoom to a certain position, capture the image and save it to a file… handy for uhm… I dunno… a cron job to take time lapse photography. 🙂

[code=php]connect(‘your.camera.ip.address’);
$cam->get_control();
$cam->goto( -7463, -548, 4126);
sleep(5); // Wait for movement to finish and lens to focus

$handle = fopen(‘images/’ . time() . ‘.jpg’, ‘w’);
fwrite ($handle, $cam->image());
fclose ($handle);

$cam->disconnect();
?>[/code]

class_camera.php:[code=php]host = $host;
return $this->connection_id = substr(file_get_contents (‘//’ . $host . ‘/-wvhttp-01-/OpenCameraServer?client_version=LiveApplet_4125&image_size=640×480’), 14, 9);
}

/**
* Disconnects from the camera
*
* @return none
*/
function disconnect()
{
file_get_contents (‘//’ . $this->host . ‘/-wvhttp-01-/CloseCameraServer?connection_id=’ . $this->connection_id);
}

/**
* Attempts to get control of camera
*
* @return none
*/
function get_control()
{
file_get_contents (‘//’ . $this->host . ‘/-wvhttp-01-/GetCameraControl?connection_id=’ . $this->connection_id);
}

/**
* Get camera info
*
* @return array of camera info variables
*/
function get_info()
{
preg_match_all (‘#(.*?)=(.*)#’, file_get_contents (‘//’ . $this->host . ‘/-wvhttp-01-/GetCameraInfo?connection_id=’ . $this->connection_id), $matches);
foreach ($matches[1] as $key => $value) {
$this->camera_info[$value] = $matches[2][$key];
}
return($this->camera_info);
}

/**
* Move camera
*
* @param string Movement type (pan | tilt | zoom)
* @param number Position to move to
*
* @return none
*/
function move($operation, $position = 0)
{
file_get_contents (‘//’ . $this->host . ‘/-wvhttp-01-/OperateCamera?’ . $operation . ‘=’ . $position . ‘&connection_id=’ . $this->connection_id);
}

/**
* Set pan/tilt/zoom on camera with one call
*
* @param number pan position
* @param number tilt position
* @param number zoom position
*
* @return none
*/
function goto($pan, $tilt, $zoom)
{
$this->move(‘pan’, $pan);
$this->move(’tilt’, $tilt);
$this->move(‘zoom’, $zoom);
}

/**
* Set parameter
*
* @param string paramter to set
* @param string value
*
* @return none
*/
function set_value($parameter, $value)
{
$mapping = array (
‘back_light’ => ‘B’,
);

$parameter = $mapping[$parameter];

file_get_contents (‘//’ . $this->host . ‘/-wvhttp-01-/OperateCamera?’ . $parameter . ‘=’ . $value . ‘&connection_id=’ . $this->connection_id);
}

/**
* Get current image
*
* @return none
*/
function image()
{
return file_get_contents (‘//’ . $this->host . ‘/-wvhttp-01-/GetOneShot?image_size=640×480’);
}

}
?>[/code]

Someone asked me why I hide the sidebar on this blog by default, then show it in a different part of the HTML, so here’s the explanation…

Most blog themes float the main body to the left, and make the sidebar on the right “static”. I did the opposite when creating my custom WordPress theme… My sidebar is a DIV that is floated to the right. The reason for this then the content below the bottom of the sidebar wrap around it, which I just think looks better. So here’s the problem… Google weighs content at the beginning of a page higher than content at the bottom, so Google was seeing 99% of my pages as “similar content” because my sidebar needed to be at the top of the HTML source.

So to solve that problem, I just put the sidebar at the bottom of the page in a hidden (with CSS) DIV, then call a simple script to set the contents of an empty DIV (<div id=”sidebar”></div>) at the top of the page, where the sidebar needs to be, to the contents of whatever is in the hidden DIV at the bottom…

For web browsers, the sidebar renders at the beginning of the HTML source, but Google sees the sidebar at the end of the HTML and pages no longer are seen as 99% similar.