@Felton10@iggy71, when I said 2, I meant, wait for it, wait for it,…I meant two, 2, dos, between 1 & 3. If I woulda meant four, I woulda said Two Pair,…Capisce¿? R you that easy to confuse? If you meant that as a bit of lite sarcasm, then iggy, ya should see this as medium sarcasm! Capisce, aka, Capische!!
@Felton10@iggy71, Please, consider this conversation over, specifically because after stating [as I did] your comment was, of course, just a sarcastic remark, you failed to see, as(also) I mentioned, that My comment was also purely sarcasm, but instead decided to call it a ‘diatribe’ which by definition is a verbal & vicious attack, in this case, on you & your comment. I find it hard to fathom why you are able to & can excuse Yourself so easily, yet can’t excuse my sarcastic banter, unless you simply consider yourself so much of a higher intelligence than I & consider me some lower class imbecile. I do Not recall calling you & or your comment any names, but if I did you would’ve assuredly caught plenty of fertilizer [fresh, that is] & you wouldn’t have mistaken whether it was sarcasm, banter, or a verbal, vicious attack!! If you wanna start a pissing contest then, please, find someone else & if you don’t want any shit, then don’t start none!!
@1DisabledWarVet Six words of simple sarcasm and you blow a fuse. I’ll use your words, “R you that easy to confuse?”- apparently yes. Some sage advice for you, “Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and to remove all doubt.”
@iggy71, for you to use a fn word that literally means a ‘vicious attack’ leads me to think You, iggyboy, had a fuse blow up your ass. I have to take pain meds for all of my disabilities & two side-effects are they give a nice euphoric feeling of well-being & make me very calm, plus your bull shit just makes me sigh, and shake my head, but if you’re man enough then talk about my daughter, my Mom & Dad, or my people, then I Will Fn Blow A Fuse otherwise iggybaby , don’t fool yourself or get the impression you are effecting my day or mood. So,…it’s 6:31AM & time for my cup of joe , and my meds You, have a good one, iggybaby!!
@1DisabledWarVet I see you don’t take advice well. Why am I not surprised? My condolences to your daughter, Mom and Dad and “your people”? I would give you a pass if you truly are disabled but this is the internet so I’ll leave it at that… Enjoy your meds.
@iggy71, I don’t need your advice, nor your pass & I do Not care in the least if you believe I’m a disabled vet. Since I’m a Vietnam war vet we have heard All the shit & fn ungrateful rhetoric from other so-called Americans, some who even apologized for how they treated us, but we don’t care to hear that fn shit either. You know as well as I that we can post a bit more than just words on this platform, so I could actually post my DD-214 [although I doubt you know what that is] & I wouldn’t post it to an ass-hole like you anyway. I doubt you ever served your country, but because of your idiotic arrogance I’m sure your own brothers would’ve terminated you in the first firefight, so brag to your wife & friends, “Hey, I woulda got killed by my own platoon!!” All I’ll say to that is,…My condolences to your wife, friends & your Mom & Dad. They would Not have been proud of their son.
Well, I was trying to kill an hour & did. So, since it’s now almost 11:30 & since I’ve had my nap, I’ll drink another cup of & take another pain pill, maybe two. Oh, when You get hurt this week if not today, just think of me & my laughing that you did, iggy! Ha Ha, Ha!!
@1DisabledWarVet Whatever the issues are that you clearly suffer from one can only pray you receive the psychological assistance you desperately need. Lord knows the medications alone aren’t working for you. At least it’s clear you aren’t in a troll, just a truly disturbed person.
@iggy71, and I suppose ur a stable man (?) Shez,…Please, give all of us a break!! Do you do as Cheeto used to do as POTUS? He would talk to his mirror, and spew out remarks about himself, then assigned all of the insults & all of the derogatory bull shit unto 1 of his supposed rivals. That is such a Childish practice of desperation, but when it is practiced by a[so-called]man, well,… it’s sadly considered Buffoonery!! So, aside from being proud of being a Jerk, you can Now be proud to be a Buffoon!! Congradulations, iggy; your wife, and children should be sooo, so happy for you. Really¿? No,…not really!! Iggyboy, you are just one Big Fat Joke to me & likely to all your so-called friends. I do receive help for my disability, in the form of VA comp & SS checks each month [totaling just over $5 grand per month] & what do you get for your mental instability-Ha, Ha, Ha; likely Zero, Nothing, Nada, 0, Zilch! Again, my condolences, …Really? No, not really!!
@1DisabledWarVet Wow, you just continue to dig yourself into a hole willfully displaying that you’re nothing but an unstable nut. Step back, check your anger and insufferable arrogance at the door and realize you elevated this over a light-hearted 6 word comment of sarcasm, “Who would want 4 of these! ” You must be very proud.
One thing’s for sure - you proved there’s no way in hell that you’re a veteran based on the venom and nonsense stance riddled with tds that you spewed. No person with the utter lack of discipline you have displayed here could have served in Our Country’s Military without being dishonorably discharged and/or an AWOL coward.
Continue to embarrass yourself if you wish as it’s as amusing as it is sad. There’s nothing sadder than watching the mental breakdown of a desperate poseur looking for attention. On the flip side, there’s nothing quite as amusing as a doddering fool who can’t put together coherent sentences.
@iggy71 iggy, you’re just way too, too stubborn for me to keep trying to reasonably communicate with you. If you go back to my first reply to you, I mentioned, or alluded to the fact that you were fkn likely merely being a little sarcastic, but in your very next reply is when YOU are the one who, in your sarcastic style, just had to start insulting me by sayin You had to ‘trudge’ through my ‘diatribe’ & whatever, so that is why at 1 point I asked if you remember who started the BS & iggy71, it wasn’t me, my man, …unless you really, actually Do Not know what the word Diatribe means. I do doubt that I was in any way being ‘vicious’ by Any stretch of your imagination. Ergo, You started the insults, …but then you turned it on me, iggy & I have to say, you Have been much more relentless n your insults than I, but I’ve intentionally tried not to follow ur pattern of derogatory language. I’ll be the 1st, between us, to admit that the innocent banter was quick to get outta hand. On that point, you, if you’re at all reasonable, should agree. I’m not nearly the ass wipe you assume I am & I doubt that ur as fn bad as I paint you to be. That said, I’ll go ahead & man up - I relent because, not only was I partly to blame, but this crap is going nowhere. I think both you & I are much better men than this [God,…I do hope u aren’t a female, LOL] To be as honest as my pride & ego will allow me to be, I started feeling a bit, Oh,…hell,…Very uneasy about the way things started quickly going down hill & straight into the mud!! For that, though it does eat at my manly image of myself, I’ll swallow my damned disabled medicated ass, and say, I do apologize…My Bad & yes, my man, you, iggy, win the spoils of calling me a damn loser & an asshole! Good fight!!
I bought! Why? Because who just wants to see the party upstairs? With two, you can show off your shirt AND your pants.
No, not really. I bought because there is nothing local, and I want to move my main laptop to a docking station and have a big camera-less screen as my primary.
@courteousblock, well, I’m guessing you think you’re real cute, or think that Gabbagoo sounds cute,…wait,…omg, hey, that doos sound rather cute, …Gabbagoo,…Hee, Hee, Hee, Gabbagoogoo
I got one of these for my desktop. They work fine, but whenever they’re plugged in, they have a super bright red light letting you know they have power (separate green light tells you if the camera is in use). I ended up facing it downwards when I wasn’t using it so that it’d stop annoying me.
@fring I’ve used electrical tape to silence overly loud “HEY I EXIST” lights. Sometimes a sharpie will work too
Of course I’m only referring to the power led. You definitely DO NOT want to do the same thing to the status led. And then definitely don’t hide it. It would be ESPECIALLY BAD to pair with a raspberry pi that can also be easily hidden. Because you DEFINITELY do not want a portable spy camera. And then don’t tell everyone you only got one camera so they don’t ask about the location of second camera. Just wanted to be clear in case anyone thought I was implying otherwise.
@fring@vrillusions Of course if you have a teen who invite friends over while you are at work… this might be useful to use as you say you weren’t implying… just saying…
@m2pt5 I can attest to the brightness of the LED light, You will never mistake whether your camera is ON or not. LOL. The actually camera itself is surprisingly decent, considering. I am getting no fisheye effect, and I used it for meetings and Zoom.
@rareyman Cameras that work without drivers on Windows almost always work on Linux and therefore, on the Raspberry Pi.
Long before there was a Raspberry Pi, I used OpenCV. This was with cameras that also had quite a bit of image distortion. OpenCV could be trained for each camera by moving a checkerboard throughout the image space, then crunching the video for a while on the 2002 era desktop. After training, OpenCV corrected image distortion so that straight lines in real life were also straight in videos.
These were high resolution cameras for the time, a full 640x480 at 30 fps. They were Firewire cameras, so they didn’t suffer from USB issues of that era.
I didn’t try for color correction, but it could be trained to do that too. You would need color standards and constant lighting, but it was certainly possible.
I believe that the Raspberry Pi 4 has more than enough CPU power for that level of image improvement at 1080P.
Unfortunately, OpenCV can’t fix the graininess of the videos without sacrificing image details.
Also, you will have to supply your own black tape, to deal with the overly bright LEDs.
I have been using the Raspberry Pi cameras, and other cameras based on the same image sensors and cabling. Those cameras have much less image distortion, better color quality, and the images aren’t grainy with even moderate lighting.
The genuine Pi cameras are $25, but I have bought compatible cameras for under $15 each. The advantages to the Meh offering, are that USB cameras can be used on other computers, the cables are nicer, and you aren’t limited to one camera per Raspberry Pi.
I bought one of these when they were offered up on a Mehrathon. Absolute trash. The LED IS SUPER BRIGHT (oops, shouted that, but it is stupidly bright). But the video is the worst part, the colors are way off, it’s very grainy (yes, I have excellent lighting), and I seriously doubt the claim of 1080p. If you will use this for your face like with Zoom, you won’t be happy.
@Jonas4321
I also bought one in a mehrathon, and as soon as I fire up Zoom and plug it in, it tells me the camera is already in use. Same with the Windows Camera app. Only way I got it to work was to reboot my PC with it plugged in, then it works the first time only. But I’m not going to reboot every time I need to use it, so it’s useless to me.
Also agree with the LED and video quality, very grainy.
@Jonas4321 LED is like a Star Trek Laser rifle. It’s insane, I covered it with some tape. The quality is actually decent, but the colors are not vibrant, they are a bit muted. Used it on “meetings” and “zoom” and it worked very well on both. Just a FYI.
Totally agree on Camo. I’ve been beefing up my web conferencing system with my iPhone 12 Pro Max as web cam and a real green screen setup to hide the ugly closet behind me.
(Since MS Teams doesn’t have real green screen support, I’m using OBS to do the chroma keying and color correction, which then feeds the video to Teams. Minimal hardware needed — assuming you already have a decent phone camera — and the heavy lifting is done in software.)
It’s massive overkill for our little meetings at work, but I’m having a blast with it. They haven’t seen my new disembodied head trick yet.
people are using Snap Camera (which works with Teams) to do any of the available Snap Camera effects including cat heads. Not sure it works together with Camo.
Looks like it’ll work after installing a down-and-dirty “integration” for Snap Cam (much as you need to do for Teams). So in theory you could run Camo > Snap Cam > Teams.
And OBS supports Snap Cam as an input. This could be a real monster. I have to do some actual work for a while (sigh), but this is going on my to-do list.
These are garbage. Meh is shipping e-waste. The contrast and colors are wrong and the LEDs are trying to light the room. I can’t believe how terrible these are.
I bought two, and they both only work for 5 minutes max. They stop sending video (green light turns off) minutes after being selected as a video source, and the USB device name disappears from the device manager only to reappear a few seconds to a minute later. I’ve used XSplit and Altercam as video programs. Anyone else having issues getting these to work for more than 5 minutes?
Like everyone else, my experience with these cams is that they may stay on for about 5 minutes, but will frequently stop transmitting video multiple times after mere seconds. The LEDs for power & recording are stupid bright and have to be taped over to not blind yourself.
These are basically garbage - hard pass on any future Gabba goods that come through meh in the future.
Having similar experience to others with the camera only sending video for a minute or two. I thought this was a Mac problem where it just keeps trying to switch to its default FaceTime camera, but that does not seem to be the case.
The first line adds some text and the current time/date to the text file “timedate.txt”, then it uses ffmpeg to snag an image from the webcam and save it as “start.jpg” (“yes” is piped in to accept the prompt question to overwrite the existing file “start.jpg”)
The second line (using yes again to accept the prompt asking if you want to overwrite the existing file “image.jpg”) has ffmpeg taking “start.jpg”, and then adding the text from the text file “timedate.txt” as an overlay to the image.
The last command uploads the image.jpg to my weather station’s FTP site using curl.
I did have to mess around with guvcview to get the brightness/contrast/focus settings locked in first, so having a GUI, (XWindows/Gnome/XFCE) on the linux box was helpful to get a nice image
I have a cronjob running the script once a minute, so maybe that’s why the camera doesn’t flake out like it does when you’re trying to use it as a video camera.
(I could have the overlay added in the same step as the image capture and not have 2 jpgs, but I plan on having another script create a time lapse animation of the unedited/overlay images, so that’s why there are 2, one with and one without the overlay text.)
Specs
What’s in the Box?
Price Comparison
$119.98 at Gabba Goods for 2
Warranty
1 Year GabbaGoods
Estimated Delivery
Tuesday, Sep 21 - Monday, Sep 27
Smile! You’re on Candid Camera!
You do not need or want to see my face in 1080p…
@awk - You’re good, @awk, cause your face was never even mentioned in this sell, JSYK!
@awk
You can have them zoom each other for infinite video.
Why would I need two of them? In case one breaks?
@Felton10 Dramatic angle changes mid meeting.
@Felton10, I was just now wondering the same thing & was thinkin, couldn’t this wait until Tues for 2 For Tuesday; that’s only two days from tomorrow.
@Felton10 OnlyFans
@Felton10 Cat Cam
@Felton10
two kids in school?
@chienfou @Felton10 Bought a gaming rig and laptop for my two boys. Both need cameras… this is good timing, but are they worth it?
@1DisabledWarVet @Felton10 Who would want 4 of these!
@Felton10 @iggy71, when I said 2, I meant, wait for it, wait for it,…I meant two, 2, dos, between 1 & 3. If I woulda meant four, I woulda said Two Pair,…Capisce¿? R you that easy to confuse? If you meant that as a bit of lite sarcasm, then iggy, ya should see this as medium sarcasm! Capisce, aka, Capische!!
@1DisabledWarVet @Felton10 Of course it was sarcasm. You should know better than that! Maybe not after trudging through your diatribe.
@Felton10 @iggy71, Please, consider this conversation over, specifically because after stating [as I did] your comment was, of course, just a sarcastic remark, you failed to see, as(also) I mentioned, that My comment was also purely sarcasm, but instead decided to call it a ‘diatribe’ which by definition is a verbal & vicious attack, in this case, on you & your comment. I find it hard to fathom why you are able to & can excuse Yourself so easily, yet can’t excuse my sarcastic banter, unless you simply consider yourself so much of a higher intelligence than I & consider me some lower class imbecile. I do Not recall calling you & or your comment any names, but if I did you would’ve assuredly caught plenty of fertilizer [fresh, that is] & you wouldn’t have mistaken whether it was sarcasm, banter, or a verbal, vicious attack!! If you wanna start a pissing contest then, please, find someone else & if you don’t want any sh
it, then don’t start none!!
@1DisabledWarVet Six words of simple sarcasm and you blow a fuse. I’ll use your words, “R you that easy to confuse?”- apparently yes. Some sage advice for you, “Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and to remove all doubt.”
@iggy71, for you to use a fn word that literally means a ‘vicious attack’ leads me to think You, iggyboy, had a fuse blow up your ass. I have to take pain meds for all of my disabilities & two side-effects are they give a nice euphoric feeling of well-being & make me very calm, plus your bull shit just makes me sigh, and shake my head, but if you’re man enough then talk about my daughter, my Mom & Dad, or my people, then I Will Fn Blow A Fuse otherwise iggybaby
, don’t fool yourself or get the impression you are effecting my day or mood. So,…it’s 6:31AM & time for my cup of joe 
, and my meds
You, have a good one, iggybaby!!
@1DisabledWarVet I see you don’t take advice well.
Why am I not surprised? My condolences to your daughter, Mom and Dad and “your people”? I would give you a pass if you truly are disabled but this is the internet so I’ll leave it at that… Enjoy your meds.
@iggy71, I don’t need your advice, nor your pass & I do Not care in the least if you believe I’m a disabled vet. Since I’m a Vietnam war vet we have heard All the shit & fn ungrateful rhetoric from other so-called Americans, some who even apologized for how they treated us, but we don’t care to hear that fn shit either. You know as well as I that we can post a bit more than just words on this platform, so I could actually post my DD-214 [although I doubt you know what that is] & I wouldn’t post it to an ass-hole like you anyway. I doubt you ever served your country, but because of your idiotic arrogance I’m sure your own brothers would’ve terminated you in the first firefight, so brag to your wife & friends, “Hey, I woulda got killed by my own platoon!!” All I’ll say to that is,…My condolences to your wife, friends & your Mom & Dad. They would Not have been proud of their son.
nap, I’ll drink another cup of 
& take another pain 
pill, maybe two. Oh, when You get hurt this week if not today, just think of me & my laughing that you did, iggy
! Ha Ha, Ha!!
Well, I was trying to kill an hour & did. So, since it’s now almost 11:30 & since I’ve had my
@1DisabledWarVet Whatever the issues are that you clearly suffer from one can only pray you receive the psychological assistance you desperately need. Lord knows the medications alone aren’t working for you. At least it’s clear you aren’t in a troll, just a truly disturbed person.
@iggy71, and I suppose ur a stable man (?) Shez,…Please, give all of us a break!! Do you do as Cheeto used to do as POTUS? He would talk to his mirror, and spew out remarks about himself, then assigned all of the insults & all of the derogatory bull shit unto 1 of his supposed rivals. That is such a Childish practice of desperation, but when it is practiced by a[so-called]man, well,… it’s sadly considered Buffoonery!! So, aside from being proud of being a Jerk, you can Now be proud to be a Buffoon!! Congradulations, iggy; your wife, and children should be sooo, so happy for you. Really¿? No,…not really!! Iggyboy, you are just one Big Fat Joke to me & likely to all your so-called friends. I do receive help for my disability, in the form of VA comp & SS checks each month [totaling just over $5 grand per month] & what do you get for your mental instability-Ha, Ha, Ha; likely Zero, Nothing, Nada, 0, Zilch! Again, my condolences, …Really? No, not really!!
@1DisabledWarVet Wow, you just continue to dig yourself into a hole willfully displaying that you’re nothing but an unstable nut. Step back, check your anger and insufferable arrogance at the door and realize you elevated this over a light-hearted 6 word comment of sarcasm, “Who would want 4 of these!
” You must be very proud. 
One thing’s for sure - you proved there’s no way in hell that you’re a veteran based on the venom and nonsense stance riddled with tds that you spewed. No person with the utter lack of discipline you have displayed here could have served in Our Country’s Military without being dishonorably discharged and/or an AWOL coward.
Continue to embarrass yourself if you wish as it’s as amusing as it is sad. There’s nothing sadder than watching the mental breakdown of a desperate poseur looking for attention. On the flip side, there’s nothing quite as amusing as a doddering fool who can’t put together coherent sentences.
@iggy71 iggy, you’re just way too, too stubborn for me to keep trying to reasonably communicate with you. If you go back to my first reply to you, I mentioned, or alluded to the fact that you were fkn likely merely being a little sarcastic, but in your very next reply is when YOU are the one who, in your sarcastic style, just had to start insulting me by sayin You had to ‘trudge’ through my ‘diatribe’ & whatever, so that is why at 1 point I asked if you remember who started the BS & iggy71, it wasn’t me, my man, …unless you really, actually Do Not know what the word Diatribe means. I do doubt that I was in any way being ‘vicious’ by Any stretch of your imagination. Ergo, You started the insults, …but then you turned it on me, iggy & I have to say, you Have been much more relentless n your insults than I, but I’ve intentionally tried not to follow ur pattern of derogatory language. I’ll be the 1st, between us, to admit that the innocent banter was quick to get outta hand. On that point, you, if you’re at all reasonable, should agree. I’m not nearly the ass wipe you assume I am & I doubt that ur as fn bad as I paint you to be. That said, I’ll go ahead & man up - I relent because, not only was I partly to blame, but this crap is going nowhere. I think both you & I are much better men than this [God,…I do hope u aren’t a female, LOL] To be as honest as my pride & ego will allow me to be, I started feeling a bit, Oh,…hell,…Very uneasy about the way things started quickly going down hill & straight into the mud!! For that, though it does eat at my manly image of myself, I’ll swallow my damned disabled medicated ass, and say, I do apologize…My Bad & yes, my man, you, iggy, win the spoils of calling me a damn loser & an asshole! Good fight!!
I bought! Why? Because who just wants to see the party upstairs? With two, you can show off your shirt AND your pants.
No, not really. I bought because there is nothing local, and I want to move my main laptop to a docking station and have a big camera-less screen as my primary.
Gabbagool!
@courteousblock, well, I’m guessing you think you’re real cute, or think that Gabbagoo sounds cute,…wait,…omg, hey, that doos sound rather cute, …Gabbagoo,…Hee, Hee, Hee, Gabbagoogoo
@1DisabledWarVet @courteousblock
@iggy71
@courteousblock @iggy71, Hey, You’s,
Remember who fn started it, Mr, “Who Would Want 4 Of These?”
@1DisabledWarVet
https://www.amazon.com/Victure-Microphones-Computers-Desktop-Conference/dp/B086GQSKK3/ref=mp_s_a_1_4?dchild=1&keywords=1080p+webcam&qid=1616300401&sr=8-4
Looks highly similar, and only $21 for one. Unless you really need two, probably a better deal.
@alose, I might buy these 2, reasoning that if I’m willing to pay $21 for one, I should be willing to pay $8 for 1 more.
@alose Looks similar? LOL. Don’t 99.999993% of all webcams on Amazon look similar?
I grabbed a couple, I figure I can hook it up to and pi on either my 3d printer, or various Christmas light controllers.
I have facings the window for storms and the other for zoom .
I got one of these for my desktop. They work fine, but whenever they’re plugged in, they have a super bright red light letting you know they have power (separate green light tells you if the camera is in use). I ended up facing it downwards when I wasn’t using it so that it’d stop annoying me.
@fring I’ve found a square of black electrical take good for pesky LEDs
@fring I’ve used electrical tape to silence overly loud “HEY I EXIST” lights. Sometimes a sharpie will work too
Of course I’m only referring to the power led. You definitely DO NOT want to do the same thing to the status led. And then definitely don’t hide it. It would be ESPECIALLY BAD to pair with a raspberry pi that can also be easily hidden. Because you DEFINITELY do not want a portable spy camera. And then don’t tell everyone you only got one camera so they don’t ask about the location of second camera. Just wanted to be clear in case anyone thought I was implying otherwise.
@fring @vrillusions Of course if you have a teen who invite friends over while you are at work… this might be useful to use as you say you weren’t implying… just saying…
@fring @paulmakepeace, I’m certain you meant ‘Tape’, but you did have me cornfused @ 1st, but I got over it; it didn’t tape me long to figure it out!!
What does Qanon think about the safety of using these?
Like the dentist that asked Dustin, ‘The Marathon Man’, “Is It Safe?”
Yay! What terrific news!
Surely if Meh is selling webcams that means that the need for them has passed. The pandemic must be over. Time to take off your masks and party.
According to reviews on Morningsave, the LEDs on this camera are ridiculously bright, and the camera itself has a heavy fisheye effect.
@m2pt5 I can attest to the brightness of the LED light, You will never mistake whether your camera is ON or not. LOL. The actually camera itself is surprisingly decent, considering. I am getting no fisheye effect, and I used it for meetings and Zoom.
Will these work with raspberry pi?
@rareyman Cameras that work without drivers on Windows almost always work on Linux and therefore, on the Raspberry Pi.
Long before there was a Raspberry Pi, I used OpenCV. This was with cameras that also had quite a bit of image distortion. OpenCV could be trained for each camera by moving a checkerboard throughout the image space, then crunching the video for a while on the 2002 era desktop. After training, OpenCV corrected image distortion so that straight lines in real life were also straight in videos.
These were high resolution cameras for the time, a full 640x480 at 30 fps. They were Firewire cameras, so they didn’t suffer from USB issues of that era.
I didn’t try for color correction, but it could be trained to do that too. You would need color standards and constant lighting, but it was certainly possible.
I believe that the Raspberry Pi 4 has more than enough CPU power for that level of image improvement at 1080P.
Unfortunately, OpenCV can’t fix the graininess of the videos without sacrificing image details.
Also, you will have to supply your own black tape, to deal with the overly bright LEDs.
I have been using the Raspberry Pi cameras, and other cameras based on the same image sensors and cabling. Those cameras have much less image distortion, better color quality, and the images aren’t grainy with even moderate lighting.
The genuine Pi cameras are $25, but I have bought compatible cameras for under $15 each. The advantages to the Meh offering, are that USB cameras can be used on other computers, the cables are nicer, and you aren’t limited to one camera per Raspberry Pi.
I bought one of these when they were offered up on a Mehrathon. Absolute trash. The LED IS SUPER BRIGHT (oops, shouted that, but it is stupidly bright). But the video is the worst part, the colors are way off, it’s very grainy (yes, I have excellent lighting), and I seriously doubt the claim of 1080p. If you will use this for your face like with Zoom, you won’t be happy.
@Jonas4321
I also bought one in a mehrathon, and as soon as I fire up Zoom and plug it in, it tells me the camera is already in use. Same with the Windows Camera app. Only way I got it to work was to reboot my PC with it plugged in, then it works the first time only. But I’m not going to reboot every time I need to use it, so it’s useless to me.
Also agree with the LED and video quality, very grainy.
@Jonas4321 LED is like a Star Trek Laser rifle. It’s insane, I covered it with some tape. The quality is actually decent, but the colors are not vibrant, they are a bit muted. Used it on “meetings” and “zoom” and it worked very well on both. Just a FYI.
For only ten bucks more, you can get a license for Camo and use your phone as a webcam, which will look a billion times better.
@QU8yNRXWYqyq @zenoid
Totally agree on Camo. I’ve been beefing up my web conferencing system with my iPhone 12 Pro Max as web cam and a real green screen setup to hide the ugly closet behind me.
(Since MS Teams doesn’t have real green screen support, I’m using OBS to do the chroma keying and color correction, which then feeds the video to Teams. Minimal hardware needed — assuming you already have a decent phone camera — and the heavy lifting is done in software.)
It’s massive overkill for our little meetings at work, but I’m having a blast with it. They haven’t seen my new disembodied head trick yet.
@QU8yNRXWYqyq @TheFLP
people are using Snap Camera (which works with Teams) to do any of the available Snap Camera effects including cat heads. Not sure it works together with Camo.
@QU8yNRXWYqyq @zenoid
Hmmm cat heads …
Looks like it’ll work after installing a down-and-dirty “integration” for Snap Cam (much as you need to do for Teams). So in theory you could run Camo > Snap Cam > Teams.
And OBS supports Snap Cam as an input. This could be a real monster.
I have to do some actual work for a while (sigh), but this is going on my to-do list.
@QU8yNRXWYqyq On Android you can use DroidCam for free.
You can use the app Camo to use an iPhone or iPad as a camera. Camera on your iPhone is way better than this.
But, do I need two of them?
@PocketBrain I don’t know, how many PC’s in your house?
If you would have advertised “Jeffrey Toobin approved” you might have success selling more of them.
Will this record Biz’s Beat of the Day?
Anybody know if these’ll work with a raspberry pi? Could be some decent cheap 3D printer cams with Octoprint.
@Ephori read thru this whole forum & get ur question answered…
Mic is meh
These are garbage. Meh is shipping e-waste. The contrast and colors are wrong and the LEDs are trying to light the room. I can’t believe how terrible these are.
I bought two, and they both only work for 5 minutes max. They stop sending video (green light turns off) minutes after being selected as a video source, and the USB device name disappears from the device manager only to reappear a few seconds to a minute later. I’ve used XSplit and Altercam as video programs. Anyone else having issues getting these to work for more than 5 minutes?
@xenophod Yup. Both of my units drop out of video regularly… or irregularly. The mic is so bad that I still use a separate unit (and it’s not great!).
@xenophod Same, mine only last a few minutes at most before stopping. These are worthless.
Like everyone else, my experience with these cams is that they may stay on for about 5 minutes, but will frequently stop transmitting video multiple times after mere seconds. The LEDs for power & recording are stupid bright and have to be taped over to not blind yourself.
These are basically garbage - hard pass on any future Gabba goods that come through meh in the future.
Having similar experience to others with the camera only sending video for a minute or two. I thought this was a Mac problem where it just keeps trying to switch to its default FaceTime camera, but that does not seem to be the case.
I was able to successfully get this webcam to work for over a week as a weather station webcam on linux.
Here’s my bash script:
“webcam.sh”
The first line adds some text and the current time/date to the text file “timedate.txt”, then it uses ffmpeg to snag an image from the webcam and save it as “start.jpg” (“yes” is piped in to accept the prompt question to overwrite the existing file “start.jpg”)
The second line (using yes again to accept the prompt asking if you want to overwrite the existing file “image.jpg”) has ffmpeg taking “start.jpg”, and then adding the text from the text file “timedate.txt” as an overlay to the image.
The last command uploads the image.jpg to my weather station’s FTP site using curl.
I did have to mess around with guvcview to get the brightness/contrast/focus settings locked in first, so having a GUI, (XWindows/Gnome/XFCE) on the linux box was helpful to get a nice image
I have a cronjob running the script once a minute, so maybe that’s why the camera doesn’t flake out like it does when you’re trying to use it as a video camera.
(I could have the overlay added in the same step as the image capture and not have 2 jpgs, but I plan on having another script create a time lapse animation of the unedited/overlay images, so that’s why there are 2, one with and one without the overlay text.)