Webcam

[Lemur]

Grandma wants to see her little lemurlings in realtime. Two questions:

What are the better webcams out there? Several sites recommend the Logitech Pro 9000, but it looks a bit like overkill to me. The only feature of interest is the low-light stuff, everything else sounds useless. Thoughts?

Second question, what is the most old-person friendly video chat software? She says that one of her church organizations already uses Skype; should I try to hook us up that way? Experiences with video chat that I can learn from?

I have avoided the world of video chat/videoconferencing for over a decade. Now I have to learn it. Direct me toward useful information of be forever damned.

[pevergreen]

My experience is either low end or top end.

I would go for something that has a decently high framerate. Worst thing about webcam is jerking pictures. Gah to them.

Of course a Video Confercing Unit we put in a few months ago totalled about $20 000 USD. We got payed $150 USD to install it, roundabouts.

Skype should be fine, no reason to doubt it, but as always, wait for someone else who really knows what they are on about.

[Beskar]

Skype is definitely the programme to use.

As for jerky framerates, it is a multiple issue thing. It could simply be the device you are using, the connection speed of the uploading, their connection speed and all sorts of various factors.

Webcamera's definitely have tons of functions to them that sound useless, so look at the direct specifications. For that camera -
Max. video resolution - 1,600 pixels by 1,200 pixels
Max. frame rate - 30 fps

It looks like it will do a very good job. You can obviously go for cheaper models, which should be able to do the job. It is just a matter of picking a price range and going for something you are comfortable with.

You will want at 20-30fps streaming rate for the camera though.

[Lemur]

Yeah, I think I asked a similar question some months ago, never got a really authoritative answer, bagged the whole project. But now grandma's at it again, so I'm asking again.