Mac Daddy World

Abstract:

Use your iPhone’s camera as a wireless Mac webcam! Stream video over Wi-Fi to any Mac video application such as iChat, Photo Booth or Skype.

Some History:

After the C4 Iron Coder contest where we made the video conferencing iPhone app, we put down our iPhones and got back to writing Mac software for the rest of year. Nobody knew, and we still don’t know, what the future of these iPhone apps would and will hold.

Last week I had a strange urge to get back on the iPhone again and solve some problems that had left us stumped this summer. More specifically, I wanted to get streaming video from the camera. (If you remember our video demo at C4, the frame rate was quite low. This was because, under the strict time limit of the conferece, we weren’t able to grab from the camera any faster than a frame or two per second.)

Meet iPhoneCam:

Click to download a recording of an iChat video conference where I demo it to Glen.

I figured it out: Now we can stream at up to 30 fps. My proof-of-concept is an iPhone app which streams video over Wi-Fi to a video driver component on the Mac. This way, you can use the iPhone’s camera stream in any Mac video program like iChat, Photo Booth or Skype.

Using iChatUSBCam (so that iChat can see non-iSight video sources), I did a video conference with Glen to show him how it looks. He recorded it with Conference Recorder so that we could share it on the blog. You can download a demo video here.

But I haven’t gotten to the clever bit yet.

The Clever Bit:

The iPhone app and the Mac component find each other using Bonjour (zeroconf). There’s absolutely no configuration necessary. If there’s an iPhone-based camera available, the Mac finds it and uses it automatically. Glen had the idea to see if Bonjour could be used, and we noticed that IDMResearch had already provided a nice wrapper around CFNetService.

FAA: (Frequently Answered Answers)

A: No, it only streams video.

A: No, it’s only for Mac users.

A: iPhoneCam is not yet available to download. We’ll have something for folks to try soon. Stop by our booth at MacWorld Expo and maybe we can give you a live demo!

The whole Ecamm team is going to be exhibiting at MacWorld ‘08. If you’re going to be at MacWorld, be sure to come by the booth and meet Glen, Midori, and myself. If you’re not going to MacWorld, consider it! This is the Mac enthusiast’s event of the year.

We’re doing a really fun promotion all week: Stop by at any time during the expo and instantly win cool prizes. Prizes include iPod Shuffles and completely free copies of our (not usually free) software. So come and win a copy of DockStar, iGlasses, iPhoneDrive, CardRaider, or if you’re lucky, an iPod!

We’ll also be demoing our software, showing off our iMage cameras, giving a sneak peak at the very new, improved and the never-before seen Huckleberry 3.

We’ll also have various iPhones and iTouches available, showing off some cool new iPhone hacks we’re working on, and for anyone who wants to see a demo of our other iPhone projects.