Sneak Preview: iPhoneCam
January 12th, 2008 by kenAbstract:
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:
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| 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!
January 13th, 2008 at 6:06 pm
Well what wireless antenna is this using in both devices?
January 13th, 2008 at 6:23 pm
@Donald:
It’s using normal Wi-Fi.
January 13th, 2008 at 6:24 pm
Good thing they announced this today, since come Tuesday bluetooth iPods and bluetooth accessories of all types will make hack devices like this obsolete.
Something IS in the air, and it’s something blatantly lacking from iPod’s to date. Sorry all you “MacBook Air”, reader, and whatever-the-heck-else other rumors we hoped would be true.
But I for one am psyched about bluetooth iPods.
January 14th, 2008 at 12:41 am
wonderful
January 14th, 2008 at 5:48 am
Great news, something I have been looking for for more than a year. It would be even better if jailbreaking my iphone is not required – I guess this will become clearer after Macworld?
January 16th, 2008 at 4:25 pm
Hi
When would you require beta testers? I’m willing to test the app for you I have two iphones both with different firmwares, so I would be more than happy to part of the project as a beta tester or I could contribute to the source as I do have knowledge of Object-C.
Regards
January 16th, 2008 at 4:42 pm
Can you use the iPhone for flash based webcam sites? Or is it iChat only?
January 17th, 2008 at 12:33 pm
Very nice!!! Can’t wait to try it! Nice work guys.
January 21st, 2008 at 12:05 pm
How soon can we expect app. over the installer?
January 21st, 2008 at 8:38 pm
Any updates on this? Whens it coming out and so on?
January 23rd, 2008 at 4:15 am
hey, I’m asking the same, when, when when?!:D
January 31st, 2008 at 5:54 am
Any news yet?
Sorry for bragging, i’m really exited about this app!
Is there a way we can beta test?
February 7th, 2008 at 8:33 am
This looks really useful.
Any news about it though? It’s been nearly a month, and I’m eager to hear more about it.
Any beta testing going on?
February 7th, 2008 at 5:35 pm
I agree… any updates? I’d be very interested in beta testing. I’m currently running a jailbroken 1.1.3 iPhone.
February 21st, 2008 at 2:08 pm
can someone email me (iempirefox@aol.com) to tell me when this is coming out
February 29th, 2008 at 12:44 am
This is KILLER! Could it use the iPhone mic to stream audio as well? What’s the latest, guys? Are you still working on this?