Streaming Webcam over SSH

A while back I posted a "How I Roll - EeePC Security System" article where I talked about some of the modifications I had made to my EeePC's software to help recover it in the event that someone stole it. One of those measures has even been incorporated into this blog. See the three pictures in the "EEESECURE" section? One of them is taken every time the computer is unplugged, one is taken every time the computer is turned on, and the third is taken hourly.

Well, I decided to take it up a notch. Now I can get a real-time video feed of whatever my EeePC's webcam sees!

Here's what you'll need to do the same thing on your machine:

1. Linux lap/desktop with: 1) a webcam, 2) an SSH server, 3) VLC media player, 4) a public IP address (if you want to view the feed from outside your local network)
   
2. Another lap/desktop with: 1) an SSH client, 2) VLC media player

Here's how you do it:
For the purposes of this demo, we'll use two computers [EeePC] and [Other]. [EeePC] is the computer running Linux (Ubuntu 8.04 in my case) with the webcam that I want to watch and [Other] is some other computer (OS not critical).

1. Connect to [EeePC] using SSH. If you're using PuTTY, make sure to set "Connection > SSH > Tunnels" to:

   Source port = 9091
   Destination = localhost:9091
   'Local' and 'Auto' selected

   If you're using the command line it looks like this:

   ssh user@[EeePC] -L 9091:localhost:9091

   ... isn't that much easier?
   
2. Once you've connected to your [EeePC], run the following command:

   vlc v4l2:// :v4l2-dev=/dev/video0 :v4l2-adev=/dev/dsp :v4l2-standard=0 :sout="#transcode{vcodec=mp4v,vb=800,scale=1,acodec=mpga,ab=128, channels=2}:duplicate{dst=std{access=http,mux=ts,dst=localhost:9091}}"

   It's a beast, I konw, just copy/paste it into the terminal window of your [EeePC], or better yet, put it in a script on your [EeePC]!
3. You'll see a lot of text scroll across your screen. When it stops, you'll want to open up your local copy of VLC player
4. In VLC go to:

   Media > Open Network > Protocol = HTTP > Address = localhost:9091

   and again, if you're using the command line

   vlc http://localhost:9091

   starting to understand why geeks like the command line?
5. What happens next should look something like this: