Overview

ITP Spy Cam allowed users to control the pan, tilt, and zoom of a camera over the web and type messages online that were transmitted to the screen of an old Macintosh SE.

Prototype

The project consisted of a motorized webcam that was controllable from a browser (pan, tilt, zoom) as well as an old MAC SE that displayed text messages. People online entered the text and that text would show up on the SE’s screen. I really love old Apple computers and the best thing was that the entire SE operating system and the project ran off a floppy disk.

System
The system used a Sony serially controlled video camera that was remotely controlled with a Macintosh. The Mac received server messages from the site for the pan, tilt, zoom of the camera as well as the most recent text from a CGI script reading people’s posts. That text was then sent serially to the Mac SE while other serial commands were relayed simultaneusly to the camera.