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Technical Overview 

Introduction

The Axis Network Cameras are self-contained digital color camera and a Web Server, which represent a new way to connect cameras to the World Wide Web. There is no need to connect to a PC. They contain all necessary hardware and software to provide images over the Web and intranet. The users can take and view pictures remotely over the network using a standard Web browser.

Supported Environments

You can use any standard browser capable of viewing JPEG format images.

Today the following browsers can be used:

  • Netscape Navigator 1.22, 2.0 and 3.0 Beta
  • MS Internet Explorer version 3.0 Beta 1, and 4.0 Beta
  • Oracle Power Browser version 1.0
  • NCSA Mosaic version 2.1.1
  • Chimera 1.65

The Axis Network Cameras use the TCP/IP suite of protocols. All transportation of data is done through HTTP or FTP.

Theory of Operation

The Axis Network Cameras are stand alone web servers, supporting the HTTP protocol. You use the camera Web address in your documents to access the pictures taken by the camera.

A snapshot is triggered by the request from the browser (using the camera's URL). The snapshot is then taken by the camera, compressed into JPEG format and transmitted over the network back to the browser. Typically this process takes one second to get a full size image. There are three picture URLs available:

  • fullsize.jpg This is the latest triggered full size JPEG snapshot with 352 x 288 pixels and typical file size of 23 KByte.
  • halfsize.jpg This is the latest triggered half size JPEG snapshot with 172 x 144 pixels and typical file size of 10 KByte
  • lastshot.jpg This is the previously triggered snapshot. That is, the previously taken full size or half size picture.

You can also integrate the network camera into your CGI scripts in order to create your own applications such as photo catalog, id card printing, etc. Then you simply refer to the URLs containing the Axis network camera An Example

Imagine that you want to create a home page where you have a virtual picture of your front yard . If you have already made the basic installation and have given your camera a name, then:

  • Create your home page with an editor that supports HTML, Microsoft Internet Assistant, Frontpage and the like. You could also create the raw coding in HTML from the start.
  • Use the HTML reference to the picture at the position where you want it to be. If your camera's name is cam.yourbusiness.com, then the image reference should be http://cam.yourbusiness.com/fullsize.jpg
  • As the home pages can refer to external pictures, your virtual picture is now created and ready to use.
    • A Sample HTML Page Using a Network Camera

    "<HTML> <HEAD> <TITLE>Sample page</TITLE> </HEAD> <BODY> <H1>Welcome to Axis Web camera demo</H1> <H1> <IMG ALT="Fullsize JPEG Image" SRC="http://extneteye.axis.com/fullsize.jpg" WIDTH="352" HEIGHT="288"></H1> <P>This picture is taken right now!</P> <P>Follow <A HREF="http://www.axis.com">this link</A> to get to our corporate home page!</P> </BODY> </HTML>"

In this example you can see how simple it is to refer to the picture from the Axis network cameras. You have also learned that we have a file in the camera called fullsize.jpg. This is the 352*288 pixel image, an appropriately sized image to fit in a browser application. You could also refer to a smaller file called halfsize.jpg, 172*144 pixels.

The AXIS Web Cameras is primarily intended for unattended monitoring and not for video conferencing and the like, which normally requires a PC. Instead, some suitable applications would be surveillance, Intranet and remote monitoring.

Features and Benefits

Connect a Camera Directly to the Network

Connection to the network is easy and there is no need for any other server, such as a PC with frame grabber cards, complicated image translations and network configurations. Simply assign an IP-address to the camera and add a web-reference.

Self-contained Optimized Web Server

This camera is installed as a web-server. No PC or extra hardware and software are required. The open architecture makes it easy to integrate into other WWW/Intranet applications as well as to CGI scripts.

Wide Range of Applications

Add excitement and virtual actions to your web site. Replace video cabling with your network, use it for tourism, office automation, lite surveillance, event promotion, to create your own MPEG movies, image databases, medical or monitoring machines. For the Intranet, it is ideal for photo catalogues, conference room viewing, visitor badges or monitoring the coffee machine.

Cost-effective

Until today, the only way to connect a camera to the Internet involved UNIX workstations or PCs running special software with frame grabber cards. These solutions are difficult to set up and manage, and they also tend to be quite unreliable and/or extremely expensive. The AXIS Web Cameras provides a reliable low cost alternative with all the necessary features involved.

New Features

These are recently added features to the Web Cameras.

  • Full configuration using HTTP and your web browser.
  • Support for the serial port. The first step was to support the zmodem protocol for fast file-transfer. This enables you to get your images not only over the Ethernet but also over your ordinary telephone connection with a modem. At a later stage we intend to give it full PPP support.
  • Support for a relay connector. With this you can trigger a door-solenoid, i.e. it's possible to open or close a door or similar.
  • Support for input switches to allow a push-key connection to the camera.
  • A real-time clock. With this you can display the time inside the picture to give a touch of live action. The clock can be positioned wherever you want.
  • Camera specific settings like white balance and ambient light.
  • The lastshot.jpg file is triggered by the push-key on the front.
  • JPEG compression quantification. By trimming these parameters you will be able to get smaller file sizes.
    •  

Ultra Fast JPEG Compression

The AXIS Web Cameras network camera has hardware support for the JPEG compression as well as a 32 bit High speed RISC CPU. This gives you ultra fast JPEG compression. With the AXIS Web Cameras you get JPEG images directly - no need for manual conversion between image formats. A full size JPEG image is compressed in less than one second.

Without the hardware compression, it normally takes 10-30 seconds for picture compression. Here the Web Cameras is superior to other technologies such as Pentium based PC:s with frame grabber attached cameras. For solutions where the camera is attached over the parallel port (such as Connectix QuickCam) the difference will be even larger.

Security

The AXIS Web Cameras is a Web server of its own. This means that the server is secured like any other Internet host. It is up to the network manager to restrict access so that either individuals, groups, the whole company or the whole world may access your AXIS Web Cameras camera server. Normally this is done in your company's firewall.

The configuration is stored in the product's config file in the product that is available using FTP. This config file requires root access and password to the product in order to be modified.

Management

With its nature as an Internet server, you can manage the NetEye from any Internet browser in the world - provided your fire-wall allows you. The Web Cameras is also featured with full configuration using HTTP and your web browser.

Software in the AXIS Web Cameras can be obtained free of charge from the "Download Area" under the support section of this website. The camera server has FLASH memory that allows central and remote updates over the network.

Performance

The AXIS Web Cameras uses a RISC CPU and hardware chips for the JPEG transformation. This is basically a must in order to reach acceptable performance. The current performance of the AXIS Web Cameras is:

  • fullsize.jpg: 0.5 s to generate the picture. Typically 23 Kbyte using the highest picture quality.
  • halfsize.jpg: 0.3 s to generate the picture. Typically 10 Kbyte using the highest picture quality.

You must also add the delays of your network and/or the Internet to the time it takes to generate the picture.

Hardware description

The AXIS Web Cameras is a digital camera with web functionality.

  • Camera lens with manual focus
  • UTP (10BaseT) Ethernet connector to the network
  • Power connector (12 V AC or DC, 9.6 VA)
  • 9 pin serial DSUB connector for future modem functions
  • Push key on the front to manually trigger snapshots
  • Auxiliary connector with relay and inputs
  • The camera is built for a standard camera 1/4 inch nut.
  • Miniature tripod for simple placement and mounting

    • CCD Camera Description

Axis 200+ Web Camera:

  • Direct digital camera, 24-bit color
  • CCD: High quality 1/3", 768 x 582 pixels
  • Lens mount: CS mount (C mount with C/CS ring)
  • Lens iris: Auto iris lenses supported
  • Illumination range: 5 - 5000 Lux (with delivered lens),  2 - 200.000 Lux (with F1.0 auto iris lens)
  • White balance: Automatic or fixed.
  • Gamma: 0.45
  • Optical filter: Quartz low pass filter with IR cut filtering.
  • Delivered with a basic wide angle lens. Focus can be adjusted from 0.02 in (0.5mm) to infinity. The lens can be replaced with any industry standard C or CS lens.
  • Focal length: 5.5 mm
  • Apperture: Fixed F2.0
  • Thread: M12P0.5 mm.
  • Angle of view: Approx. 51 deg. horizontal, 39 deg. vertical.

      
 
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