n two of my earlier articles for DevX, "Teach Your Old Web Cam New Tricks: Use Video Captures in Your .NET Applications" and "Building an Enhanced Security System with a Web Cam and a Servo," I showed how to incorporate your web cam into your .NET applications and use it for surveillance purposes. However, using those solutions, the videos can only be viewed locally on the computer running the web cam. An interesting enhancement would be to extend the applications so that the video can be viewed remotely over the Internet.
And so, in this article I will show you how to use socket communication to send a live video image from a server to remote clients. The sample applications built in this article consists of:
A server that displays the video captured by a web cam
A client that receives the live video image from the server
The server will allow multiple clients to connect to it at the same time. Among other things, it is a useful application for the home environment where you can use it in your office to monitor your home or kids.
Creating the ServerI'll first create the server. Using Visual Studio 2005, create a new Windows application and name it RemoteMonitoring. In the default Form1, add a PictureBox control and set its properties as follows:
Size—449, 253
SizeMode—StretchImage