Eagletron's TrackerCam v2.01 Review

Eagletron's TrackerCam v2.01

Here's a cheap way to get a WebCam up and working in a few seconds: TrackerCam is the official software companion used by TrackerPod, a hardware pan/tilt unit for your WebCam. It is not required, however, to own a TrackerPod to operate TrackerCam as a WebCam software.

Set up is driven by standard wizards and you need to allow a certificate to be installed in your system. You can then launch the application, that will check for installed cameras and TrackerPods in your system and take you to the initial control screen.

A nice interface allows you to preview the video coming from your camera. If a TrackerPod is present, you can begin panning and tilting your camera instantly. Do notice that TrackerCam's specialty is automatic tracking, which means locking onto a subject in the camera's view and then automatically following them with the camera so that they stay in view. Tracking performance depends on camera quality (Eagletron recommends using the Logitech QuickCam 3000 WebCam). Thus, a TrackerPod pays special significance here. Otherwise, you can go and set up parameters to let TrackerCam publish your live image within minutes.

TrackerCam enhances a variety of digital video applications and allows for some entirely new ones too. You can record movies with it, do videoconferencing (and being tracked while you move in the middle of a videoconference, if used with a TrackerPod), give voice commands (start and stop recording, movement...), panoramic capture (allows you to capture a panorama of the camera surroundings when used with a TrackerPod), etc.

The interface is quite intuitive, and a serie of icons (hideable) allow you to execute each of the functions mentioned above. A TUNER button lets you finetune your tracking experience.

TrackerCam is a nice, fully-featured, piece of software you can use for FREE (for a limited time? who knows!). You can get the most of it when used in conjunction with special pan/tilt unit TrackerPod but it also allows you to create a small WebCam server and get some extra features for a really, really, affordable low price ;)

Your Comments/Opinions

Well, I'd like to say it is a great product, but I can't get one. First attempt, they couldn't bill my card. Possibly my fault, who knows. Second attempt, they sent a confirmation number and a tracking number, saying some other company would deliver it. Tracking number is invalid. Other company that they link to doesn't exist. No responses to emails. I think I may have just wasted some money.

john

OK, I'm going to have to say the only problem was slow email responses. After Nagging, I got a valid UPS Tracking number that showed they did ship it on time. Just from Canada which is slow. Got it. Works fine, and I'm having fun with it. John

john_again

This is a really cool piece of software. We used it to create a web cam server and then embed the live web cam images directly into out web pae we are talking to our developers about letting the public control the camera from the website, obviously this will present several challenges as only one person will be able to control camera movement at a time, but we think we have found a way of allocating control of the web cam to our web site visitors.