The Power Supply
My project idea was inspired by the first live webcam on the Internet, The
Trojan Room Coffee Pot. The motivation was to have a live image available
of the company's coffee maker, so employees could check the status of the coffee
maker from their desk.
I thought it would be interesting if a user could have some interaction with
what they see in the image. For instance in the coffee maker example, if the
user could refill the coffee pot from the web page, or at least trigger some
indicator to someone in the area of the coffee maker to brew a fresh pot. The
user could then witness the results of their actions on the webcam.
I thought an LCD display would be a interesting interactive device to be controlled
over a webcam. The user would be presented with a web page displaying the image
of the LCD display. From the web page the user could input text, and see it
displayed on the LCD display on the webcam.
The LCD display would be interfaced through the parrallel port. I needed an
older machine that I could experiment with, and not be too concerned if I accidentally
damaged the port with a bad circuit design. The LCD display requires a DC power
supply of 5V, however the power supply in an x86 computer outputs 12V DC. A
standard multi adapter was used for the power supply. My operating system of
choice would be GNU Debian Linux to drive
the LCD display.