Thomas Moeslund's

EVI-D30/D31 SONY Camera Application home page

During the last couple of years I have been contacted by several people about my work with the EVI-D31 SONY camera. At some point I started to store the names of the people who contacted me. The idea was to pass that list on to others who contacted me and thereby helping them in answering the questions which I could not answer.

Now I like to take this idea a step further by creating a web-page containing these names together with the different applications. This will be an inspiration site to people around the world who use or want to use the camera.

In order to make this site as useful as possible I strongly advise ALL who have been or are going to be working with the camera to contact me at tbm@vision.auc.dk . Drop me a few lines about how you are using the camera (applications, SW/HW) and the different problems you have confronted (and solved). If you also have a link to your work or perhaps some driver SW which you wish to share with others, please mail it to me. The more information you give me, the better the site will be.

Looking forward hearing from you. Any comments you might have to my idea and this site are most welcome.

So far I simply present the raw information which I have. In future versions of this site I might want to group the different information in a more neat and natural way.

From: Andrea Emilio Rizzoli (andrea@idsia.ch)
Date: Thu, 24 Sep 1998 14:50:19 +0200
I ported Thomas Moeslund's EVI driver to the Windows NT environment. It wasn't hard at all, but for some strange behavior of NT which requires hexadecimal numbers to be written as /xFF instead of 0xFF in C++ (!). I also had to build the wiring for the RS232 comm port and so on. It took be about 1 week of full work to complete the project, but it was diluted in time. You can also try to remotely control the camera but we are still working on the site, and very probably you will find that the camera is not working. The driver is written in MS Visual C++ %.0 and runs on a Pentium II @ 300Mhz, Windows NT 4.0 The camera is connected to a Osprey 2000 video capture card, and the signal is fed into a Real Encoder. The resulting live feed is served by a Real Video Server. The Real Encoder is really demanding in terms of memory and CPU and therefore the PC has to be dedicated to this task. When our application is not working it is because we had to switch it off to use other resources on our PC. For the moment the driver SW can be down-loaded here.

Input from: Dan Kinney (dkinney@wamnet.com)
Date: Mon, 28 Sep 1998 08:46:35 -0700
I was doing some consulting work with a client that wanted to remain anonymous, and is not keen on having a lot of the details about what I was working on be made public. I had to sign a rather stringent non-disclosure agreement, and I must abide by that.
Having said that, I can say a few things about what I did do. I wrote a Unix (IRIX) library that talked to almost all of the features of the D31, going much further than just pan/tilt/zoom...such as focus, gain, various toggles of modes, etc. I implemented this from a Sony specification document that we were able to obtain from Sony directly.
I will try to answer specific questions when and where I can, but I am working at a startup now (on a very different area of software) and do not have access to any of the code or the camera.

Input from: Francois Berard (Francois.Berard@imag.fr)
Date: Mon, 28 Sep 1998 10:07:57 +0000
I wrote a driver for the EVI for a project about visual face tracking. The camera control code is available here. It's working on SGI Indy workstations running IRIX 5.3. It works fine on a SGI O2 workstation running IRIX 6.3 but I had to built the executable on an Indy: when building on the O2, the executable didn't work.
This package is not a good one: I wrote it before that the EVI documentation was available, so I had no idea about the VISCA protocol. Many things are not done in the right way, this should be mentioned.
I have a pdf documentation about the VISCA protocol and the EVI control commands.

Input from: Thomas Moeslund (tbm@vision.auc.dk)
Date: Mon, 29 Sep 1998 10:37:41 +0000
The camera was used in a project called:"Automatic Camera Control in Video conferencing". The work deals with video conferencing and how to control a camera in a videoconference system. One solution to this problem is to set up a microphone array which can pinpoint the 3D location of a speaker in a video conferencing scenario. The position from the microphone array is then used to control (pan, tilt and zoom) a camera. After having calibrated the microphone array to the camera, the system is actually able to keep a speaker in focus even thou he moves around.
The system has been implemented where the microphone array picks up the position and the speech of the speaker. The position is used to control the pan, tilt and zoom parameters of a SONY EVI-D31 camera. The camera is controlled from a Linux machine using my driver SW. To set the zoom value in the camera a test was conducted to find the relationship between the distance to the speaker and the zoom value. The result was that the relation is a 5th order polynomial.

In another video conferencing application a speech recognizer was implemented so the camera could be moved around by speech utterance e.g. "turn camera to the left", "zoom out" and "focus on Thomas". The same driver as before was used, but a Java native interface was build on top making it a very highlevel driver.

Date: Mon, 15 Sep 1999 15:30:34 +0000
Currently a student group is using the camera in a telepresence application together with a head mounted display (HMD). The idea is to place a rotation tracking device on the HMD making it able to calculate the rotation parameters of a user's head. These parameters are then used, through a network, to control the pan and tilt of the camera. The video signal from the camera is send back, through the same network, to the HMD and thereby immersing the user in the reality (location) of the camera.

Date: Fri, 18 Feb 2000 09:25:44 GMT
Another student group just finished a project where the goal was to control the camera via the Internet. They used a client-server configuration and wrote the browser software as a combination of a plug-in and a Java applet. The camera was controlled by the server using the driver software written by Vladimir Kravtchenko. A few problems with the driver was observed which resulted in dead-locks (mail me for more information). These have now been corrected. Both server and client was implemented on a SGI-machines.

Input from: Robert T. Collins (rcollins@cs.cmu.edu)
Date: Tue, 29 Sep 98 09:32:10 -0400
We are using Sony EVI-370 cameras, which have similar characteristics to the EVI-D31 and are also controlled using VISCA, but they do not have a built in pan-tilt capability (we have mounted the camera on a Directed Perception pan-tilt unit). Our application is video surveillance and monitoring. A web page on this project is available. In particular, to see our latest publications in this area go here.

Input from: Daniel Salber (salber@acm.org)
Date: Tue, 29 Sep 1998 11:19:24 -0400
I've been working with a remote-controlled webcam application. The work is finished but new features will be added when I'll have the time. The application is programmed in C on a MacOS platform.

Input from: Vladimir Kravtchenko (vk@cs.ubc.ca)
Date: Mon, 05 Oct 1998 18:07:46 -0700
The code provides interface to a single SONY EVI D30/D31 Pan/Tilt camera (address 1), connected to computer via RS232 port. It defines a class EviCamera and provides execution of all VISCA commands and inquiries through class member functions. See class definition and 'VISCA/RS232C Command List' for details. The code has been compiled with GNU compiler and tested on Linux/PC and Solaris/Sun platforms.

Input from: Volker Krueger (vok@informatik.uni-kiel.de)
Date: Wed, 7 Oct 1998 15:27:00 +0200
I'm working on applications on tracking, video conferencing and tele teaching. The camera is supposed to detect a person automatically and keep the focus on this specific person by zooming, panning and tilting. The system is supposed to function robustly with respect to illumination changes, occlusions etc. As a camera control we use our own implementation. The control employs a Kalman filter, which results in smooth movements, the speed is reasonable. We have done a comparison between our implementation and the one done by Francois Berard. A fused version is available here. We are working under Solaris, and we are using the CC compiler.

Input from: Stavros Mitrakis (s.mitrakis@caa.de)
Date: Mon, 21 Dec 1998 14:01:16 +0100
I developed a remote control for the SONY EVI-D31 in December 1997...during this time nobody could serve me with useful information on programming the camera...even SONY wasn't able to help me out. So I used a protocol analyzer from HewlettPackard to "uncover the way of communication" between my PC and the cam, hehehe =;-)) A sample remote control via internet is accessible here

Date: Sun, 12 Mar 2000 14:37:08 +0100
I just wanted to let you know that I've developed "CamControl v1.12". It consists of a java applet (client side) and a C++ program (server side). CamControl can handle one camera per COM port. This way, you can connect as many cameras to your PC as you have COM ports available. Of course the number of cams depends on your framegrabber. The Winnov Videum PCI e.g. can handle up to 3 signals simultaneously. Furthermore, you can plug more than one Winnov board into your PC, so more than 3 cams won't be a problem!
Several parameters like COM port, network port and max. control time can be configured by the user. CamControl ensures that only one client can control the cam at one time by help of a waiting queue. Any graphical remote control interface can be used to fit everyone's needs regarding look-and-feel or even corporate identity.
CamControl v1.12 requires: a PC (PII-xxx w/ 64MB RAM), a webserver running on the machine where the cam is connected to, video for windows compatible TV-card/framegrabber (e.g. Winnov Videum, Hauppauge etc.), WIN9x, 2000, NT, and an internet connection w/ static IP address. Sample pages can be viewed at: here, here, and here

Input from: Chuck Schoeffler (chucks@turbonet.com)
Date: Sat, 02 Jan 1999 02:44:30 -0800
Its for a video classroom project that is going to have the camera swing around to who ever is talking at the moment. I think a lot more people will be using the camera if I can get this figured out and post the code. I know a lot of the PIC type programmers will like it. I'm using a Parallax BS-2 module right now and when this thing is working then will port it to a PIC 16CXX or 12C7XX.

Input from: Wolfgang Mauersberger (wolfmau@et-inf.fho-emden.de)
Date: Fri, 12 Feb 1999 13:14:17 +0100
We're using several EVI-D31 in our TeleTeaching project. We developed - and still continue to do so - an Internet based contol software. This is based on a VB5-class to control up to 7 daisy-chained cameras. Sorry, there is no complete description until now. In a TeleTeaching room we placed 3 EVI-D31 controlled by a PC. On the www, you can find some impression.

Input from: Massimo Portolani (maxpor@dps-promatic.com)
Date: Sun, 21 Feb 1999 16:47:14 +0100
We have developed a hardware controller for the SONY EVI-D31 camera that is very usefull when you do not want to use a PC. You can see it here.

Input from: Bob Cummings (bob@cter.eng.uab.edu)
Date: Tue, 16 Mar 1999 23:48:18 -0600
I have written a server and client for the EVI-D31 entirely in Perl. At this point, I've tested the server and client under RedHat Linux (5.x), SuSE Linux version 6, and IRIX. The client requires that you have the Term::Readkey module for perl, but that's the only requirement. I don't know if anyone would be interested in this, but if you are, feel free to contact me, and I can supply the code.

Input from: Karoly Laszlo (laszlo@sztaki.hu)
Date: Tue, 22 Jun 1999 14:30:50 +0200 (MET DST)
Our lab is interested in image processing applications using a special architecture, namely the Cellular Neural Network. We have our own software environment for this special architecture starting from a high level language (called Alpha), using a compiler which generates the intermediate machine code which can be downloaded to the on-board running operating system which drives the CNN chip. Last year I interfaced a video capture board (manufacture Data Translation) to the system allowing us to use camera input. We also purchased an EVI-D31 camera. Currently I'm working on the interface between the camera and our software environment. We are working on PCs with NT (the interface is also tested in Win95/98) using Developer Studio, Version 4.0. In fact, the interface contains functions like ConnectCamera(), Pan(), Tilt(), Zoom() etc., it does not have graphical user interface. There are some menu items to test the functions, and there is also a camera control window where the user can type manually the packet and can see the sent and received packets.

Input from: Tony Knott (tony@tony-net.net)
Date: Tue, 15 Feb 2000 18:24:46 -0600
I am looking for an applet that will remote control a EVI-D30 connected to a windows 95 machine which has an EVI-D30 connected to it with SVHS and VISCA cable. I have capture software, I want the applet to send instructions to the IP address of the remote machine to use its VISCA(RS232) output to steer the camera. There would have to be two portions of the code, one being the .exe on the windows machine that receives data over the network from the applet on the server.

Input from: KBalaga@aol.com
Date: Wed, 16 Feb 2000 14:10:58 EST
I am using the EVI-D30 camera on Win NT.

Input from: engine@enteract.com
Date: Wed, 16 Feb 2000 15:23:44 -0600
I just bought a EVI D30 used, and I bought a custom made cable for the VISCA controler. I use EVI Control software version 1.0 under windows98 on com 2. Everything worked fine until I tried to PAN UP. Then I stop getting data from the camera and nothing but a cold reboot of the camera could bring back communications. The problem was a loose ribbon cable on the back of the pan/tilt control unit. I put some Black tape on it and works like a charm. Currently I'm looking for software to control the camera through a web page?

Input from: Joachim Bottger (joachim@MIT.EDU)
Date: Tue, 29 Feb 2000 16:04:28 -0500 (EST)
I'm interested in controlling the camera in a java environment for the project I'm working on.

Input from: Kwabena Konadu (kkonadu@osf1.gmu.edu)
Date: Thu, 9 Mar 2000 23:31:52 -0500 (EST)
We have recently acquire the SONY EVI-D30 Camera and we are considering using it as part of our senior design project. The goal of our project is to automate the camera control by the MC68HC11 micro-controller. Inputs to the micro-controller will be a highly uni-directional microphone. The microphone will give the direction of the location of the speaker. The EVI-D30 shall be used to rotate the microphone to find the speaker.

Input from: Jurgen Bart (gcii09@fais.upm.es)
Date: Mon, 13 Mar 2000 17:12:08 +0100
I am controlling the EVI-D31 camera using a Windows NT system. I would like to be able to track objects, for instance a laserpoint, with the camera.

Input from: sajit rao (sajitrao@hotmail.com)
Date: Sat, 01 Apr 2000 09:59:29 GMT
I downloaded Thomas Moeslund's Linux code for communicating with the EVI-D30 camera. So far I have not been able to get any response from the camera (connected to /dev/ttyS1 on my box) The retCommand messages from the camera are always exactly equal to the sndCommand messages - one would think there was a short in the serial cable. However... WITH DOS (on the same dual-boot pc): When I run the dos test program (evi-d30.exe) it finds the camera on COM2 and the camera responds fine to all the commands! - so the hardware setup is fine. However, I notice the "Unknown CATEGORY" message for every RCV command that it gets For example when I choose "PAN RIGHT H" from the DOS menu the camera does the right thing, but the following messages are displayed:
SND PAN RIGHT H 8101060110100203ff
RCV My own Message 8101060110100203ff
RCV Unknown CATEGORY
Does this mean that in DOS too, the Receive equals Send? But how come the camera does the right thing in DOS but not under linux? I would appreciate any suggestions about how to get the interface working under linux. A caveat - I'm using a canon VCC3 serial VISCA cable because the company I got this from didn't have the Sony Cable in stock - I dont know if this is relevant, but just thought I'd mention it.

Input from: (shipoopi@email.msn.com)
Date: Tue, 11 Apr 2000 22:42:51 -0500
My school is using four EVI-D30s hooked up to a MX-DVPRO switcher in our auditorium to videotape programs. We are currently using the IR remote to control the cameras. I'm interested in finding a program or writing one in C++ to control the four EVI-D30s with the Micro$oft SideWinder Pro 3D joystick.

Input from: Sam Saad (sam_saad@idcanada.com)
Date: Tue, 16 May 2000 15:48:16 -0400
I am trying to develop a twain interface using an integral mv-plus board and the sony evi-d30 A few years ago I had developed a proprietary interface between a panasonic cm-780 and an integral flashpoint 128 card and a photo software. I want to use a twain interface since it makes it easy to use with a variety of softwares. Can you recommend someone that can help me achieve this goal. I changed from panasonic to sony mostly for availabilty and ruggedness of the equipment as well as picture quality. Sony seems to use better ccd and optics.

Input from: florent_tymen@netcourrier.com
Date: Fri, 19 May 2000 17:12:47 +0200
I just bought a SONY EVI D31 camera, and I bought a custom made cable for the VISCA controler. I want control the EVI-D31 camera using a linux (Redhat6.2) system and I'm looking for software to control the camera through a web page.

Input from: Eddie Hughes (Eddie_Hughes@xontech.com)
Date: Sun, 21 May 2000 19:13:54 -0400
I just bought an EVI-D30 and found out quickly that there is not much info on VISCA or the computer control of camera. I am building a radar that is fully PC controlled. A joystick may be used to steer the radar, or it can automatically track objects using its track filter. I want to use the EVI-D30 as a second joystick controlled sensor and use data fussion techiques for object identification. Because many of my radar subassemblies use Visual Basic drivers, I would like to stick with that environment for development. Does anyone out there have Active X or other drivers that could be used to control the camera?

Input from: Stephen Booth (SteveBooth@mediaone.net)
Date: Tue, 30 May 2000 06:52:26 -0400
I just finished my Web page and thought I would put a Web cam on it. I'm an embedded C coder so I've had to learn enough HTML and a few other things to get my page going. I was just able to get my camera going the other day. I'm using the POST command from my Web page on Mediaone to call my camcontrol.exe program on my system at home. I'm running Windows 98 and using Visual C++ V6.0 although I'm writing just plain C code. I'm writing the code in a very simple fashion also to make it easy for the next person. I'm a firm believer in writing code so the next person can understand it instead of showing off my talent at job security!

Input from: Karsten Bruch (bruch@brause.de)
Date: Mon, 12 Jun 2000 19:22:30 +0200
We tried for a couple of days to get the camera moving. But it wouldn't. Then I found your page and program and thought maybe the cable is not right and that was true. We did an adapter an went on. Your program works fine on windows98. But we are still trying to get the camera moving with perl(linux) but it wont. If you know anybody who has done that or is doing that at the moment we would greatly appreciate getting in contact with them.
Also we found that the documentation of the span of the absolute positioning is wrong. These spans are from positioning the camera with the remote-control and then reading the absolute position. They may vary because (we think) the motors are so awkward. The HEX-numbers of a EVI-D31 camera bought 2000:
center = 000000
down = FFF5-FEE4
up = 000B-011D
left = FFF4-FCA5
right = 000B-035C

Input from: Susanne Kaiser (Susanne.Kaiser@NOSPAMpse.unige.ch)
Date: Mon, 26 Jun 2000 12:59:40 +0200
We just started to work with 2 EVI D31 cameras and since we haven't written a program to use the VISCA-RS232 connection, we currently play around with the infra red remote controls. Now we confront a weird problem. We can control both cameras without any problem but after a while the cameras stop reacting to the infra red signal. When I retried the cameras the next morning it worked without a problem, but after a while the problem occurred again. It seems that our problem is caused by an interference between IR control and the neon lights (Electronic Ballast Fluorescent Lights). We do not know whether the problem is related to the light spectrum, the frequency of the gear control or the dimmer. People at Sony and Osram are now checking for possible sources and solutions.

Input from: Stavros Mitrakis (s.mitrakis@caa.de)
Date: Tue, 04 Jul 2000 10:49:11 +0200

IN REPLY TO THE ABOVE ENTRY:

I have noticed that the controller of the cams will "die" when trying to send commands via remote commander and RS232-C simultaneously. Since the cams are daisy chained, all the cams connected to the first cam will "die" too, as soon as the first cam locks up. Another thing is, that even with the remote commander I managed to flood the controller's command buffer, so it resulted in a "buffer overflow" error. The only way to solve this is to send a "clear buffer" (only via RS232-C) or to restart the cam (off->on). And last but not least: I had one camera which stopped working after 2 weeks. No known workarounds and no switching on/off helped. Sending it to Sony resulted in a defective controller... As you can see, many possibilities...just wanted to let you know, what I found out in the last 4 years... Feel free to visit my interactive webcams at: http://bvlab12.fh-reutlingen.de

Input from: Eric Meurville (eric.meurville@epfl.ch)
Date: Mon, 03 Jul 2000 16:48:36 +0200
We are developing our own pan/tilt camera and we would like to implement the VISCA protocol on it. The source code controller I already have and it is very useful but I would also be interested in:
- protocol source code for the camera side
- hardware schematics for the communication part of the camera
Anyone?

Input from: cihan ceylan (cihanceylan@hotmail.com)
Date: Thu, 13 Jul 2000 08:20:05 GMT
I have bought a evi-d31 video camera and want to control it via a program which is designed in Delphi. When installing the camera you can import the activeX component of the camera to the Delphi environment. However, I need the help file (VDK.CHM) of this component in order to costumize the control. Anyone know where I can find this file?

Input from: Mikhael Bahmed (mbahmed@wanadoo.fr)
Date: Sun, 16 Jul 2000 22:35:26 +0200
We have develloped software to remote control the SONY EVI-D31 camera and the VC-C3 CANON camera. The software controls the camera, take one or several snapshots and upload them by FTP. See our demonstration web site and software site

Input from: Jason Nguyen (nguyenjl@psns.navy.mil)
Date: Fri, 21 Jul 2000 07:19:26 -0700
To control your camera via an USB port you need to put together a 8-pin MINI DIN to 9-pin Serial cable then use this cable to connect the camera to a USB to Serial adapter from Belkin.com. From this adapter, you can use the USB port instead of the serial port. Software to control the camera can be downloaded from www.sony.co.jp/ISP.

Input from: Oscar H. Nasisi (onasisi@inaut.unsj.edu.ar)
Date: Wed, 2 Aug 2000 10:11:18 -0300
We are developing a tracking control system for the pan/tilt EVI D31 Sony camera. In order to design the controller with the kinematics compensation, we need the mechanical specifications of the device regarding the position of the pan and tilt axes, and the image plane location relative to these axes. I highly appreciate it if anyone could send me this information as I can not get it from the technical specification of the camera.

Input from: Roger Morris (rmorris@rconnect.com)
Date: Mon, 28 Aug 2000 20:32:47 -0500
I'm using the camera to videotape our Sunday morning church service. I've been using the camera and software from SONY for 3 weeks and all is working well. The software to control the camera is good and it might be better if I had a video capture card since the output of the camera can directly feed into the software. The software has built in speed control which comes in handy. The process to preset locations at this point seems to be a pain. I don't know if it exists but, several people, some controlling the camera, want a joystick control instead of the 8 way click feature of the software.

Input from: Kerry Kuznicki (kkuzn@innovativecomm.com)
Date: Fri, 29 Sep 2000 11:34:54 -0400
We are an integrator of distance education, video conferencing, multi-media rooms, etc. and through the years we could never find a suitable mount for the Sony EVI-D30, so we designed and now manufacture our own line of mounts. Wall, ceiling, recessed, etc. please visit our website and click on camera mounts for our full line.

Input from: David Naranjo (ndavid@aegiselect.com)
Date: Mon, 9 Oct 2000 10:24:00 -0400
Aegis Electronic Group in southern California is a Sony Distributor for the EVID30/31. We have many customers that are using the EVID30/31 for Medical, Security, Web, and Educational applications. I have many sources of information and carry additional accessories to the cameras including software via RS232, Visca cables, Daisy chain cables, wall mounts, ceilling mounts, joystick controls, and lots more. Please feel free to visit my website or contact me via email.

Input from: Graham Martin (grahamm@epic.co.uk)
Date: Tue, 10 Oct 2000 13:17:13 +0100
I have been programming a camera control module for the Sony EVI-G21 camera, and have been having problems getting the back light enquiry command to return anything but the OFF state, after a quick look at you web page on the G30 style camera i noticed that the back light enquiry command was 8x 09 04 33 FF this was different than the back light enquiry command listed in the Sony documentation for the G20/G21 camera ( 8x 09 03 3E FF ) i have discovered that the "3E" is a typo and should be "33" as in the G30. Also whilst on the same project i discovered another typo in the Sony docs on the Pan/Tilt Drive Command, the Absolute Position tilt range is listed as being E193 to 1E6D with 0000 as the center position. Actually it is E193 down to FFFF and 0000 to 1E6D. I Guess it is just a range from FFFF to -1E6D ignoring the -sign. Hope this errata is helpful to somebody!

Input from: Daniel Wolf (daniel.wolf@gte.net)
Date: Tue, 24 Oct 2000 23:52:23 -0700
Videobotics has EVI-D30 complete application software (as well as for a number of other popular pan/tilt/zoom cameras and pan/tilt devices from Canon, Panasonic, and others) and systems available for some time called CamMotionPro30. We include GUI host/server program, and remote control with several web-enabling Java applets and a remote-client non-web application for control over any TCP/IP network. This is a camera-control system that is compatible with virutally all methods of video-transmission over the net (web cam programs, NetMeeting, etc.) and is low-cost and with many extra features (scripting ability using Rebol, etc.). Our CamMotionPro30 system has proven popular with many EVI-D30 users around the world for webcams and use on corporate and government internal network applications. You may review product information and see an online demonstration here

Input from: John Kuchera (kuchera@mpinet.net)
Date: Mon, 30 Oct 2000 15:34:16 -0500
I currently have about 15 of the cameras in use with the Intel Proshare 500 cards. I'm looking to write an application in VB or VBA to control the camera's pan-tilt-zoom and also show just remote or both remote and local windows. I can no longer get the 500's so I will be building the new application on the PictureTel 550 and the Sony D30 camera. Any ideas or comments are appreciated.

Input from: Robert E Sell (robertesell@home.com)
I recently got a good deal on a Sony evi-d30 and thought it would make a good web cam. I'm using a Matrox Meteor capture card with it. The drivers from Sony are only for Windows 98/95 so I have had to dedicate a computer for just this (as my others are all 2000 now). That was my first irratation but now 98 still does not recognize the camera. Any suggestions? Do you have any 2000 drivers?

Input from: (alpha_81@asiamail.com)
Date: Tue, 28 Nov 2000 14:12:38 +0800
I'm doing a final year project on EVI-D30/D31 SONY camera. I will be using a hauppage framegrabber to program this camera, is there anywhere that I can get the source code of this framegrabber using C++ or is there any sample program for me to have a look.

Input from: Jonathan Marianu (jmarianu@home.com)
Date: Sun, 31 Dec 2000 14:10:17 -0800
I have a couple of EVI-D30's and I am using one with a Zydacron board for video conferencing. With the other I would like to have a remote control web cam. I don't want to buy the CamControl so I'm being creative. I have Windows Terminal server which lets me open up a window into my server from a web page. From there I can execute any application as if I am local. At one time I had a copy of a Sony application that lets you control the camera. When I find it I will install it on the computer and use that to remotely control the camera. If you know of a free web based evi controller I would be very grateful.

Input from: Justin (blacky98@hotmail.com)
Date: Tue, 2 Jan 2001 00:38:10 -0500
I have a couple EVI-D30 cameras and recently upgraded to Win2k. Unfortunately, the Sony Software for remote control software doesn't work anymore any alternatives?

Input from: John Happy (john@housekeeping.com)
Date: Fri, 5 Jan 2001 12:51:49 -0800
I called a local video products dealer and gave him a brief explanation of my system and he recommended I begin by checking out the Sony EVI D30 or the Cannon VCC3. Following my phone conversation I went to Yahoo and found a link to your web page. Per your recommendation I am contacting you ... before I go to more trouble and expense than I need to to get my 'dream' system working. This is the scenario I want:
Large suburban home with a home office. I do website creation and hosting. My web server is co-located on my ISP's network in a building in another part of my hometown. I may soon relocated my server to my home office if I can get a wireless connection to my ISP's network. I want to install three exterior color cameras with audio. Two with pan/tilt/zoom capability and one stationary - all in weatherproof housings. One attached to the second story of my home on an addition we will be addding this summer, one will be located on a wooden post already installed and wired about 80 feet from the house and the stationary one will be focused on those coming to the front door. I want to install three interior color web-conferencing type cameras. All with pan/tilt/zoom and audio. I want to be able to control all 6 cameras in two ways 1) via a keyboard/joystick and switch and NTSC monitor in my home office and 2) via a secure web page. Presently my home office network and my co-located web server run Windows NT 4.0. I'll probably upgrade to Windows 2000 Server in the near future. Given the above can you offer me any advice? Wiring, streaming software, camera control software, hardware requirements, etc?

Input from: Barry Gurberg (cyberg@magma.ca)
Date: Thu, 11 Jan 2001 13:57:58 -0500 (EST)
I'm interested in getting a zoom/pan/tilt camera like the sony EVI-D30 to work using a web browser like Netscape and controlling it on a Linux (perl) system through the serial ports. Anyone?

Input from: Joe Chesak (joechesak@yahoo.com)
Date: Wed, 14 Mar 2001 18:08:06 -0800 (PST)
I plan to set up a realtime webcam with my cameras. One will use the camera's own motion sensing ability as survelliance and the other I want to be able to control it through a web page.

Input from: Laurence Davies (Laurence.Davies@ukcouncil.net)
Date: Mon, 19 Mar 2001 13:48:59 -0000
I am trying to find information on writing a control system in Visual Basic. What I am looking for is information on how to code communication between VB and my COM port. Any help would be greatly appreiciated!

Input from: EDUARDO ANDRADE (eduardo.andrade@gvideopro.com)
Date: Thu, 22 Mar 2001 13:08:30 -0600
Our company, Video Pro, is a Sony Videoconference distribuitor right here in Monterrey, México. Actually we are involved on a special quotation for a big customer regarding a videoconference system for a "face to face" distant business lunch. On the local site there will be a lunch table and an identical one on the remote site; in front of such lunch tables there will be the videoconference back projection screen, so an ilussion of being on the same table will be displayed during the videoconference business lunch. Any application note or info regarding such kind of project?

Input from: Stephane Gourichon (Stephane.Gourichon@lip6.fr)
Date: Wed, 11 Apr 2001 15:32:42 +0200 (CEST)
Corrections to the code made by Thomas B. Moeslund:
1) The example program on page 46-47 of the documentation has several unbalanced parantheses.
2) With the default setup (a timeout of 5 seconds waiting for a "complete" signal) the SetInit would fail if the camera is directed to the right, with an angle greater than 45 degrees. This is because the pan-tilt reset operation may take up to nearly seven seconds in those conditions: when the motors have to do a full round trip from right to bottom-left, then back to right. So I increased the timeout from 5 to 7 seconds like this in SendCmd() :
/* Wait for an complete signal. Retransmit if nessesary */
do {
/* Read from the camera. A complete signal is expected */
if(WaitFor(aFd, 7, &retCommand) < 0) {

Input from: Hugo Varvaró Marcinek (huvarmar@doctor.upv.es)
Date: Tue, 15 May 2001 13:54:52 +0200
We are working with two EVI-400DR Sony module cameras with VISCA protocol communication. Our problem is: Each independent camera communicate very good with RS232 port, but when we connect both cameras in daisy chain connection, the buffer returns continously the "power on" information 9038FF and we suppose that this information fulls the port buffer (we can not control any camera). On the other hand, we do not know if it is neccessary to make anything with the out port cables from the camera 2 (Now, these cables are without connection DTROUT, DSROUT, TXOUT and RXOUT). The actual connection that we have made is: 232 Computer port TX,RX,DTR and DSR with the terminals to the camera 1 RXIN, TXIN, DSRIN, DTRIN, the output terminal from the camera 1 TXOUT, RXOUT, DTROUT and DSROUT to the input terminals to the camera 2 RXIN, TXIN, DSRIN and DTRIN. The output terminals to the camera 2 are without connection. We have been in contact with Sony but they did not help us. Anyone?

Input from: Jack Liao (jackponis@netscape.net)
Date: Fri, 18 May 2001 12:03:53 +0800
We want to control 60 units EVI-D30 through TCP/IP or RS-485. Where can we get the software? As we know via VideoServer RS 232 COM Port(AXIS. VCS ..) to control EVI-D30 VISCA Port that is limit must daisy chain wire it. Is any device you known can "star configuration" or some device can convert VISCA to TCP/IP then I can control it from a Browser (IE or Netscape) or proprietary software.