Firewire Web Cam
I bought an ADS Pyro 1394 Firewire web camera. It works with iChat A/V without any drivers or anything. Very cool.
They ship you the IOXperts Firewire Camera drivers but I'm not sure why you need them. Read on.
I'm able to do everything I want to do with just the drivers that are standard in Panther. (I'm running 10.3.1) Admitedly, all I want to do is iChat A/V, so Panther's drivers are all I need. I just plugged the camera in, and everything was done.
I have two MacOS X systems, one has the IOXperts driver installed, and the other does not. Both give me fine performance. I haven't seen any apps that the IOXperts drivers allow you to use, that Panther's drivers won't let you use.
The camera comes with some video conferencing software: iSpQ and iVisit. I've monkeyed around with both of them a little bit. I prefer iVisit because it seems no-nonsense and simple. It's biggest problem is that its interface is clunky and overly complex. It has a minimum of like 3 different windows that pop up if you're doing the simplest of video conferences. iSpQ seemed to be more commercial and i just didn't get a good feel when I ran it the first time.
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Macintosh Software for ActiveHome and CP290 |
The good news is that both of them support the Pyro web cam with the Panther drivers and both support Windows users as well. That's key for me: I can communicate with Windows people seemlessly.