WEBCAM FOR UNDER £20 - EXAMPLE PICTURE ON MY PROFILE !!! (Logitech Dexxa Webcam)

Member Name: dolphin_style

Product:	Logitech Dexxa Webcam
Date:	29/06/01 (4631 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Budget Price, Good features

Disadvantages: Build quality of budget produict.

To see a still image taking with this camera, taking only 5mins ago!, look at my profile.

I bought this little webcam from game in Nottingham at around 3pm today. I got it home for about 4pm. I’ve been playing with it since!!!

At only £19.99 I was in 2 minds whether or not to purchase this budget cam. On one hand: its only £20, so what if its crap! On the other: its £20, it’s bound to be poor quality - why waste your money. Well after this case of uncertainty, the little voices in my head persuaded me to get it.

How wrong could I have been! After seeing all my mate's webcams, which they have all forked out upwards of £50 for, I can’t believe my bargain beauty actually shows the same quality. Its great. Colour camera, that can record, and take still images for under £20, what a deal.

HOW DOES IT WORK

Well it’s basically a lens in the shape of an eyeball, connected to your PC via USB. It comes complete with a mini tripod, which is handy for attaching your cam to your monitor. The main unit and wire are blue in colour, whilst the base is a contrasting greyish, rubbery material. It looks cool anyway.

Here is a run down of the features, that come as standard with the cam:

RECORD

You can capture motion video by simply pressing the big button on screen, funnily called "RECORD". It then starts recording images immediately, however you can set it to record X amount of secs after pressing the button. However one downfall would be the amount of disk space it uses. At approx 1mb per 20sec clip, you have to be careful you don’t overload you CPU! Oh yes, and if you've got a microphone, you can have audio as well!

TAKE PICTURES

It has to be said these pictures are not of great quality, but from a unit that isn’t supposed to be a digital camera, they are decent. "See profile for sample pic". If you are starting your own webpage
, like myself, the format of the image, .jpeg, is perfect, as it is smaller enough to upload to the web. You can also tweak the image using the in-built controls. I.e. Brightness, controst etc. etc.

WEBCAM PICTURES ON YOUR WEBPASGE.

Although I have yet to upload this feature on my own page, I will be soon. Watch this space! But basically how it works is, the camera send a picture to your webpage every 3 seconds, so what the person viewing your web page actually sees, is a picture refreshed every so often, or they can manually refresh via a hyperlink

COMMUNICATE WITH OTHER WEBCAM OWNERS

Whether they’re in China, USA, or across the road, you can see them, and they can see you. It’s brilliant, especially if you have relatives in other countries. The program I use is "NETMEETING" and is already preinstalled on most CPUS- you will probably already have it! This enables me to have a voice chat with another person with the same program. All they need is a CPU, Internet connection, WEBCAM, and a copy of the software. (sighs) the wonders of technology!

MOTION SENSOR

Amazingly, even thought this is a budget cam, it comes with a feature only normally found on high end products. The motion sensor device, tracks the image in real time, and can be set to take a picture, or record for a set amount of time, when something moves in the area it is viewing. The sensitivity level can be adjusted, so say you have it watching your back garden overnight, a rustling leaf would not set the sensor off.

CREATE A VIDEO EMAIL

This feature is obsolete really, as you can simply save the recording and send as an attachment. However it does make the whole process easier for the novice PC user. But if you do intend to use it, it basically sends the saved image/video, as an email to anyone in the world. Nifty!


Basically this product is unbeatable for value for money, its generous range of feat
ures combined with its bargain price tag make it a must for anyone remotely interested in the idea of digital imaging.

The Dexxa cam can be purchased from GAME in the high street, but as of yet I have not seen it anyway else. Get in there while they have some left.

James
aka. dolphin_style

UPDATED

Heres a link to the game.uk.com website, where you can see the product, buy online too.

http://www.game.uk.com/review.asp?tab=pc&rev_i d=138257

Enjoy !

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