Notice: If you crash your car/injure yourself/land in a lake/etc because you were trying the idea below out, it’s not my fault.
The last couple times I drove down from Everett to Tacoma, I broadcast the drive from my car. There was really no point to this except to see if I could do it. I am going to share with you today the secrets on how to run live video stream on the go!
Hardware Basics: Needs
Before we get into the details, let me list some of the must have items you’ll need to pull this off:
- A laptop or carputer with a decent amount of power (depending on how interactive you want to be)
- An external webcam (I like the Xbox Live camera for this)
- Mobile internet (Anything but EDGE)
- Power inverter (trust me, you’ll need it)
The above four items are the bare minimum you’ll need in order to stream video on the go. Before my recent laptop upgrade, I used an Inspiron 600m (old) which allowed me to stream basic video. Anything more caused the system to crawl. Here is my hardware setup:
You can start streaming the basic raw feed right from your webcam with the above hardware and an account with a video streaming service like uStream or Mogulus (note: Mogulus is not very friendly with low end hardware). But basics is boring, and this article would already be over.
Hardware Basics: Internet
To actually stream your video, you’ll need an internet service that works on the road. No you can’t hack your wireless router to give you a signal on the road.
All the big mobile internet services offered by cell phone providers are going to offer you around 5GB of bandwidth a month. While the cap is small, it is highly unlikely you are going to hit the cap while streaming video — unless you decide to stream every day from your mobile internet connection and not jump over to WiFi when it is an option.
For my mobile internet, I chose Sprint (5GB/mo data cap — $60/mo). The broadband card is small, has a built in GPS chip, has a spot for an external antenna, and doubles as a memory stick when you insert a Micro-SD card in it.
The GPS in this chip is nearly flawless outdoors in my car. In my apartment, not so much. As I write this, the GPS just told me (via Google Earth) that I somehow jumped from my apartment, past work (I live right across the street from work), and landed over near Interstate 5. It’s not like I really need to know the GPS coordinates for my apartment, though.
Software Selections: Text/Effects/Other
Once you have your hardware figured out, it’s time to move on to software selections. If you’re interested in adding special effects, text, or other data into your video stream, you’ll need an extra program to help manage your video.
There are various applications out there to handle the video coming from your webcam and you are welcome to test run them all. If you want a program that is guaranteed to give you results, I recommend trying WebcamMax (Win 2000/XP/Vista 32bit - $29.95). This program pretty much has everything - Picture in Picture, text, special effects, and doodling (do not doodle and drive!). You could easily overlay your own custom logo, greeting text, video clip, or another application with the features built into WebcamMax.
Software Selections: GPS
If you want to add an extra level of data to your live video stream, why not go with a live view of your location in Google Earth? It looks neat and gives people an idea (keep the Google Earth window small so it stays an idea and not an exact point) of where you’re at.
So what is needed to pull this off? Well you already have your GPS built into the mobile broadband card and WebcamMax. The only two missing items are Google Earth and Earth Bridge.
You hopefully have an idea of what Google Earth is and maybe even have it installed on your computer. It is highly likely that the version of Google Earth you downloaded does not support GPS out of the box (the free version doesn’t). And even if it does, the implementation is limited. This is where Earth Bridge steps in.
Earth Bridge (free) is an application “designed to bridge the gap between Google Earth and your GPS receiver”. With this tool you have the ability to “see your location on Google Earth in real-time and easily control your view”.
Integration between your GPS and Google Earth is really a snap with Earth Bridge. All you have to do is plug your GPS/mobile broadband card in, activate the GPS feature (if using mobile broadband card), and tell Earth Bridge where to look for the GPS data (if using Sprint, it will tell you the COM port to look at). All you have to do from there is tell Earth Bridge to start sending the data over to Google Earth. Within seconds you will see Google Earth begin its desent on the Earth as it zooms in on your location in the map.
With Earth Bridge and Google Earth setup, you can stream that data as a Picture in Picture window via WebcamMax. Just enable PnP, change the mode to “Specific Area”, and move/adjust the selection box around your Google Earth window (but make sure to get the window borders outside the selection area). I would also recommend keeping your Google Earth window small (maybe 400px X 200px) so that your exact location isn’t clear as day. Unless you prefer that, of course.
Video Streaming
As mentioned earlier, there are a couple of options for streaming your video on the internet. Feel free to try some of the various services out there, but make sure you try uStream. Why? The window that opens up to stream video is nice and compact, it supports IRC chat, and can handle large amounts of viewers. I am in no way saying other video services don’t support these, only that I have tried only a few services and decided to settle with uStream at this time.
There really isn’t much to getting this going (create account, open up stream window, select webcam, start stream), so I’m not doing to go into extreme detail. uStream does allow you to chat with those who are watching your feed, but I wouldn’t suggest reaching over to your laptop to type while you’re on the freeway going 70+ MPH. If you do decide to be negligent in driving, please record your stream (there is an option in uStream) so the internet can remind you how dumb that was.
Suggestions and the Future
If you decide to try this out and want people to watch your stream, remember that there are now other eyes on the road in your car. If you do something stupid, they will see it. If you’re speeding and have Earth Bridge setup with the default settings, it will broadcast your speed (with a -/+ 5MPH variance I have found).
I am also looking into a way for you to safely communicate to your video viewers as if they were passengers in the car. uStream supports IRC chat, so all it should require is a plugin for one of the various IRC clients that can perform text to speech. I’ll be sure to update this post if I find a solid way of performing that.
Update: Looks like mIRC has text to speech built right into the application. Neat!
Stay safe on the road!
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June 19th, 2008 at 12:51 am
Hi blackice912, i enjoyed reading you post. Thanks for that. I promise not to do everything you described in my car
June 19th, 2008 at 10:03 am
This is a great how-to post! Like uStream, Justin.tv also supports IRC as well! We have some awesome broadcasters who do just this!
We have some advanced moderation tools for your chats. You should give a look at Justin.tv too
June 19th, 2008 at 10:20 am
Tia: Thanks for the information. I will be sure to check out Justin.tv tonight when I get home!
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