Webcam assistance.

[Wired Weirdo]

Hi All,

I am new to this forum and I’m really looking for a little bit of help, in my bid to make my mums life easier at home and bringing technology to help me in my endeavours I have started digitising all music, movies, tv programmes that are on dvd or tape all on network storage with my thin client PC to run as media server, it’s in a completely different part of the home but with space and electrical outlet constraints we have a webcam that is used as our video calling camera on the living room tv, in a bid to reduce the cables and weight on the tv stand I want to find a way of making the webcam wireless if possible, i just don’t know the best way of doing it. I’m thinking of a few options here.
1. Leaving a majority of the equipment in place I getting a long USB3 cable to extend the connection with signal boosters, but they’re expensive, not completely reliable and just don’t want to pull out furniture for the sake of a USB cable.
2. I have at my disposal 3 cat6 Ethernet cables one of which I intend on creating a HDMI over Ethernet to provide signal for display on TV, can I use the same system as the basis to do the same for the webcam?
3. Investing in a raspberry pi set up, one that can allow me to run the optical Blu-ray drive and webcam via the network to remote access thin client PC that i currently already own.
4. Abandon the whole thing, run the thin client pc as a headless system and use remote access from a tablet to run my media server kit, then consider buying an android device for the tv to run the webcam on video calls.

Each choice has pros and cons but i just don’t know what to do for the best way forward and would appreciate the help.
Thank you
Andy

 

[BradtheRad]

If Mom were to realize it's possible to do the following I suspect she would prefer to have her own laptop computer with built-in mic & speakers, webcam, wifi internet access and Zoom or Skype to video-phone. Maybe it runs Windows, Macintosh, maybe Linux. Just turn it on and start a call. Every so often re-select your wifi network if it forgets.
I suppose the same system can be left running (at low power) with a chime alert to notify of incoming calls.

That describes my own webcam system, an HP laptop purchased for $180 at a local pawn shop. I became annoyed enough at turtle-slow Win10 that I erased the hd and installed Linux Mint. It did all the peripheral installs with no effort on my part.

Very important that you're close to the mic to pick up clear speech, maybe 12 inches away. 2 or 3 feet is suitable distance to send a headshot.