OCC 2026 - Day 6 & 7
--------------------

The "one other thing I could try" referenced in the entry
for Day 5 worked rather well.  The Library has a surfeit of
used webcams kicking around, relics of a transitional age
when videoconferencing went from being a thing some folks
did occasionally, to a thing everyone does all the time, but
before we transitioned the staff from desktops to laptops
with built-in webcams.

Turns out it's relatively straightforward to hook up a
circa 2020 USB webcam to a 2007 Dell D610 laptop, and take
still photos in an easily scriptable way, via a command-line
utilty called "fswebcam". That's what I did on Day 6.

So, at this point I think all the pieces are in
place. Here's what remains to be done:

1. Set up a null modem RS232 connection from the old 1990
   desktop to the 2007 laptop. I've done this before so I
   know it's possible. (The laptop hails from an more
   enlightened age, when laptops had DE9 serial ports).

2. Configure the PP3 client software to send and receive
   data over the serial port. I've done that before too.

3. Write a script that runs on the laptop, listening on the
   serial port for an incoming command. Could be anything,
   maybe the character 'p' for 'photo'.

4. When the script receives the 'p', it sends a command to
   fswebcam to take the photo and save it to a specified
   location.  After waiting for an appropriate interval, it
   then sends another system command to convert the photo to
   ASCII, using jp2a.

5. Then it reads in the ASCII version of the photo, prepends
   the NAPLPS prefix commands, and sends the result back
   down the serial line.

6. The PP3 client software receives the graphic and displays
   it.

I was going to work on getting some of that done on Day 7,
but today is, in fact, already Day 7 and I'm feeling
somewhat under-motivated.  So instead I'm going to finish
this write-up and post a couple more photos, and then call
it a wrap.

It's been fun. And hey, despite the fact I didn't actually
finish the project, it's been a useful exercise, if only
because I discovered the flood before it did much damage, and
confirmed the working status of the NEC Multisync II and the
386 PC, and the insufficiently-working status (alas!) of the
Axis network camera.  

It's possible I will continue to work on this project post
OCC. I will add another entry to this log should I
successfully complete it.

The other thing I'm going to do today is catch up on
everybody else's projects. I see the mailing list has been
quite active!

Sat Jul 11 13:57:34 PDT 2026