I shall not detail how to set up the required PC programmes and smartphone App, as they should be self-explanatory. However, I will give one word of advice: charge your smartphone to 100% because the combination of both using the camera and LED and transmitting data over wireless network will rapidly drain the battery!
Connect both your smartphone and PC to your wireless network.
Begin by starting IP Webcam. You should reach a screen such as:
IP Webcam start screen.
I suggest you use the following settings:
| Option | Setting | Comment |
|---|---|---|
| Resolution | 640×480 | |
| Photo resolution | maximum allowable | (only relevant if you will take freeze-frames) |
| Quality | 90 | lower this if the output on the PC keeps ‘lagging’. |
| Orientation | Landscape | |
| FPS Limit | No limit | |
| Focus | Default | This option is important, as later you will be able to auto-focus using your PC. |
| Prevent going to sleep | Yes |
When ready, touch Start Server. This takes the input of your camera and allows a PC to connect to it to see the output.
Press How do I connect? –> I’m using Wi-fi router. Now note down the address it displays; on my network it is 192.168.0.7:8080
You might want to press Actions –> Fade to switch off the smartphone display in order to save battery. As per the previous post, mount the smartphone onto your basket.
On your PC, type the address you noted down earlier into the web browser, e.g. 192.168.0.7:8080. You should see this screen:
Don’t click Open stream in media player just yet (as this option introduces an unacceptable delay between what you do in real life and what you see on screen.) Instead, open VLC, go to Media –> Open Network Stream, and see this screen below:
In the top box, type in http://<address>/video, e.g. on mine it would be http://192.168.0.7:8080/video. Under Caching, set it to about 50 milliseconds. Finally click Play. You should see a screen like this:
Out of focus.
It is out of focus, and dark. No matter; go back to the web browser, click Open remote control panel, which will bring the following screen:
Hit the Turn on LED and Autofocus buttons. Autofocus will focus upon what is at the centre of the field of view.
In VLC it should now look like this:
Well illuminated, in focus.
And there we have it. You should now be able to manipulate the laparoscopic tools in near-real time (a slight delay might be present). In the near future I will try to show some basic skills in a tutorial fashion.
In the next post I will discuss changing the “channel” your wireless router broadcasts on in order to improve performance.
Happy laparoscoping; I hope this will be useful, instructive — and above all — fun!
DIY Laparoscopy 