I originally setup my weather camera to use a Logitech QuickCam C910 web camera.  I did some previous research and the choices seems to be either a Logitech or Microsoft web camera.  I liked the C910 because it said it was HD and had a good lens with auto-focus.

The operation went fine however over time I became less impressed with the C910 camera.  My biggest compliant was the images were blurry.  It didn’t seem like it was an auto-focus issue as I had the focus on manual focus to infinity.  But, this change required me to leave the software running all the time which was an issue when the computer rebooted and I would have to turn off the auto-focus again.  Lastly, the CPU was always running around 50% usage.

But, the image quality became the sticking point.  I decided to do some more research.  The research pointed me to using an actual digital camera.  The Willing Webcam software said it supported some models of Canon cameras.  I had two cameras but neither worked.  I did some more research and found out that Canon supported a protocol called PTP (Picture Transfer Protocol).  A free software called gPhoto has a list of camera that support PTP so that explained why my two didn’t work.  But, now I had a list of what did.

I was thinking of buying a new camera didn’t make a lot of sense.  I looked at eBay first but actually found better results at Amazon which sold many old, used camera.  I selected a Canon PowerShot A520.  It only cost around $20.  I needed to order an USB cable, too.

I tested the camera and it worked fine.  I had to change my mount on the window frame but finally got the right position for the camera view.  The images were excellent.  In fact, I had to reduce the resolution because the time-lapse movie was too big to store.  Check out the results at Woicik Weather Camera.