Camsecure how to set up your webcam for FTP file transfer

What is FTP?

FTP is an Internet (or more properly a TCP/IP) communications protocol to allow you to upload and download files from a
machine connected to your local machine via the Internet. FTP is composed of two parts; an FTP client and an FTP
server. The FTP client is the software you execute on your local machine to send or receive files e.g. your webcam
program. The FTP server is software which executes on a server machine on which the files are to be saved or retrieved.
Most (if not all) machines which provide Web serving capability also serve as FTP servers to allow you to upload your web
pages. Web pages are usually composed of HTML source files and images (either JPEG or GIF format).

What do I need to know to use FTP?

To be able to FTP (send) files to your FTP server and Web server, your Internet Service Provider (ISP) should provide you
with four pieces of information. These are:

The name of the FTP server - Each FTP server on the Internet executes on a separate machine. Machine's on the
Internet have both DNS names (eg. members.aol.com, ftp.flash.net ...) and TCP/IP addresses (eg. 152.163.199.41,
209.30.0.100, ...). To be able to FTP a file to an FTP server, you must know the name or TCP/IP address of the machine
hosting the FTP service.

The userid to login to the FTP server - FTP servers are protected to allow only authorized users the ability to save and
retrieve files from the server. To gain access to an FTP server, the administrator of the FTP server (usually the ISP) will
provide a userid used to access the FTP server.

The password to login to the FTP server - To gain access to the FTP server, the password for the userid supplied by
the FTP server administrator must also be known.

The directory in which to save files - When connected to an FTP server, the server will allow upload of files only to
particular directories located on the server. The FTP server may place you in such a directory when you connect or you
may have to change to a different directory. This will be explained by the FTP administrator (usually the ISP).

Webcam Programs and FTP

Most Webcam programs have the ability to act as an FTP client. This allows them to create JPEG image files and FTP
those files to the FTP server automatically. Since the FTP server is usually the same machine as the Web server, FTPing
an image file to the FTP server allows a new image to be placed on the Web server and is then immediately viewable by
browsers on the web. Since each user's configuration including FTP server name, userid, password and directory in which
to save the image files varies,the Webcam program must be configured with these unique details before use. the Webcam
program will remember the details and need only be configured once.

The Webcam program will have an FTP configuration section where you will have to insert the above information along with
a time interval so the program knows how often to upload the image and usually a save count which denotes how many
images to save....e.g. you may want to have the latest image always update, but also keep the last 5 images on the
server aswell.