These are the instructions I came up with for putting a web cam up on the
web using secure ftp protocol with the windows operating system.

Here is the basic process:

1. Setup your webcam to produce a .jpg file on a regular basis.  This might
be a standard option in the software that came with your webcam, or you might
need to download another program to do this.  

My camera software did not have this feature and I had to get a program off
of the web to do it.

2. Generate a method for automatically downloading this file to your 
internet server using secure ftp protocol.  This requires that you 
download the program sftp and generate a .bat (batch) file that will 
tell the sftp program what program you want to download and where you
want it downloaded to.

This section is complete!

3. Setup a windows "scheduled task" that will make the update generated 
in #2 occur at regular intrevals.  

This is a pretty straightforward process once you get into the wizard to
add a new scheduled task.

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Any comments on improving this process are greatly appreciated.  Send them
to tree at kkn dot net.

1. Setup your webcam.  You will need a program that can generate a .jpg
file from your camera - and have it updated every so often.  If you are
lucky, your camera came with software that will do this.  Also, maybe
you are using Linux and K5TR can help you do it.  However, for me, I had
to find a program to do it for me.

The one I finally found that does this easily is mad by Vinta Software and
you can find it here:

http://www.vintasoft.com/

You can try it before your buy it (for $19.95).  

I had some trouble making this work and had to downloan a code file and 
then mess with the settings (video format).  I can't say for sure exactly
what I did to get it working, but if you have problems, Alex (the program
author) is very helpful.  

You will want to set the Timer for something like 55 seconds or less.  The
counter type should be cyclic at the value of 1 so the .jpg file has the
same name (webcam-000000.jpg) all of the time.  I saved in JPEG format with
the highest resolution.  

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2. Generate a method to download the file. 

The heart of this is using the program psftp.  You can download this program
from the following webpage:

http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/download.html

Make sure you get the right version of the program for your operating system.  

I would suggest saving it in a directory called something like 
c:\program files\psftp.

It is assumed that you have access to an internet server that allows SSH
connections.  You can test this program by typing in a command similar to
this example:

psftp -pw password tree@kkn.net

Subsitute your password and change tree@kkn.net to whatever your userid and
server name are.  If this works, you should be able to do things like this:

lcd c:/     { changes your local directory to your root }
ls          { lists the files on the remote server }
quit        { quit the program }

Once you have this working, you will need to create a script to tell the 
program how to update your web cam files on the server.  This file is just
a simple text file that you can generate using any text editor (edit.exe
for example).

Here is what mine looks like:

lcd "c:\program files\IbmPcCamera"
cd /home/tree/public_html
put cap0001.jpg webcam.jpg
chmod 644 webcam.jpg
quit

You can call this script file anything you want - like script.txt.

This instructions in this file change my local directory to the one that 
the web cam file will be located in.  It changes the remote directory to 
the one where my public web files are located at.  It then transfers the 
file and makes sure the protections are correct for public viewing.  Finally 
it closes the psftp program with the quit command.  

To execute the script, you will type a comand like this:

psftp -pw password -b script.txt tree@kkn.net

The final step here is to generate a shortcut on your desktop that has this
command all included.  To do this, right click while on your desktop and 
select to create a new short cut.  Press the BROWSE button to find the
program you want to run - and go to the psftp program wherever you put it.

Next, edit the TARGET window to add the rest of the command line to it
(-pw password -b script.txt tree@kkn.net).

My complete entry looks like this:

"C:\Program Files\psftp\psftp.exe" -pw secretpassword -b update.scr tree@kkn.net

Except that I have my real password instead of secretpassword.

3. The final step is to setup the shortcut you made on your desktop so that
it will be automatically executed every so often.  This is done using the
Windows Task Scheduler program.  You might find this in your Control Panel,
or possibly in your program folders in the system subdirectory.  Click the
folder for creating a new folder and play with the options until you have it
setup to execute as often as you want.

When you setup your task, you will not be able to set it up to run every 
minute right off.  You have to do something like daily, but then go to
the advanced setup.  Here, you can make it run as often as you want (up
to every minute).  Set the duration to 24 hours and schedule the task
daily.

You will need to copy the whole target window from your shortcut you setup
earlier as only the first part of it will be copied.