Live ASCII video
Capture from Video4Linux devices and render frames into readable ASCII output.
HasciicamASCII for the masses
Live webcam video rendered as ASCII art and published as HTML, plain text, or a terminal window.
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Since 2001, Hasciicam makes it possible to make live ASCII video.
Hasciicam captures video from a TV card and renders it into ASCII. It can format the output as an HTML page with a refresh tag, as a live ASCII window, or as a plain text file. This lets anyone with a video device and a modest Internet connection publish a live ASCII video feed that can be browsed without plugins, Java, or other client-side requirements. And it can also be printed! It's ASCII Art!
- HTML screenshots featuring chmod and thing.net
- Portrait of Wolfgang Staehle, 2001
- Portrait of Richard M. Stallman, 2002
Swiss artist installation using Hasciicam and printers, 2015:
Credits
Hasciicam is a RASTASOFT production by Jaromil.
People who contributed to the Hasciicam project:
Jan Hubicka and the AA-project crew for the original ASCII rendering library; Gerd Knorr, whose webcam source code inspired the grab code; Mathop, also known as Josto, for CSS help; August Black for Iomegabuz hacks; Boffh for USB camera hacks; Martin Guy for buffer overflow prevention; Rat for text dump support; PBM and Megabug for watching ASCII horizons; Rapid for security and bug fixes; Alessandro Preite Martinez for SGI Irix support in 0.9; Thomas Pfau for the FTP library; Blended for wider webcam support; Dan Stowell for Video4Linux2 API support.
Special thanks to LOA hacklab Milano, Hell Voyager, Acme, Rasty, Martinez, servus.at, maddler.net, flyinglinux.net, autistici.org, and Freaknet brotherhood.