Installation

It's a very straightforward application. There's nothing complicated to it at all.

Just download the software from the website and extract the files to a folder. There, you'll find the Palm application (Palm Webcam.prc) that needs to be Hotsync'ed into your device.

The desktop application is called Palm Webcam PC.exe. It also comes with a WDM (Windows Driver Model) webcam driver - palmcamusb.sys. When you first run Palm Webcam PC.exe, it will automatically install the WDM driver. You can also install it manually from the Windows Device Manager.

The Palm application itself can reside in the main memory or moved to a memory card. Once launched, a simple interface will appear with half of the screen taken up by a viewfinder, just like the typical camera application that comes with your device. The only difference is that there is no capture button.

There is however, a 'Stream' button that allows the device to stream data across to the PC. As soon as you press this button (with the Hotsync cable connected), it'll attempt to connect to the PC. If there's no connection, the device freezes for a few seconds. Then a window pops up to ask the user to make sure that 'Palm Webcam PC.exe' is already running on the PC.

Testing Palm Webcam

If you connect successfully to the PC, a timer will start running and you'll be shown the frame rate. At the resolution of 320x240, I managed to achieve a frame rate of only 3.6 fps. That is not a very good frame rate but it's still usable.

The picture quality though, is about at par with dedicated budget webcams in the market.

I tested it with Adrian on his PC using MSN Messenger v6.2. He was in Melaka while I was in Kuala Lumpur. All I did was to initiate the webcam utility from the chat screen. When he accepted it, both of us were shown the streaming video from my CLIE. Here are some of the screenshots he took.