GSCam v1 used an SiPix Blink in streaming video mode, and the iVista webcam software that came with it, on a 700MHz P3 WinME box.  The downsides of this approach were that iVista crashed a lot, and it only used video mode, not still mode.  The SiPix video driver didn't deal well with daylight (the picture goes all white) so basically it didn't work if we pointed it outside. 

GSCam v2 used a Kodak DC20 on a dedicated 150MHz P1 Win95 laptop (later upgraded to Win98 to allow the use of USB and a wireless card).  In this configuration we first (v2.0) used a modified version of software from http://www.jfitz.com/, but later (v2.1) used Oliver Hartmann's Software for the DC20, since it was easier to incorporate his command line programs into scripts which were quite stable and reliable.  You should visit Oliver's most excellent Kodak DC20 / DC25 Secrets page!

GSCam v3 used an Epson PhotoPC 650 camera controlled by the same 150MHz P1 laptop with a NetGear MA401 wireless card, now running RedHat 9 Linux.  The camera control script is in expect and tcl and uses gphoto2 version 2.1.2 (older versions don't support this camera) and ImageMagick's convert to imprint the time and date.  This is a nice camera from a control standpoint, but a bit too wide field of view (Mission Peak looks about as big as it does to a person standing in Palo Alto when we use it!) and I was unable to find a telephoto converter that did not vignette the image.  Thus GSCam v3.2 below.

GSCam v3.2 uses a Nikon Coolpix 800. Since gphoto2 can control this camera as well, this required only minor changes to the tcl/expect script.

GSCam v4 beta is (as the name implies) currently in beta testing. It uses the same Nikon Coolpix 800 controlled over a serial port by the same tcl/expect script, but on OS X instead of Linux. This only really required one change, with photopc replacing gphoto2. I could not get gphoto2 to compile on OS X and there was no port available, so I had to go searching for a replacement. While photopc is less general, it was also written specifically for the chipset the Nikon 800 and several other cameras of that era used (it was originally written for a different Nikon) so it allows me to do additional things like 30+ second exposures (the camera on its own will only do a max of 1 or 8 sec, depending on the mode it's in). Better yet, a port was available via < href="http://www.darwinports.org">DarwinPorts (now MacPorts) so I didn't even have to try to compile it. DarwinPorts also has a port of ImageMagick (and ghostscript, which ImageMagick seems to need to do the annotations) so for now I'm using that as well. Those ports give a lot of error messages about fonts but appear to work anyway.

If you know of any other programs I might be able to use to run my Nikon 800 from OS X, or of any other faster (USB) cameras with at least 2 megapixel resolution that can be remotely operated from OS X, or you want to do this yourself and would like to see a copy of my script (I'm not sure I really want anyone to see that script...), or you want to share anything else that seems helpful, let me know: bclee -at- umich -dot- edu -- Thanks!

Special limited time bonus GSCam 2 is an experiment of the week sort of thing, and most of the time it's inactive even when it claims otherwise. In addition to guest appearances by nearly all the cameras above, GSCam2 as also been staffed by a second Nikon CoolPix 800 and a Nikon CoolPix 900 that I had for a short time. Recently it's mostly an iSight, either still images or live video, using the software packages EvoCam and iGlasses and whichever mac happens to be closest to it (as this went to press the iBook is running both GSCam and GSCam2).