So K&I are expecting a little one soon (yeah very soon like in 5 weeks OH MY GOD!). Anyways, as geeky as I am, I have been looking into these baby monitors that let you stream video/audio to a little device. Well I have seen them and quality sucks. And they cost something like $200 minimum if you want video. So I have decided to look around for some cheaper solutions.

The first thing that came to mind was to buy a new IP camera like this one or this one. If it works like advertised, I could put it in the baby’s room and attach to the stream from XBMC and see the little bugger on TV or on my laptop (or even from work!).

Then I looked at the capabilities. MPEG-4. Now what device plays MPEG-4 content and is small enough to be carried? THE PSP of course! So I have been poking around today and guess what, I got it working!

I pulled my little PC webcam and through a set of (complicated) steps was able to stream the live feed to the PSP.

Here are the instructions:

1/ Download logisphere here. It’s a nice freeware that can deliver a live stream of your webcam. And unlike Windows Media Encoder, it does work. Run it, it should send a stream @ http://localhost:8090/

2/ Download VLC 0.8.5 and follow these instructions. VLC will attach to logisphere, transcode it to a PSP compatible format and retransmit on port 1234.

3/ Download PMP VLC Player 0.0.8 here and follow instructions. I tried on a v1.5 PSP. Modify pmp.ini to set the server (VLC) IP & port.

4/ Attach to live stream. Voila!

Check out the video here of myself going silly.

A while back, I had blogged about how it was possible to downgrade the PSP firmware. Now why would you want to do that? Well, the v1.5 firmware is the only firmware that permits running “homebrew” applications on the PSP without restrictions. Sony soon after realizing that, started to release firmware updates with security that would block such features. To achieve wide adoption, Sony would require game publishers to force people to upgrade their firmware (with an updater on the UMD) before they could the game. So you see the dilemna.

The hackers community and Sony have then been playing a game of cat and mouse. Hackers trying to find ways to run homebrew applications on newer firmware (including the ability to downgrade back to a v1.5 firmware) and Sony blocking them. A month ago, Sony was the clear winner with no way to downgrade from their latest firmware (2.6) back to 1.5. But the Hackers have found ways. Not only is it now possible to downgrade, it is also possible to run most homebrews (some kernel access is still restricted) without downgrading.

Yesterday, I was able to run the infamous Super Nintendo Emulator (instructions here) on my brother in law’s 2.6 PSP with the latest eloader from fajita. I was also able to downgrade it to a v1.5 successfully (without bricking it) and upgrade it back to 2.6 using a game firmware update.

Now if you think this is cool, something else is even cooler. The devhook app was released a few weeks ago and allows you to emulate firmware in software! So basically, you can emulate a v2.5 firmware on a v1.5 PSP without needing to upgrade - all in software! I tried it on my PSP, and it works like a charm (though a little slow) including the web browser capability. A few days ago, Sony released firmware v2.71, where the firmware is apparently now encrypted. Well in a matter of hours, some dude had the encryption cracked and the new firmware was runnable on devHook. Yes sir re bob.

All this geeky talk just to show that you don’t need tons of marketing to make a product successful. Just let the hackers community act.