The Echo Park Lake webcam project is an experiment in open source software mixed with cheap consumer hardware.

--==FAQ==--
Why point a webcam at a lake? What's the point?

The Echo Park lake is scheduled for maintance. Part of one of the things they are going to do is drain all the water out, remove a bunch of trees, and plant a bunch of new trees.

How much did it cost to put this together, and how long did it take?
All the components including shiping cost about $200. The projected cost to run the server for the length of the project is over 1K. I've put more hours than I want to account for into this project

What kind of beer do you like?
Tecate is my favorate, but I'll drink it all. If you want to donate to this project, the money will be spent on paying myself back for the equipment and server bills.. Any extra dough will go into a maintance fund. Servers cost real money to run.

How did you do it?
Everyting is running Linux, specificly Debian. Here are some pages that helped me get it all together
The links below give some info on how I did it.
Here is how to run Debian on a Dockstar
And a package to make webcams work under Linux