hello,

i thought this would be an appropriate forum to post in. i am a complete newbie, so please bear with me while i ask stupid questions!

what i need to do is to grab data coming in from a usb webcam and send it out over tcp so i can view the webcam at a different location. i have never done anything like this before and i have some very very basic questions for you regarding getting data from a webcam... (not about sending over tcp- i've done that and tested with different test cases..it should be ok!).

1. When you do something like this, is the communication between the "usb port (or webcam)" one way or two way? what i mean by this is will the webcam just keep sending data, or does the "computer" ever have to send anything to the port/device?

2. how difficult would it be for me to grab the webcam data? I mean, am i looking at 10 lines of code, 100 lines of code, 1000 LOC ......?

3. Someone suggested that i get a usb to serial converter. is it really that much easier to read from a serial port than a usb port?

4. I would like to be able to use any USB webcam in my app. are teh formats of the data from different webcams different? where can i find info on this?

5. Any other general stuff you can tell me, point me to would be appreciated!

I know these are very broad/general questions... but i need a starting point and to know if what i want to do is even possible! Please help a newbie out!

Thanks a lot!