David’s Opinions

If you’ve got one of the DreamCheeky MSN Missile Launchers (you know the ones that come with the camera on top and would like to get the camera working on your Mac… Here’s how.

Download the MacCam software from sourceforge. Make sure you get the latest version (I got the CVS build of 2008-03-13). This includes support for the camera (specifically the ZSMC ZS211 USB PC Camera (ZS0211). Actually the camera seems to have come from Vimicro.

Once you have downloaded MacCam, unzip the archive. You will need to manually copy the file maccam.component into the /System/Library/Quicktime folder and copy the MacCam application into your Applications folder.

Plug in the Camera only to a spare USB port and run the MacCam program. You should get a black window with a right pointing triangle in the top of the window. This is for “Play”. Press it. You should now see web camera images on the screen.

If you’ve got this far and it’s all working… you can now use the “Missile Camera” with the USB Missile Launcher NZ software. It will be automatically detected and if you open the video window, the onscreen target will be what the camera sees.

The additional good news here is that now you have the camera working, it also works with Skype. No fiddling or configuration changes are required.

If you are using a machine that also has a built in iSight, you will need to alter the video settings in USB Missile Launcher NZ so that the source for video input is the USB Web Camera mounted on the Missile Launcher.

Good Luck. Happy shooting!