HasciiCam is an application that converts video captured from a camera into moving ASCII art. Instead of displaying conventional images, it represents changes in brightness using combinations of text characters.
The program was originally developed to publish live ASCII video on the web using ordinary HTML pages. This approach made it possible to distribute moving images over extremely limited internet connections without requiring browser plugins or conventional video streaming software.
HasciiCam also provides live display modes, plain text output and controls for adjusting the appearance of the resulting ASCII imagery.
The software converts captured frames into greyscale image data before rendering them with AA-lib. Its modular capture system supports different operating-system video interfaces.
This is free and open source software.
Key Features
- Converts live camera video into animated ASCII art.
- Uses AA-lib to render image brightness as text characters.
- Live display modes for viewing ASCII video through supported graphical and terminal backends.
- HTML output with configurable automatic page refresh.
- Plain text output for applications that process or display ASCII frames.
- Supports PNG and JPEG images as alternative input sources.
- Configurable image brightness, contrast, gamma and inversion.
- Customisable HTML foreground colours, background colours and fonts.
- Allows selection of capture devices, image sizes and ASCII character dimensions.
- Configurable output refresh interval for HTML publishing.
- Supports SDL, X11, curses and standard output rendering where available.
- Can publish rendered ASCII frames through a virtual webcam on supported systems.
- Startup configuration using TOML files, environment variables and command-line options.
- Provides a reusable rendering API for integration into other applications.
- Cross-platform support – runs on Linux, macOS, and Windows.
Website: dyne.org/software/hasciicam
Support:
Developer: Jaromil (Denis Roio) and contributors
License: GNU General Public License v2.0
Hasciicam is written in C. Learn C with our recommended free books and free tutorials.
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Read our verdict in the software roundup.
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