I began thinking of a side-project recently that will make use of usb triggered relay switches to allow interaction between the internet and mechanical objects (something like click a button on a site and ring a real bell).
Now I have this part figured out but what I'd love to do is have this captured, live on streaming video via a webcam (and potential take a snapshot at a specific time). I'm pretty sure I'd have to use some sort of scripting language that can interact with hardware (flash/flex/silverlight). Also consider that this will be hosted locally, on the computer that has the webcam. Any Ideas? Thanks!
I would suggest writing a kiosk type of application in adobe air. You can capture the camera pretty easily and some simple network event listening to tell it when to snap some video.
Sounds somewhat interesting, if you need some help let me know (my stack nick has my email)