---
layout: home

hero:
  name: "Hasciicam"
  text: "ASCII for the masses"
  tagline: "Live webcam video rendered as ASCII art and published as HTML, plain text, or a terminal window."
  image:
    src: /img/hasciicam-icon.png
    alt: Hasciicam icon
  actions:
    - theme: brand
      text: Usage guide
      link: /usage-guide
    - theme: alt
      text: Downloads
      link: https://files.dyne.org/hasciicam

features:
  - title: "Live ASCII video"
    details: "Capture from Video4Linux devices and render frames into readable ASCII output."
  - title: "Web publishing"
    details: "Generate refreshable HTML pages that can be viewed without plugins, Java, or special clients."
  - title: "Terminal friendly"
    details: "Run from the command line, preview live ASCII, or write plain text output for simple workflows."
  - title: "Free software"
    details: "A RASTASOFT and Dyne.org project released under the GNU GPL."
---

![The ASCII spliff](/img/jaro_hasciicam.jpg)

Since 2001, Hasciicam makes it possible to make live ASCII video.

Hasciicam captures video from a TV card and renders it into ASCII. It
can format the output as an HTML page with a refresh tag, as a live
ASCII window, or as a plain text file. This lets anyone with a video
device and a modest Internet connection publish a live ASCII video
feed that can be browsed without plugins, Java, or other client-side
requirements. And it can also be printed! It's ASCII Art!

- <a href="hasciicam001.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">HTML screenshots featuring chmod and thing.net</a>
- <a href="hasciicam008.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Portrait of Wolfgang Staehle, 2001</a>
- <a href="rms-hasciicam.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Portrait of Richard M. Stallman, 2002</a>

Swiss artist installation using Hasciicam and printers, 2015:

![Swiss artist installation using Hasciicam and printers](/img/swiss_installation_printers.jpg)


## Credits

Hasciicam is a [RASTASOFT](https://rastasoft.org) production by
[Jaromil](https://jaromil.dyne.org).

People who contributed to the Hasciicam project:

Jan Hubicka and the [AA-project](http://aa-project.sourceforge.net/)
crew for the original ASCII rendering library; Gerd Knorr, whose
webcam source code inspired the grab code; Mathop, also known as
Josto, for CSS help; August Black for Iomegabuz hacks; Boffh for USB
camera hacks; Martin Guy for buffer overflow prevention; Rat for text
dump support; PBM and Megabug for watching ASCII horizons; Rapid for
security and bug fixes; Alessandro Preite Martinez for SGI Irix
support in 0.9; Thomas Pfau for the FTP library; Blended for wider
webcam support; Dan Stowell for Video4Linux2 API support.

Special thanks to LOA hacklab Milano, Hell Voyager, Acme, Rasty,
Martinez, servus.at, maddler.net, flyinglinux.net, autistici.org, and
[Freaknet](https://freaknet.org) brotherhood.
