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Using Webcams as Remote Security?
The_Mama_Cass_Ostrea asks: "Does anyone have experience using a webcam and a cellphone for remote security? I am raising shellfish in a hatchery / nursery on a 51 foot pontoon boat, anchored offshore in Chesepeake Bay. Recently the boat and it's contents were damaged by vandals. Since my day job writing software won't permit me to guard the boat 24/7, I want to set up some sort of webcam / cellphone security monitoring system that would be effective day and night. And since I am doing this on a small scale, without the money for a professional security firm, an inexpensive, open source solution would be preferred. Any suggestions would be appreciated, as would the experieces of anyone who has done anything similar." Cool idea! Has anyone tried this in practice and can pass along a few hints? I was thinking about installing webcams in the home sometime this summer, but the remote security aspect never occured to me.
An anonymous submitted this related tidbit: "I want to have a couple of video cameras and a storage array to capture and store a couple of days worth of both internal and external activity. What (Linux application) software and hardware is available? How does one overlay a running-clock with the video signal? Also would be nice to be able to login via the web and look at live signals and review stored data." This is a bit more complex than setting up a few webcams, but the ideas in here are interesting enough. Would some of these things be possible with consumer grade equipment? The time overlay is a useful idea, however I don't know if many webcams support such features.
Problem: How to protect Vandals/Robbers from attacking Remote,
Aqueous location.
Thoughts: Perpetrators are swimming or traveling by boat to the
site. With respect to swimming, it will be nearly impossible to
identify them, with the exception if they leave the water and actually
board the boat. Boats would carry identification markers that would
be much more suitable for the purpose of tracking them down.
Traditional security relies on physical barriers: Walls, locks,
concrete, steel, etc. Followed up with alarms designed to pique the
interest of the local population and summon the authorities.
The Aqueous nature suggests no physical barriers are possible.
The Remote location suggests there is no local population. Consider
altering the location of the boat to a more populated area.
Physical harm of the perpetrators is acceptable in many areas of the
United States, but only if you are physically present, directly
involved, and willing to tolerate extensive legal troubles. Traps
that do permanent physical damage are not considered acceptable/legal.
Electrical stunners or dye-marking paint is a viable option.
I suggest fluorescent pink for your color scheme, if you go with this
latter option. Simple expensive sensors: Ultrasonic, light beams,
Infrared detectors, etc would be appropriate for triggering such
devices.
On site surveillance is questionable. The equipment is subject to
theft or damage. A superior solution might be remote observation from
a land-based source via an astronomy-grade telescope attached to a
video camera. Remote controls could be created so as to allow you to
zoom in, or track, perpetrators during the crime in progress, all via
an Internet connection.
Web cameras are suboptimal. They run at a greatly reduced resolution,
with only a handful of frames per second. [e.g. 160x120x2] This is
sufficient if you are staring directly at the camera. I doubt your
perpetrators will be so cooperative.
For hardware, I would suggest tracking down a Matrox Marvel G400-TV
video card. This is the best product I've found so far for video
capture. It supports hardware-based JPEG capture at NTSC [704x480x60]
under linux. Unfortunately, Matrox has recently stopped producing
this card, so you will need to move quickly if you wish to acquire
one.
Averaging the images over the last minute or so, and checking the
standard deviation should allow you to detect intruders.
In terms of long term storage of video data, consider a video cassette
recorder [VCR]. The data storage requirements are huge for digitized
video data.
Alternatively, you could store just the digitized video data relating
to when interesting things began to happen.
I was looking to do a similar thing except for my home.
I would strongly recommend an Axis 2120 Camera. They have an auto iris lense to prevent it from damage when exposed to sunlight, it can also be hooked up via 10/100 ethernet or standard serial port to a land line or a cellular modem.
This will provide for much more scalability. It also has built in motion detection and can send pictures via FTP before after and during a break in. It also has a build in web server, and can alert you via email when an alarm is triggered.
I'd assume that the phone would be for connectivity for the webcam. Doesn't that make a little more sense to you?
The biggest problem with such an arrangement is that the airtime costs would end up being astronomical. Even top of the line plans with most carriers don't include nearly enough minutes for 24/7 connectivity. And the overage adds up quickly.
A Ricochet, as suggested in another post, is a decent idea, but this doesn't sound like the kind of area in which there would be coverage. If you have property line of site with the monitored location, you could possibly do your own wireless network of some sort...
Well, that would definitely help with the airtime issue. But if the thief steals the machine the images are saved on, you're worse off than you were before (because you've now lost your hardware in addition to whatever you would have lost otherwise and have gained nothing from the loss).
Get yourself a couple of cheap USB camera's ($30 or thereabouts), an old laptop - old Pentium will do - and see if Ricochet wireless modem service is available in your area.
... in about 5 minutes of web searching, you can find solutions pretty easily...
If so - piece of cake. Hook 'em up, either write some software (Linux-wise) to do regular posts of the images to a web server over radio modem somewhere, or get any one of the countless Windows apps that have been written for just this sort of thing off the 'net...
The more I think about this, the more I realise it was pretty dumb to waste an "Ask Slashdot" on it
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
Although it probably won't apply to you, I remember a few years back when I worked for SGI and everyone had an Indycam or an O2cam on their desktop there was a package you could install called "securitylight" that basically functioned as a simple security camera. It wasn't very sophisticated (basically taking a picture every 2 seconds and only storing the deltas between frames, complete with timestamps). The software worked really good, and didn't use up too much disk space and kept really nice pictures.
Rumor has it the software was written originally because an SGI owned warehouse kept getting ripped off overnight even with the security guard on duty. It turns out the security guard was bringing his girlfriend in for sex, and she was swiping supplies on her way out. Of course this anecdote is all fourth or fifth generation information, all accuracy may be coincidental.
Down that path lies madness. On the other hand, the road to hell is paved with melting snowballs.
I read the internet for the articles.
Not really. Been watching freshmeat much? I read it daily, and there's already motion-detection software for linux available.
Problem solved.
So mask all windows or other open spaces; motion detect only on objects fixed with respect to the camera. You might have to modify the camera's location a bit for this to work, but it should function just fine.
and I thought cronning the lights to go on and off was cool...
:)\n"
if ($user =~ m/shaldannon/i) {
print "\n-- $user
}
What is your Slash Rating?
Actually, we found the lighting controller. It wasn't stolen, just misplaced...
Especially given the theft problem (they could only steal half the camera) and the remote location, the X10 remote cameras sound good, but there's no "brightness" control on the CCD's -- it needs extremely good illumination. Most of my interior rooms aren't sufficiently lit to discern objects using the X10 remote cameras -- you have to open curtains, and then you can only see outside.
Or just do what I did: Remove the IR filter and flood the inside of the boat with IR light. The intruders won't see it but you'll have full view of them. I've done this to catch the neighbour's cat in my garbage and it works wonderfully.
Cameras vary, but most I've seen follow this basic removal procedure: Screw off the lens. If you can't get the IR filter out from that side you'll have to take the plastic assembly apart to get at the filter. (It's usually a piece of glass with a blue-ish film and it's usually right before the CCD itself, after the lens assembly. I've never seen it a part of the lens assembly.) Anyway take it out and reassemble. The camera will be practically useless during daylight (too much IR flooding the CCD) but it's awesome at night, especially with a good size IR lamp.
Where to get an IR lamp? Do some web searches or buy lamps which you can fit IR filters over. I've modded the X10 little 1" colour camera, Quickcams and a few USB cams of unknown make.
You're right; B&W Cameras will be better but you want LOTS of light... you'll need a pretty serious cluster of IR LEDs, even the high output ones (this all depends, of course, on the size of the area you want to illuminate and whether the surfaces reflect or absorb IR)
I think you are placing the cart before the horse. You need to evaluate your real risks and concerns before implementing a solution. It sounds like you have a solution without really considering your problem.
First, is aquaculture your hobby or business? This is important because it judges the possible financial loss. If this is a business, buy insurance. Pure and simple. Get enough insurance to cover potential losses. If the premiums are too high, find a small insurance agency and start negotiating discounts for security systems, guards, safer marina, locks, etc. No amount of prevention is perfect and insurance is generally the best option for businesses.
If this is a hobby, then insurance is probably too cost prohibitive. You are on your own. So, first look at your potential enemies. Potential enemies include industrial sabatoge (perhaps a big aquaculture company doesn't like what you're doing), environment groups (if you are doing research involving transgenic fish), vandals, and anyone who hates you. Look for how to protect against these enemies.
There is nothing you can do to prevent industrial or environment sabatoge if this is your hobby. Forget it. Companies have too much money and destructive environmentalists are operating out of ethics. Nothing will stop them. Luckily, the liklihood of one of these groups targetting you is very slim.
Vandals commit crimes of opportunity. This act seems to be the act of vandals. A web cam won't prevent them, but a motion activated siren and
lights might. The idea of a dog is a pretty good one, actually. If the platform is large enough, considering investing in a good watchdog. Make sure they have enough room to run. Get some automated feeders and waterers for the dog and provide plenty of shelter. As long as you visit the dog every few days, this is a very cost effective preventative. Two dogs would give them company and actually reduce behavioral problems.
Any enemies you have would probably not be detered by the siren/lights combination. They would, however, think twice about murdering a dog or two. That's a pretty serious crime. If they are willing to go that far, however, you probably won't be able to stop them anyway.
Now, the camera idea would work for acting upon and investigating a crime. Acting upon a crime would require you to be notified when something was occurring. It could page or call you. You could then call the harbor police or coast guard to intercept the crime in progress. Investigation, while helpful to the police, really doesn't help you. You won't get your property back if you figure out who did it. All you may get back is satisfaction. If that is important to you, then go ahead with the cameras.
Good luck,
Dave
I'm a little surprised that no one else has brought up this smart alec issue, so I'll do it. Why are you storing valuable stuff in a boat? Boats really aren't a bastion of security. Surely there ought to be a better place to put these things.
-- Solaris Central - http://w
There are also pre-pay phones available that have no monthly charge or contract. You could just buy 30 minutes worth of calling or something. I'm not sure if the minutes expire, so you may have to buy some each month.
You can also try a wireless link to bring the signal to a secure area, and avoid the power drain of an on-board recorder. Most of them work on 12V, same as the camera. Try supercircuits.com for cheap bare-bones analog cameras and wireless links.
X10.com has a "VCR commander" that triggers a vcr record function when an event is received. I forget, but i think it's wireless in the video and possibly the trigger channel, so you could link the alarm or a motion detector to the thing and get it to trigger a home VCR.
Maybe you can trigger it from the airbag too, and avoid lengthy litigation after a crash. You'd need an on-board recorder for that, though.
---- "If we have to go on with these damned quantum jumps, then I'm sorry that I ever got involved" - Erwin Schrodinger
It would be very cool to add some speakers nearby so that when someone was there and your web camera caught them you could call the computer up and talk through the phone -> speaker.
"Hey you kids, get out of there. I just called the cops! You in the red jacket, does your Mom know what your doing? I'm going to send her this image. What's your email address?"
Go check out X-10's web site. In addition to the very cool Firecracker that every /.'er should have by now cause it was just about free, they have wireless XCam2's that transmit to a receiver on the 2.4Ghz band. Plus lots of accessories to hook those to websites, wide-angle views, VCR recording, and such.
Plus, it's always nice to support a company that makes cool hardware and opens up the control protocol for those of us who can write our own drivers.
This space for rent. Call 1-800-STEAK4U
First, I like what you're doing -- aquaculture is seriously cool. Keep it up.
Second, your problem here is not to identify the vandals after they've come and gone. Sure, you might be able to put them in jail (if you're lucky). I wouldn't count on them being able to financially reimburse you.
You don't want anything like this to happen again. The way to ensure that is to move your boat to a better marina. Find a marina with a resident harbormaster -- if he lives there, he'll make damn sure that it's secure.
Those kinds of marina slips are expensive, so maybe you can use the info on webcams that people are giving here to barter with the harbormaster -- in return for a discounted slip, you provide a remote camera system for the other tenents. Not much for security, but it makes boat people feel better if they can check on their boat whenever they want. Especially if they're a 40' Hatteras boat person...
"Beware by whom you are called sane."
Potato chips are a by-yourself food.
The ironic shot of the guy about to steal the webcam out of jwz's club.
Let's Slashdot his house! Quick, everyone -- go ring his doorbell!
--
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Don't like it? Respond with words, not karma.
Home Watcher does it prety well, been using for about a year or so. I know, it runs on windows and isn't open source, but it works well.
matguy
matguy(.com)
Maybe they wouldn't come up with the clams to buy the beer?
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I've finally had it: until slashdot gets article moderation, I am not coming back.
Oooo, that's very shellfish of you not to invite your friends!!!!
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I thought that, in the US, illegal evidence wasn't admissible ONLY when it was collected by a police force. So, the private guy-collected evidence would definitely be admissible...
--
There was a story on here a while ago about a police department posting hundreds of candid pictures of rioters, asking for assistance in identification. Would this not be the exact same scenario?
----
Mike
No, paranoia is irrational or excessive fear, and that is not necessarily good. You should keep the cost/risk and benefit in mind. Although paranoia might deliver nominally more secure systems, it doesn't necessarily mean you're better off. For instance, you can spend 15k securing a 10k dollar server that have NO valuable data on them. Or you could spend thousands of dollars investing in a fancy alarm system, only to have the employees fail to properly arm it.
.5 percent of the cars will be stolen each year and each car costs 20k at purchase. In other words, the company would lose roughly 500k dollars to theft each year whereas if they invested in alarm systems it would cost them 2.5 million dollars upfront. If the cars and the alarm systems only last 5 years and the companies cost of capital is 10%, then they'd actually save, in financial terms, roughly 500k dollars by NOT installing alarms. The reason for this is because it costs the company real money to sink it anywhere; that money could be invested elsewhere in the company (or simply not borrowed) and return them more money.
Or for a less obvious example, suppose you're a Fortune 500 company, well you could spend, say, 500 dollars installing alarms on each of the company's 5000 cars, let's even assume it stops all theft. If you know with a high degree of certainty that
Although this example is simplistic, it takes into consideration some of the actual concerns that are at issue for companies and people. Put simply, some money is better off invested elsewhere. Paranoia can cost you time and money.
Furthermore, I would argue that unbridled paranoia might actually result in worse security, because perspective is lost and the real threats are not properly analyzed and responded to.
Be careful that whatever video hardware you're unsing's audio (if any) isn't recording. If you record both their image and audio, it's illegal (in the US) and the evidence will be stricken. That would suck. Take whatever means you must to keep from recording audio.
"Let him go, Ralph. He knows what he's doing." --Otto Mann (simpsons)
A fellow in Australia caught some pretty good pictures of thieves who came into his house and forgot to steal the webcam.
http://www.geocities.com/osz/rob2/wanted.htm
Ah, you've found what us shipboard folks lovingly call the CHEESE-WIZ. Darn thing's spozda protect us from incoming missiles and whatnot, knock on wood it'll do the job. Not only is it big and heavy, it takes up a fair amount of deck space that could be used for picnic tables and a bar-b-q.
...stuck at the pier cuz of budget cutbacks...
"I want peace on earth and good will toward men." "We're the U.S. government. We don't do that sort of thing!!"
retrieves images from a video4linux device and has motion detection algorithms
These creatures will attack burglars and spit all over them!
/ ar ticle/0,2669,SAV-0104250280,FF.html
http://www.chicago.tribune.com/news/nationworld
In a world that is Free and Open, who needs Windows and Gates?
While, I imagine the satisfaction of Cuisinarting bad guys (a la "Reason vs. Pirates" in Snow Crash), your neigbours may be a bit annoyed when the depleted uranium slugs tear through their boats as well.
Better solutions that can blow away in the wind...(as long as the neighbors aren't around, everything is ok)
-- "I am disrespectful to dirt. Can you not see that I am serious!"
http://www.phasys.com is based on what you are saying. Inexpensive remote security monitoring.
Probably not as small scale as you want.. but cool anyway.
One slow morning, a long while ago, i hacked a small script that compared recent images from my webcam to the most recent ones, and kept aside the images that were "most interesting" (the most different from the images i already had). It has been up on my webcam since that morning, where it gathers a "top 20 of the day" where i + my friends can watch what happened in the house during the day...
:-)
The script is very small, written in (gasp) perl with the support of a small C program, in just 2-3 hours (meaning: it's ugly, but it does "some" job.). If there's any interest, i could release those few lines of code to open source (just reread the comments to this for any updates - the boss's firewall wont let me download it from here).
I thinkered with the idea of using it for security purposes the day somebody had played with my car during the night (no harm done). I would have had to boost the number of "interesting" images kept from 20 to a large number to see almost everything that would happen to the car. By chance, I never really had to set up the webcam for that.
Heck, it works so well so that i knew when our roommate brought visitors home...
What it does:
1. Using my regular webcam software + ftp, just upload one image file to a directory on my linux box
2. Using the small C deamon, start the perl script, which does:
3. Calculate a value representing the image's parameters, and returns it to the c program
4. Compare the value to the 20 others, and save the image if the value is sufficiently different from the others. The more "interesting" (i.e. different) the images were in the day, the less chance they had to be thrown away.
C.
(meunierc2@nospam.netscape.net, meunierc@mail.com)
C.
There, X10.com, you should be able to get some decent hardware for your "project", motion detectors, camera, IR camera. And most X10 stuff is supported under Linux (and probably other UN*X variances).
Rodney Brooks' crew at www.irobot.com have got a remote "avatar" robot equipped with web cam for exactly this purpose. Highly neat!
www.HearMySoulSpeak.com
Say that you could get your webcam thing to launch some script if something funky was going on, eg the image changed cuz people walked in it.
What that script could do is send an email to your telephone, or page your pager. Since a lot of celphone/pager companies offer this service, it seems like a good way to get this part done.
As for the first part with the video -- you could write a program that captures some video somehow, and then sees how much different one frame is from one captured, say, a second before (through a sum of the per-pixel difference squared or soemthing).
All in all it would take some time, but I don't see it as being impossible to accomplish.
-S
"Place thumb HERE and run your driver's license through the card reader to unlock the camera."
The pre-pay phones work off of cards which expire in 30-60 days. When you buy a card you're basically paying a monthly fee.
I would think a single guy in armor wearing a sword should be enough, whether is name is Beowulf or not.
Well, if they're going to be flipping switches, have a switch which locks the doors, turns on flashing lights and siren, and drives the boat to just offshore the nearest relevant law enforcement office. Put a plaque above the switch that explains what the switch will do.
If the images will be stored on the boat, a film camera in a strong box is the traditional solution.
To paraphrase one suggestion in another recent discussion: Put speakers "in the next room" (in the engine room) which plays deterring sounds. A thief might not like hearing things like "Yes, Operator, that's my location and the thieves are in the next room. I'm glad the cutter is so close.", or "I'll use the machete, you cover me with the shotgun.", or "Woof, Woof, Woof!".
Although I suppose you could have a film camera in a device which would be ejected overboard and which would propel itself or hide for later pickup. That's not-quite-local storage.
"If you want to break into our place, you had better take down our net connection."
Unfortunately, despite @stake.com's front-page claims that "all old l0pht material is available on this site", not everything is.
They had a video camera pointed at their door, at what looked like a 10-15 foot distance. The picture was clear and fairly good size. I've no idea how often it refreshed. Of course, this setup assumes that all intruders will be barging in through the front castle gate.
I've considered doing the same thing in my new apartment, since I own two webcams that I can't use at work anymore.
Seems to me there are lessons to learn from JWZ's experience. One, don't use a crappy teenybopper-vidchat-designed Quickcam for this unless you can get nice sharp pictures from it. Two, go for a higher refresh rate than 30 seconds -- if it takes someone less than 30 seconds to walk from the door to the cam, its not a good idea is it? And three, try not to put it right behind the door and plainly visible.
--Keith "And four, make sure the audio is muted so they don't hear the fake 'cha-click' sound" Tyler
--
Terrorists can attack freedom, but only Congress can destroy it.
It might not be too hard to set it up so that it starts recording when it detects motion. Then it runs for, say, five minutes and then goes back to waiting for motion. Reduces the amount of data stored, lets you get a good frame rate.
Of course, if you can detect motion, then just hook it up to a klaxon. If someone triggers it and doesn't punch in the right code within 30 seconds, they get an earsplitting howl (and maybe you get paged).
At this point, though, you're pretty close to a standard security system. Probably cheaper just to buy and install one. Maybe set up the webcam to start recording when the alarm goes off (or just before), so you get good evidence.
PHEM - party like it's 1997-2003!
I live in a college dorm room and last Christmas while away for a few weeks I was concerned about management entering my room and possibily turning off my computer or causing other "damage". Details aside, and not having a web cam, I decided to plug a microphone into my computer and just have it record all sound in my vacant room. I whipped up some code to monitor and track the level of ambiant background noise, and to record any sound above background, convert it to mp3 format, and ssh it to a machine at school I knew I'd have access to. If someone did enter my room and turn off my computer (or even if they didn't turn off the computer), I could retrieve the mp3's of the event from where I was and find out what happened.
If anyone is interested in this code, you can get it from here. Unfortunately, I don't have time right now to package it up nicely or answer questions about it so just take it for what it's worth.
From the movie Aliens special edition. Pictures are Copyright 1986 20th Century Fox Film Corporation
I use motion with a 4 port Brooktree-based card and a near-infrared camera to watch my motorcycle. The camera works great in total darkness and I've used the mask capabiltiy to stop the motion detector triggering for every passing car, but only when someone walks onto my property.
I haven't tweaked motion to get it to watch all four cameras on my property, but I'm working on it. The mpeg capability of mpeg is a nice toy, but not useful in a security situation. In the remote situation, motion would email you if there was motion detected, but I guess that a shellfish farming operation probably has a lot of motion due to waves, wind, etc. Rain can also appear as motion unless some tuning of the motion detection is done.
But it's not free or open or whatever. Don't go there is these things offend you. I suppose that for transmission of the data, the solutions using HAM packet radios would be perfect. I know nothing about them except that a buddy of mine has one in his Jeep and it works in crazy places!
BTW: you gotta check this site: the moustaches on the guy on the first page are just unbelieveable!
Too bad this weighs 12,000-13,000 pounds.
I wonder if you can just discard the overengineered search and track radar and put in one of those supermarket door motion sensors...
someone should mod this one up
Although this isn't exactly going to help in his situation, I have a webcam that looks out my front door. Anytime the doorbell is run, 3 pictures are captured and appended to a log, as well as being sent to a remote server. This is far from a perfect solution and I do plan to update this to reflect any dramatic changes with the internal cameras when I'm not at home.
Of course, if anyone is aware of the camera, it would be easy to hide from, and there is always a chance that I won't get a good enough picture to do any good legally, but its a start.
The page that accesses the webcams is at http://alignment.net
-Restil
Play with my webcams and lights here
If I had any moderator points today, I'd moderate this guy up with a "funny". Classic!
(This is what I want for spammers!)
As you can see they're breaking in right now!
0x or or snor perron?!
look at the images again. in both of them there is a shot of them in profile, facing to our left.
the blue hat guy has shorter sideburns, and less of a beard. the red hat guy has longer sideburns and a larger beard (i wouldnt really call it a beard, but hey)
so unless the single robber shaved in the closet, im a bit leery to call them one and the same
--
Very easy to do - I've set up several of them. I've used a Color Quickcam to dump snapshots to a drive shared with a Linux box via Samba, then set up a web page on the Linux box that points to the images captured by the camera. Very simple.
-- Ed Carp, N7EKG erc@pobox.com PGP KeyID: 0x0BD32C9B What I'm up to: http://intuitives.mine.nu
I set up X10 motion sensors and a perl script that acts as an alarm system. The alarm is activated and deactivated via a RF remote, or from the prompt. When the alarm is active and the sensors are tripped, it turns the volume on my stereo up to full, and plays a WAV file of a booming voice saying "MOTION DETECTED IN ZONE TWO" (or zone one, depending on which sensor was triggered). It also pages me with the time and zone, with some heuristics to reduce frequent redundant pages when I set it off myself or the cats set it off.
It also turns a fan on in the kitchen when zone one is tripped to deter the cats from jumping on the counter. The sensor is positioned so that it doesn't detect them, unless they jump on the counter. (Bad kitty!)
The next phase of the plan was to add a cheap webcam, but I haven't gotten around to that yet.
"The simplest solution is to ignore your dead children."
Why couldn't you just store stills or video locally, then call the phone, using it as a modem and downloading or reviewing what you wanted?
Spencer Ogden
Remember: When you're talking about security, paranoia is a good thing.
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http://www.iomojo.com/demos/ for the demos. This is really great: no plugins, no java, just html. Not even "push" technology. Hurry, and you can catch llamasonic at his desk right now!
The cell phone wouldn't be constantly connected. The point is to have the computer call the cell phone when it detects an intruder.
It can get a bit annoying if the motion detection threshold is too low. If it's an outdoor view and you're doing motion detection based on the video image (as opposed to stand alone motion detection devices), then shadows, birds, boats, etc. can set off false alarms. Indoors, pets, changes in lighting conditions, etc can do the same.
I'd assume that a good system would allow you to view the images over the web or via dial-up connection and change some parameters (target region, change threshold, etc).
jwz has a 24/7 webcam running in his nightclub that is being reconstructed. So far people have stolen:
o The webcam
o Two amplifiers
o The controller for the emulator lights
All he managed to get was a few blurry shots of the guy that stole the webcam.
There was an incedent down here in .au where a techo type guy caught his home being broken into on web cam.
The problem is that the "current afairs"-type TV programs got hold of the story and now there is no chance of the criminals goind down, despite the great mug-shots, because there isn't an unbiased 12 in the land.
So if you do catch 'em, don't go public w/ the footage until they are charged.
My experience with getting Cell-Phones to connect to anything is that if you don't live in an area that just happens to support some lame specific type of cell phone you're not getting connected to crap.
Years ago, there were very broad application cell phones with RJ-11 connectors to allow you to hook up any old modem to them, but as with all conspiracies, those types of cell phones have vanished entirely and of been replaced by things that now require special (probably costly) services.
It's all a plot by them to make sure we can't do any 'netting without a million people listening in.
"Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"
"Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"
Moderation Totals: Wrong=2, Stupid=3, Total=5.
We set the cameras up and let them rip that night. Enter the "perp", turns out our cleaning staff has it so bad that they were stealing not only our pop fund but they were sifting through our desktops (rifling through one guys CD rack) and generally doing things that breach their contract as cleaning staff! We took the video straight to the building manager and he was not impressed with what he saw. The next day we took down our cameras and duplexer (they were on loan) and we had new cleaning staff the next week.
What kind of world is it where you can't trust your own cleaning staff?
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crazy dynamite monkey
Yeah, I got that, and I was joking. The point is, there'd still be a nice computer and cell phone on board, actually making it an even more attractive target.
So much for sarcasm.
I gotta admit, if I was gonna jump on a boat in the middle of nowhere, it would be unsettling to hear a phone ring. But I'd probably just take it.
I know of an ISP, DigitalAgent in Atlanta that uses webcams to monitor the server rooms.
Someone you trust is one of us.
Axis has several "networking" cameras, running linux btw. (www.axis.com)
From my comment:
With regards to 2, it will be very difficult (especially in uncontrolled conditions such as on a boat) to detect intruders in software. If you have a closed room you want to monitor, you might get away with it.
That's exactly what I was talking about. Motion detection software isn't the very difficult part (no insult implied to the writers of such software -- it can be done well or badly). But it's very difficult to make it work usefully unless you have a fairly stable background. In a closed control room, it could work, but pointing out to sea, it would have a hard time, especially with a host of "valid" moving objects such as other ships being present.
-Puk
1) Do you want to use this to notice if someone is stealing your stuff, or catch pictures of whoever stole your stuff?
:)
2) Are you planning on remotely watching this all day (or having someone watch it), or do you want it to auto-detect thieves and take action only then?
3) Can you afford to have your cell phone connected 24/7?
With regards to 1, it won't be useful for catching anyone. With regards to 2, it will be very difficult (especially in uncontrolled conditions such as on a boat) to detect intruders in software. If you have a closed room you want to monitor, you might get away with it. 3 is related to 2 -- if you want it to transmit the data live, it's gonna cost a bundle. If you want it to call only if you're being robbed, you have a very difficult (possibly impossible) software problem on your hands.
-Puk
p.s. You could always put the webcam up on a web page and have people "Click HERE if I'm being robbed!"
Check out www.surveyorcorp.com - they do exactly this type of thing. They helped me put up a cool webcam setup for a building the company I work for was putting up. They own Webcam32 and a bunch of cool gadgets and open source ideas.
I think a barking dog / police siren would do the trick. Or maybe the sound of a phone dialing and a computer voice saying "Intruder alert! The police have been called and are on their way..."
I've been using it for a while, and I'm really happy with it ; there's a new version that works with multipls cameras too.
Now the problem is that it runs on Windows, so the solution may be to build a waterproof PC-104 system with a video capture module such as this one and plug it to some sort of radio-transmitter or cellphone.
As processing the video captures requires quite some power, you won't be able to use the lower-end PC-104 CPU modules unfortunately, but you must be able to make a system for a reasonnable price.
"Naughty, naughty, naughty, you filthy old soomka !"
In the case of the Matrox Meteor, Phillips had a 'last call' on the chip, and is why it stopped being made.
If it was said on slashdot, it MUST be true!
Because its been done in FreeBSD. Using the Matrox capture card. One that went out of production back in 1999 and cost $600 Using the kernel code from 1995 by Jim Lowe and Mark Tinguely. And once using a $49 card that the interlace is busted (the odd line is in the even slot, and the even is odd), as a time-lapse security camera system. (it just goes with 1/2 a page.) Given the one system is now 5 years old, and was last rebooted 500 days ago (a server move), FreeBSD is a known, working solution.
.avi for that time-lapse movie effect.
:-)
At 2 TV stations. Every minute it does a rbg24 and pipes the ppm through ImageMagick.
To add the date gfont.
Like gfont -r 640x45 "`date '+Time:%l:%M:%S%p Date:%m-%d-%Y'`"
Take that result and do the append via ImageMagick.
Make them animated gifs or a
A keyboard USB chip is the input from the security sensors, and USB switches which camera is the live feed into the capture card. (Ya have to shield it because USB and 900 mhz phones don't play nice) As a benefit, the security testing is simple keystroke simulations.
If it was said on slashdot, it MUST be true!
I'm doing essentially the same thing here at work.
Hook up our existing security cameras to the 'web'. I found Ivista at www.inetcam.com.
It does:
Streaming Video
Streaming Audio
Motion Detection
- Also, Do 'X' when motion is detected...
Basic Recording
Scheduling all the above...
My only issue is the motion detection part... Once it detects motion, you tell it how much time to wait between shots, but you only get 20 shots.
If you can live with that, and windows, it's quite cool.
"I can't give you a brain, so I'll give you a diploma" - The Great Oz (blatently stolen sig)
Actually we had the same probelm this summer doing some stuff with face recognition. Try averageing all the shots for the last minute or so. That way you can filter out natural lighting changes like the sun, cloud cover, ...
bash-2.04$
bash-2.04$
bash-2.04$yes "Don't you hate dialup connections?"| write USERNAME
Erk, darned enter key. Anyway, there was a story from New Zealand flying around a while ago....here it is:
e 1.html
http://www.smh.com.au/news/0102/09/pageone/pageon
which details someone catching two criminals on camera. Granted part of his solution failed as one of the thieves tripped over the phone cord, but it still got pictures of them, at least. The article doesn't say what software the guy used...it alludes to the fact that he wrote it himself, but papers tend to get things wrong. e-mail him and find out...
Cheers,
Reid
The Right Reverend K. Reid Wightman,
digital radar is a product that is supposed to do exactly what you're looking for.
It was available from connectix and according to logitech's web site (logitech bought the quickcam stuff from connectix) is still available with their quickcams.
There is an older version for macos too, but I don't think it's been updated in a while.
Especially given the theft problem (they could only steal half the camera) and the remote location, the X10 remote cameras sound good, but there's no "brightness" control on the CCD's -- it needs extremely good illumination. Most of my interior rooms aren't sufficiently lit to discern objects using the X10 remote cameras -- you have to open curtains, and then you can only see outside.
Worse, they claim you can use it on a telescope -- buloney. I tried it on an 8" Meade (which makes the moon look as bright as a powerful flashlight coming off the focal point), and you can barely see the moon using this camera.
Just don't let the vandels steal things at night if you're goung to use the X10 remote cameras.
I've seen this problem reported a lot, so it's not just the unit I bought.
When I die, please cast my ashes upon Bill Gates -- for once, make him clean up after me!
>Wireless internet? Oh wait, you can't use cellphones for that....
I'm guessing your just trolling, and fully aware of CDPD and GSM modems.
Anyway, this X10 thread is about a remote camera. The computer can be land based with a video capture card recieving signals from the boat -- it hopefully wouldn't need wireless internet.
When I die, please cast my ashes upon Bill Gates -- for once, make him clean up after me!
or a motion activated "barker" works fine on my boat
People who bite the hand that feeds them usually lick the boot that kicks them
Funnily enough I am going to run something like this as a project for my undergraduate electronic engineering students next year. While they won't complete it in time for your needs some ideas I had thought of where
One of the advantages I see of such a system is that it could store and serve pretty good real time video of detected events, rather than simply updating poor quality low rate video all the time and of course the "push" element would be useful for an alarm system
One I know about is at Wincam.com, they are developing security camera technologies with webcam's.
Currently, their products run on linux.
Worth a look anyway.
Apparently she likes some of my music.
There was a product like this for mac years ago called Radar something or another by Connectix. It was cool, but it was marketed for monitoring your office. It never really took off. The joke among webmasters was that if the crooks manage to get in, they'll grab the computer with the images on it. Hence, no benefit.
Why don't you go to radio shack, buy some fake camaras. They sell they, I saw them not too long ago. Buy a lot, and make them obvious. Then get a motion detector, or maybe one of those things that tells a store owner when some comes in. Then when some one come in, start a siren. Hey, they'll think you really beefed up the place and try an easier boat to rob.
Hey I'm latin, I know what I'm telling you
And please, be grateful. Be grateful that They are only watching.
I would like to say more but I am afraid that this datalink is not secuæç%^
--
--
I like to watch.
--
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I like to watch.
With just about any V4L device you can do it. I would personally recommend checking out a couple different places to figure out what the best one is; I use a Creative WebCam III under FreeBSD as a pure webcam, not a security cam, and I don't recall if V4L is set up yet.
This freshmeat query should get you started. There are four different projects that come up. GNU.PhantomSecurity seems pretty promising.
Anyone played with these much ?
At our place, perpetrators discovered over thefts were ALWAYS tied back to the security detail. We're with our fourth private security company in as many years (i proposed not bothering at all and incidents would likely go down).
-eb
I've thought of doing something similar with my home... not because I'm really worried -- just because I'd think it's kinda neat to do.
Grab a bttv based tv card, hookup a poopy video camera too it. I bet you can get a black and white one pretty cheap -- it doesn't even need to record itself. There's a util I see on freshmeat.net called bttvgrab or something of that nature that'll fire off an event and capture a picture when motion is detected. When you get a snapshot of something moving just have your box on the boat dish the picture to a remote location, and notify you of the change on your cellphone. Dish the picture to a remote location in case they steal the computer itself of course.
In order to NOT get caught they'd have to disconnect the machine, THEN steal your stuff. I'm guessing your average vandal wouldn't really think that something like this would be setup. If you ran a large data center it might be a different story... I'd imagine somebody breaking into a NOC would realize they should try and cut the incoming 'net connection before trying anything... but that's another topic.
Justin Buist
Take a penguin, hack off the beak, tape on some legs, add a barker, voila!
Oracle and unix guy.
"That baked 'em good".
- A Boy And His Dog.
Oracle and unix guy.
Why is it being an "open source solution" really that important? Just so it can get on slashdot? As much as people hate Windows, (or the MacOS) there are quite a few viable webcam software alternatives out there.
This answer has violated memory management restrictions and is being shut down.
Oracle and unix guy.
If you want a motion sensor - think about how the tilt sensor from the old pin ball machine works. Or maybe use a car motion sensor. You could also use some mercury reed switches (like the old thermostats have) pretty cheap if you have a few thermostats around you can chop up. Should be able to find these things at any radio shack.
A motion detector with reed switches on a boat???
Oracle and unix guy.
Add a couple of these. These have much better multi-spectrum detection and reaction.
I know you can get cheap quickcam's which are motion sensitive. Although being on a boat if moving all the time might cause problems if you want it to alert you.
"I was thinking about installing webcams in the home sometime this summer, but the remote security aspect never occured to me. " hmm.. so what what other reasons would one have for installing webcams around their house... Slashdot not paying you enough? Time to start experimenting with the internet and it's uses?
With the current prices of cell phones its probably cheaper to pay someone minimum wage to sit there and watch it. Plus with a camera that means someone has to be watching or at least recording it.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
A pontoon boat anchored offshore...How far offshore? Do you have any idea how much batter capacity you're gonna need to keep this electronic sh*t running? And if the boat is offshore, how are you going to recharge them? Are you really planning on running a generator as well?
That's a lot of work to protect a bunch of crustaceans..
Why go high-tech? The cost involved is rather high:
1) Computer to run the whole works: $500
2) Decent web cam: $100
3) Dedicated UPS: $130
4) Dedicated DSL connection: $50/month
All easily defeated if the theif/vandal/what-have-you cuts the phone lines in advance.
Do what I do for home security:
1) One 120 lb. Rottweiler that doesn't get fed until dawn.
It's a surprisingly effective deterrent....
I set up a webcam just this past weekend with freeware I found on download.com. Now I can monitor my house to make sure my pets aren't getting into trouble, or noone is breaking in. My router has a dynamic IP from my cable modem service provider which changes rarely, and when it does, I have another freeware program that posts the new IP to dyndns.org.
Grab the ISO here.
Demo available at the URL in my sig...
Either way, you should check out X10.com. They don't have anything to interface the cam to a cell phone, and I'm not sure how you would do that. You might look into whether Metricom's Ricochet (which offers wireless internet in Washington and Baltimore) happens to extend to your area of the bay.
X10.com has lots of remote controls, switches, and cams. You will want to read carefully, as they come in several confusing packages and "specials."
Some of them are inexpensive and work with VCRs to only record when there is motion. They also have also have multi-camera/motion-detector/Internet systems that record one cam at a time. The site is kind of cheesy, and I have not purchased from them, but they have been around for a while (over a year).
Good luck.
Its not that tricky to do. Have a look at motion.
Jeroen
Secure messaging: http://quickmsg.vreeken.net/
I would imagine the hardware would be pretty cheap... But...
;-)
Imagine having a cell phone on for half a day, every day? I think it would be cheaper to hire a security guard. Besides, most web cams don't come fully equipped with night sticks. Vandals are one thing I would prefer to deal with entirely in meatspace....
Bork!
My biggest fear is that someone will access my cameras and see that I'm not there and I'm not watching them.
Such is the infinite Grace of Popeye.
Does everything you want it to...but it's for windows...but it does PDA and WAP transmission and it does it from your own ip...which is beneficial...it also has streaming and of course the motion detection which is digital and very fantastic. it stores the logs wherever you specify, it has 4 levels of motion and you can set what to do for each level and you can set the sensitivity of the camera...the software is about US$200 but considering you can hook it up to any webcam it's worth it.
"Helping to keep you two steps ahead of the Thought Police!"
My roommate and I- two attractive college females- are pointing BOTH our webcams at-- A CAN OF TUNAFISH!!!! Come and get it, boys.
Uh, "if it looks roughly mouse-shaped according to my infra-red sensitive pit, eat it"? --Chris Burke 09-08-10
i don't even have my webcam linked up, dork. It was supposed to be funny.
Uh, "if it looks roughly mouse-shaped according to my infra-red sensitive pit, eat it"? --Chris Burke 09-08-10
I was looking at the axis webcams and apparently the higher end one has motion capture built in and the low end solution can be hookedu up to a cheap radio shack motion sensor. (so says their website) On top of that, they can be programmed to automatically upload images to any ftp server when the motion sensor triggers. I've never used either of em, but if your budget allows, maybe you should check em out.
X10 has a ton of neat shit. My brother uses a couple of their cameras, they seem to work pretty good for him. Sadly though, I don't believe any can be used with linux.
AK
X10 has some cheap wireless cameras that might work. Depends on how far you are from shore. Possibly it can be hacked to increase the range (common, I know it can!) Plus they are really small and could easily be hidden. Then put up some fake cameras.
--- http://homepage.mac.com/gregjsmith
The free software which came with my logitech quickcam (~$50 street) allows "video radar" - it will detect changes in the video data. You can adjust the sensitivity, and set the computer to either sound an audible alarm, record video, or both when motion is detected. You can also upload a still to a website at fixed increments if you have an internet connection. It would probably not be so difficult to have a little program on the web server which compares the current still and the previous still pixel by pixel, then sends an email or SMS message if there are more than x pixels different. Good Luck.
'Most men would sooner die than think, and most men do.'
There's an excellent camera and server from Axis (http://www.axis.com) that runs Linux. It comes with some basic scripts that are useful and you can also write your own, of course. In my experience, the maximum frame rate you can get is about 15fps. You can also set up 4 triggers to start video capture. There's also PTZ models with presets to scan an entire area.
You want something with motion detection. WebCam-Control-Center would seem to fit the bill. Motion detection based on a mediocre video source is a tricky thing, and I don't know if there's an open source app that does it yet; You might actually be able to do something using the pbm tools and shell scripting for all I know, but this seems like a good, pre-rolled kind of bet.
--
ALL YOUR KARMA ARE BELONG TO US
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
You can get the Axis Network Cameras from thinkgeek.com. It runs Linux, has integrated webserver (which can run video 25 frames/sec at 322x240 or 10 frames/sec at 704x480), plus it has a feature that allows you to back up to an FTP server. It also has motion detection and you can connect it to an alarm or doorbell. I was hoping to get a few of these for my home security, but there was one reason stopping me: they cost $1049.99 each.
Andrew
A very long extension cord, of course!
forth ?love if honk then
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
don't let the webcams show worthwhile info; i.e., the room layout, or available merchandise. just cover entrances/exits, or wide-angle, low-detail overall shots so you can monitor for activity. (even if the cam refreshes every 5 seconds, most poeple can make it through a door quicker than that.) Also, keep your goals in mind: do you just want to know when someone's in there, or do you want high quality pics that can be used as evidence or for IDing perps?
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
Vancouver, BC.
Carousel is a lie!
I work at a mid-sized ISP, and what I've heard is that a couple construction companies here are doing that at work sites: point a camera at the delivery entrance, and stream everything back to the office and save it on disk. Works wonders on keeping sub-contractors honest, apparently; when they say, "Oh yeah, we had that concrete ready at 10am but there was no one there", they just whip out the zip disk or whatever and show the mixer showing up at noon. I understand it's been a big hit, and is letting us sell a few ISDN lines more than we used to...
Carousel is a lie!
The Axis camera & Milestone surveilance software works real well. The Axis cam just plugs into an ethernet. You could then just run UTP back to wherever, or if on a boat, figure out some sort of scheme with Cisco's aironet (802.something). The Axis can control various PTZ camera heads, including the somewhat nifty Canon VC-3 type pan tilters. Pelco 'for great justice' even.
Axis stuff rocks, there moving over to linux OS on alot of stuff they do now, and open their source for a lot of their stuff.
Milestone however is a little evil in terms of being verry un-free softwarewise. Shame. It's actually otherwise real good software.
This assumes you got bucks and all tho.
Excuse the Unicode crap in my posts. That's an apostrophe, and slashdot is busted.
There is a program called Motion which allows you to detect motion using a video4linux device and it can send you a SMS message or an email if it detects any sort of motion in the area. I'm sure you can modify the code to your needs since it's opensource :)
Mals
Get an old camcorder, solder on an antenna and post a large sign "You are being recorded!" Seems like the most cost effective solution, at least until you can afford the real thing.
Go purchase yourself one of those nice wireless webcams and hook that baby to your boat. Some of the better wireless cams are small, fairly inexpensive, and will carry their signal over a good sized radius. Perhaps, far enough to reach a PC you have located near the shore on land that can then access the internet via traditional means and deliver the video content to you... and millions of other people willing to voyeur on your boat.
#define Subvert_Reality -1
Skiers and Riders -- http://www.snowjournal.com
Get a camera and motion detector from X10.com . You can probably right a small program that will dial out when the motion detector goes off and have it email you a picture. Look here
http://www.windmeadow.com/
I installed 3 webcams in my house for remote security/making sure my dogs don't eat the couch. I didn't want to stream video and audio, so I just take a snapshot from each camera every 30 seconds or so. I have an applet that automatically refreshes the pictures on my web server, so I just leave that page up on my desktop all day at work at keep an eye on it. I used equipment from http://www.x10.com (cheesy site, but functional equipment for cheap!) I've been happy with it so far. The cameras are indoor/outdoor too...I've had one outside for a few months of Canadian winter and it worked perfectly the entire time. The cameras can be powered by batteries if necessary.....
I always point my webcam out the window before i head for school, so i can stop by the library and see if anyone is messing around...but ussually i use it for more practical purposes...like checking on the weather at my house from school. :) The webcame is on the page on my sig.
The anti-salmon
Get a junkyard dog if you can...
That'll cut down on the crime.
Probably cheaper than a web cam.
I have a shotgun, a shovel and 30 acres behind the barn.
1q2w3e4r5t6y7u8i9o0pqawsedrftgthyjukilo;p'azsxdcf
www.pedagog.com
is the business venture of somebody involved with our company. Definitely has security in mind (I believe he's worked with an English police agency ... don't remember) in addition to many other innovative applications. Tell him Christian from WNRG sent you :)
Recently he set up a camera at the top of our office building that he would call up with his cell phone connected to his PDA (a casseopoeia or something, i forget) and he'd get pretty decent video on the PDA. I believe he said it worked much better in other countries (with better mobiles or something).
Anyway ... one day a bunch of Secret Service looking dudes came into our office asking to speak with someone in charge. Actually, they were the anti-espionage agents from Boeing ... which happens to be the ENORMOUS building across the street. They were concerned about a big obvious camera pointing at their parking lot day and night. LOL's all around. They asked my friend: "So ... what is it that you're trying to *DO* with that camera" suggesting with his tone that if it indeed was espionage, it was certainly the most feeble attempt that they had ever witnessed.
-Christian
our written thoughts are gifts to our future selves
Checkout a company called PHASYS (www.phasys.com) in Alberta (Canada), they have a remote video surveillance system with a TCP/IP based monitor software that supports multiple cameras and I/O ports... They have a cool demo, you can ptz cameras, switch cameras (zones), turn lights on-off, control a 'crane' (yes! a little crane with a net to trap the 'crook', etc. (Note: you have to download their client)...
Trust me, after this horror story, you'll all be wanting webcams for security.
Back in my university days (i.e. eight months ago), a friend and I were in the computer lab doing some work. Or something to that effect. My friend had just picked up a webcam and had it streaming to his website for a few days and decided to show me his awesome webcam/HTML hax0ring abilities.
At the time, he was living in a basement apartment. The family upstairs gave him all the privacy he needed, but on this day (and probably many others), the privacy was nil.
Upon firing up the webcam site and logining in, we see a picture of his desk and chair sitting peacefully from the glorious vantage point of a monitor-mounted webcam. A few minutes later, things took a turn for the worse.
Into my friend's room walks the landlord's 14 year old son. "He isn't supposed to be in there," my friend says, a little worried.
He sits at the computer.
"He isn't supposed to be in here," my friend repeats.
The kid types something and fiddles with the mouse.
"He isn't supp... holy fuck!" The kid had dropped his pants and started flogging the dolphin right there in front of my friend's computer, most likely to Britney Spears or some pr0n site, and in plain view of anyone who happened to be checking out the webcam.
Needless to say, the bedroom door suddenly acquired a padlock for the short time my friend remained at the place.
The webcam may not have prevented that spunkfest, but at the very least, further spunkfests were avoided. Now that's security.
(Yes, it was a Windows box. Shut up.)
J
I would recommend a nokia 8290 as the cell phone of choice. At least where i live, you can get this phone if you are using voicestream cell phone services. The 8290 has a built in IR port which can save you some money. Rather than hooking up a pc card and plugging a cord from the laptop to the cell phone, you can place a laptop next to the cell phone and it will transmit data.(Almost every older apple powerbook has a IR port built in.) This phone is also very nifty as it is nice and small. Be sure to check with the company that you are getting the phone through that it's the 8290, not the 8260 which lacks the IR port.
Yes! I worked for a gas station a few years back. A one point, we had one of the employees stealing money and what not. So, the police where called in and shown the videos. The police where completly shocked with the quilty. They said if there was more banks that would spend the money on cameras, there would be more people caught.
Its not always the camera, a lot of times its the VCR. Remeber, they need to capture over 16 hours of video, so most places cut the quailty down for more video time.
Better yet, ever seen some semi-random motion web cam footage (ie non-staged) that wasn't crap?
Sure, why not ? I have seen some pretty amazing webcams comming on the seen. There fairly cheap as well.
Your best bet is to get a bunch of stickers from a reputable security company and plaster them everywhere. Most security systems work best as deterrents not as evidence collectors.
Oh please, where the hell did you come up with this idea ? This is the worlds worst idea. Why ? Becuase, 16 year old drunk punks out to have "fun" don't care!
Now, in response to this topic. I would recommend looking into some x10 cameras, they are geared towards security. Plus, rember, you will need a good ammount of light to be able to see there faces and what not.
The best idea for finding the right stuff, is to experiment. Make sure you can exchange what ya buy.
As far as software to power this, hehehe. I am still tring to get my webcam working on Linux :)
until (succeed) try { again(); }
until (succeed) try { again(); }
Xanboo has a kit for $149 at CompUSA that does this for you. The base kit comes with a base station and a camera and an audio and motion detector. See http://www.xanboo.com/xanproducts/systemcontroller .htm
;)..
All the detectors except the camera are wireless, and in the event something gets tripped, the camera will take a 10 second picture of it and stick it on your private page at xanboo. They even have a water sensor that you can put in the bottom of your boat to see if its taking on water
Their service is only $9.95/mo if paid yearly, which I thought was cheap, especially compared to ADT and the like ($29.95/mo).
The only disappointing thing I found about them was the lack of a audible alarm for the system. Sure, it pages you and sends a message to your cell phone, but sometimes a good ol'fashioned freakin' loud alarm is good too.
BTW, the camera is color and has audio too.
Disclaimer: I do NOT work for Xanboo, or have any relation to them! I just happened to see the product at CompUSA yesterday and thought it was cool.
Need cutting edge web hosting? Find us at www.coloexperts.com!
No Not Again! Its whats for dinner.
I think it's important to distinguish that fun and research aren't always the same. I think the problem here is that a lot of companies can't understand that if someone is having fun, that doesn't neccesarily mean the person isn't doing their job. In fact, most situations require IT to test the toys (like palms, printers, scanners, etc.) that exec's will be using - and for most IT people, getting a kick out of their research is part of the job. It's true that a lot of IT people (I'm guilty of it, too) abuse their research power by purchasing things without a just business case (and believe me, there's always a business case for anything that needs to be researched - no matter how "insignificant" it may seem at first.) On the flip side, sometimes the "Fun" isn't really fun. People get the impression that testing new equipment and software is always "fun". But, I'll tell ya - when I was told to find a Media Asset Management program, I was anything but enthused. Still, people oooed and awwwed at my new software. Bottom line - it's an issue of power abuse more than having fun. :) :)
G
Parmasean Cheese. It's what's for dinner.
Not sure if anyone's mentioned it yet. But motion Appears to do almost exactly what you want.
A company called VitalLink offers remote video monitoring via webcam. More expensive than DIY but business customers seem to buy it.
sulli
RTFJ.
What about Ricochet? It would give you a nice, high speed connection and you could use any old hardware you have lying around to connect the camera to. When you don't need surveillance, you've got a nice, mobile high speed connection for your laptop or PDA.
You don't mention how far away the remote location is, but there are video transmitters from X10 that can send a video signal a few hundred feet. You could watch on a TV... no computer required.
The program can be set to run a file when tripped. I'm sure there must be a program you can find out there (or write) to dial a phone number.
The program can be set to run a file when tripped. I'm sure there must be a program you can find out there (or write) to dial a phone number.
A couple of years ago I looked into using LRP & my old parallel port QuickCam in a laptop. The cqcam app worked fine, and I remember that there was another little app (here's one that looks like it'd work - http://ic.net/~craig/pmcam/ )that would let you superimpose the date & time & a title on any image. My problem was the old laptop wouldn't boot LRP, but I bet you could get it to work. I imagine the hard part would be getting a parallel port cam now, most are usb.
I had a webcam pointing out the front of my apartment at the intersection there (just for fun) for about a week, and no matter what I did, I couldn't see anything but headlights at night. I also had a problem with a security light that killed the contrast. I was able to beat that by changing the view angle so it wasn't included, though.
I might also mention the quality is crap (even at 640x480) for anything farther than 20m away, and if you slow the framerate down you're not likely to get a shot of them facing the camera in range.
Sorry, you're going to have to spend some serious cash if you want a decent system.
Kurdt
Kurdt
I'm not anti-social. Just pro-technology.
Maybe this will get modded up enough to be noticed...
Axis Netcams might do what you need. I use them for security cameras, although I don't access them from remote. However, they can be used that way. They all have an ethernet port and a serial port that can be connected to a modem. The camera can be set to dial out on a periodic basis, and their newest camera (which I don't have) has built-in motion detection. I expect it could be set to dial-out (your pager?) when motion is detected.
The OS on the camera is Linux, too, so that should make you happy!
Cheers!
Bob
Buy the best stuff so that when the vandals come by they can pick up some nice hardware at cheap prices.
And have a gourmet shellfish dinner with it, too!
I finally have a way to help out on here :)
Heres what I suggest, you get a laptop, a decent webcam, and a mobile ip modem, aka cppd. Palm pilots have been using these for a couple years. Basically its a regular modem that gives you wireless access with a real ip. Verizon has mobile ip in a fixed area for about $29 a month. Theres always riccochet. So theres your connection.
Now just setup apache (or xitami if your me using it on win2k) and the webcam. Thats it.
[Just Shut Up and Do What I say]
Check out www.vantum.com (now if I could just get them to hire me) it's a digital video, IP running appliance. Although, you still have the hurdle of getting the packets back to you. I think all the motorola phones have an optional dongle for RJ45/net. wonder if cingular wireless offers a 24/7 plan. hehe
How will you power this thing? Some ideas so far suggest using an old laptop. Even my new laptop only lasts about 6 hours. (Plus it becomes a new and more tempting reason for unfriendlies to visit your pontoon boat!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
~~ the real world is much simpler ~~
--- -- - -
Give me LIBERTY, or give me a check.
Switch locations to a better neighborhood in the bay if you can. A blurry streak of an image from a night-time vandalism raid will not save your boat. Perhaps it is time to move because the bad guys already know where to find your boat and that it is easy pickins'.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
~~ the real world is much simpler ~~
--- -- - -
Give me LIBERTY, or give me a check.
Sounds like a setup worth stealing!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
~~ the real world is much simpler ~~
--- -- - -
Give me LIBERTY, or give me a check.
Another cool thing to steal. Where is the boat exactly?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
~~ the real world is much simpler ~~
--- -- - -
Give me LIBERTY, or give me a check.
Defeating the local storage issue is as simple as physically securing the machine on which you're storing the pictures. The easy and obvious answer is to set up a computer and webcam, then secure the PC by locking it in a box, or bolting it down with lock bolts to prevent any thief from taking it. Make sure to secure the cam, too, if you can, to prevent its being stolen, too. Most thieves don't come prepared to destroy a metal box, and to defeat the system they'd have to unplug it before it captured the first shot. If you set the system up in the right place, that's not a problem. One of my co-workers has great luck with a regular old Pentium running Win95 and a program called SupervisionCam using a US$100.00 Kodak digital webcam (get on their web site and look at all of the offerings).
Virg
The "rivatv" project is working on this.. and its _almost_ there. Try http://drama.obuda.kando.hu/~fero/cgi-bin/rivatv.p hp.
Im going to do just what your describing as soon as i move into my new house : get some cheap webcams use "Motion" http://motion.technolust.cx to detect an intruder write a script to call your cellphone incase of a file size change and use a program like "jwebcam" to put it up on a secure http server so you can check for false alarm, if there is an intruder .. grab your gun and run out the door .. or if your busy ie. having sex, whatching LEXX, or playing Quake then atleast you'll know to call the Pigs.
"I know where you wanted to go today, But we decided to stop here instead!"
It depends, I think on what sort of Webcam you have. I tried a Creative Labs Webcam and pointed it out my sons window. It was very obvious and I'm sure any serious theif would just avoid the area and steal the CPU. At best all I was able to get was the back of the mailman walking away because the software triggered to slowly. Increasing the sensitivity would cause it to trigger on passing cloud shadows or shadows from cars on the street. It was very difficult to get a good mount point and a decent field of view.
1. 6-pack of drink of your choice (non-alcholic)
2. nice quite chair
3. Shotgun with Squirrel shot
4. You, 9pm-7am
You only need to fire once!
Or, you can get a Doppler Radar on www.crutchfield.com that is used for Truck beds.
Basically, it detects stuff up to 20ft away, and closes a relay, which could set of an alarm + lights + old 386 that dials you with a voice message + servo motor attached to sawed off shotgun trigger.
What about those damn Wireless Webcams from x10.com? Lord knows I've seen enough of those ads! I don't know what the range is on them, but, hey, it's worth a try to try and relay to something set up on shore.
Contrary to popular belief, I don't actually make my website for other people to look at.
I use a Creative webcam with "iSpy" software for automatically uploading images to an FTP site on a regular (user-set) basis. It automatically overlays the time/date in the format you wish.
FYI, see my site (Keyword: fuckoff) for an example, under "things to do".
I currently upload an image every 10 seconds to a "local" server, but you could do it as often as you like.
MadCow.
I used to have a sig, but I set it free and it never came back.
Be At Home is a remote security using webcams and cellphones.
Check them out at beathome.com
When faced with a problem, many web developers say "I know, I'll use JavaScript!".
Now they have two problems.
Have a webcam well placed and secured, get pictures from it every second and check if the image changed... if it does, check if the amount of dots that changed is large enough to make someone fit. If it does, output some mp3 of an alarm ;)
Cliff,
A cell phone on around the clock would be expensive and slow. I know there are phone plans which advertise unlimited usage but I'm guessing they would not allow continous service. Even if you could get it I would think the baud rate would not be fast enough for a web cam.
How stable is the pontoon boat? Perhaps a wireless broadband connection like Sprint Broadband http://sprintbroadband.com/ or Starband satellite Internet service http://starband.com/. Sample site using Sprint Broadband with remote controlled camera set to panning mode, http://www.bflconstruction.com/camview.html
How far away from shore is the boat? If the distance is not much you could run and underwater cable from a wireless connection on shore to the boat. If the distance is not too far, maybe you could mount the camera on shore? Sample usage of underwater cabling http://www.BonaireWebCams.com/TheWorks.html
Besides a Internet connection you would need a camera(s), cabling, a computer and software. One company does provide a remote camera with a built-in CPU with software on a chip, costs about $2500.
I suggest you post your questions at link below for inexpensive solutions.
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/webcams
Daniel
---
Daniel M. Vance & Associates
Internet/Intranet Design & Support
Ph(520)797-2225 Fax(520)297-0348
mailto:daniel@vancesystems.com
http://www.vancesystems.com
http://www.vancesystems.com/scuba
Tucson, Arizona USA
Well, one of two things would work nicely...
Either have a motion sensor that trigers the camera to start recording, and send an alarm a few seconds later...
Or have the camera on always, but deletes any video footage more than a day old, and just have the motion sensor triger an audible alarm/notify authorities.
I personally use the first.
You're going to run into all sorts of problems, including power limitations, not to mention the fact that you're going to need a computer there to grab the images and send them over the link.
You might consider taking a plain old video camera and sending it to shore via a 900 MHz radio link (X10 makes a short-range version, other companies have ones with more distance) and setting up your computer and net connection there.
With my crappy Philips USB camera (which worked, well was actually just noticed in Mandrake 7.1, not 8.0) which cost about $50 makes a decent little security camera.
The software I used for capturing motion was HomeWatcher for windoze. Actually the above URL points to the page where the latest images are hosted. As you can see the quality of the pictures is crap, but it's just the camera.
With HomeWatcher you can set it to compare images and when there is motion it'll upload the new pics to the page. It's actually quite painfree - and pretty sophisticated for windows shareware/freeware.
It (HW) can save images as well as avi files which adds to the end and actually if you have motion for a few minutes one day and then none till the next you'll see both days on the avi.
Its pretty cool, check it out or the above url. Although it hasn't been updated because I don't go into windows anymore.
OH.. i almost forgot - the most important thing. Not only does it save the images locally, but you can upload to any FTP site. Which even if your vandals steal the pc and the camera the evidence is on the ftp site which no one knows the password and well you get it.
Get your Unix fortune now!
Buy the best stuff so that when the vandals come by they can pick up some nice hardware at cheap prices.
Dancin Santa
Remote View Phone is a tool that is designed to let you See there, be there, from anywhere its a remote digital surveillance camera with built -in technology that sends digital images to your pc. Call the phone number where the camera is located and within seconds you can monitor the area. It can even be set up to call you, sending images at connection. No computer is required in the area being monitored and installation is as easy as plug and play. $749.00 (U.S) @ Spy World
Need some accoustical jammers, cell phone interceptors, envelope xray'ers, heat scanners, thermal scopes, white light generators, we got all that shit too...
Got root?
360 degrees of Karma
As you can see, I'm not too hot on the idea. A posible solution could be to buy a bunch of those security camers that find at Canadian tyre. Run them through a PC that triggers the record function when a certain amount of motion (greater than the norm) is seen. Put a voice-sensitive microphone next to the computer's speakers and have the mic connected to some CB radio at an odd frequency that you're monitoring, and and have it anounce somthing when motion is detected. Or to eliminate the CB bit, have the PC use a satellite modem/radiotelephone to SMS you when movement is seen.
Crude but it (should) work.
Cue The Sun...
Yes, it has. And how do you plan on getting your X10 feed from the boat to the land?
Cue The Sun...
1) motion detection, since your on water a motion detector will not work properly. Try a touch or weight sensor or even a beam of light sensor. Please set alarms on the vessel, Truck horn upon a trigger switch on the Hatch would do wonders. Lights on the vessel flashing ( that always calls attention )
2) power source, solar and wind. unless you can get a plug to it.
expensive way :
3) you will need at least 2 cameras. Both have to pan 180 to cover the entire vessel and part of the water ( get vessel markings of the boarders ). Barge has 4 corners so, place the cameras on port foward (left side front corner), pan start 45degrees port side pan all the way to foward 45degrees passing everything above deck and capturing all the way to starboard side foward including the water, same thing with the aft starboard (right side rear corner), pan in oposite direction. remember it travels 15 degrees stops, then another 15 degrees
since I could not find a picture of your Barge I'll work on the idea that there is a hatch,
Upon opening the hatch, us a flash camera that can stores image far away, otherwise the guy will rip it apart. start to transmit the data asap.
ONEPOINT
P.S. Intercoast waterways are subject to maritime law, you could get the coast guard involved. That might bring the crime up to a federal level. Since you might have government funding, I would check to see if the coast guard would includ your vessel on there patrol.
spambait e-mail
my web site artistcorner.tv hip-hop news
please help me make it better
if you see me, smile and say hello.
Oh that was good, I was ROFL
thank you for the afternoon laugh
ONEPOINT
spambait e-mail
my web site artistcorner.tv hip-hop news
please help me make it better
if you see me, smile and say hello.
I've thought about these things often (where I live, crime is nothing new). Of course a WebCam is a nice solution, but you can also link an infra-red eye to your serial port, have a daemon running that polls the serial port, if it goes on, shout at them with an MP3 file and send yourself an e-mail. Now just where to hide the PC and speakers...
Always reserve the right to change your opinion.
What is it with the freakin' Yankees hats?
Are all webcams now required to render people as wearing them, in random colors, like some sort of Yahoo! Games avatar?
Are we sure these are two different guys?
Is the red-hatted one actually mugging for the camera?
And why is the blue-hatted one wearing the same sweater I'm wearing right now?
--Blair
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
Let me know when the webcam is there...I need a new one.
I don't recall if this has already been slashdotted, but this story is amusing along the webcam for security idea. It even contains pictures of the thieves (a bit grainy really har har har)e 1.html
http://www.smh.com.au/news/0102/09/pageone/pageon
smh.com.au article
this was a while back... a laugh in oz.
I've set up something like this before, and all I really needed was a computer, a capture card, a large hd (doesn't have to be anything TOO big), and software like Adobe Premiere.
You'll be able to customize exactly how you capture your video, between resolutions, color depth, frame rate, compression ratio, etc., and can actually capture quite a bit of video to the drive. If you'd prefer full 30fps video that's not quite as sharp and really compressed, then you can have it. If you'd rather have REALLY sharp and high res video, but at only like 10fps, you can have it.
If you work from that basic idea, you can really come up with some interesting, and effective solutions.
I used to work for a public school system as the linux administrator. I shared an office with the webmaster and one day we discovered someone had accessed our systems on our lunch break (we suspected it was the network coordinator), needless to say there was (is) all kinds of political rivalry going on and he was trying to go behind our backs and spy/sabotage us as usual so that he can get his way and have an all novell/microsoft system. We set up a cam to check it out and put it on the intranet for everyone to see, both as a security measure for us to check remotely who was touching our workstations and servers and also to scare off the would-be intruder to let him know we were watching...Plus it was just plain fun. Although we did this on a macintosh system with commercial software, I'm sure it could easily be done on linux with free software. Just figured I'd share a pointless story on the subject like most slashdot readers do :)
A webcam as security might go a long way towards gaining traffic for my site.
Oh, and please e-mail me if you happen to notice someone wearing a stocking over their face and wielding a baseball bat behind me. Thanks!
My Webcomic: Asylum on 5th Street
Check out www.axis.com... They have linux based web-cams that can email "event-driven" snapshots or take constant shots that can be uploaded into an ftp server. Either way they run embedded Linux!
good man(1), strong grep(1), sharp vi's
>they're both shown in a single frame in one of the images, dumb shit. If you had actually looked carefully, you would have noticed that "both" people are wearing the same hat and look exactly alike. If you had looked, you also might have noticed that there is a sliding mirror closet door there...
Sorry, forgot that posting is in HTML... What I meant to say was:
-"they're both shown in a single frame in one of the images, dumb shit."
If you had actually looked carefully, you would have noticed that "both" people are wearing the same hat and look exactly alike. If you had looked, you also might have noticed that there is a sliding mirror closet door there...
Excuse me, but what is the _AIM_ of all this project? I hope, it's either _catch_ the vandals (yourself or with a help of police), or _save_ your *fishes. If you want to catch them, your webcam and cellphone are absolutely irrelevant. What will you do with a lot of best quality pictures of absolutely unknown vandals? Go to police? They have a lot of work even without your *fishery.
If you want to be there and immediately catch them - you are out of luck. You are one, they are many - and they have enough time to swim away. What are you going to do then? Boat races a-la agent 007?
So, I advice either: making there a room that is automatically closed and locked when entered so that only you can open it (There is a lot of such tricks in old knight films), or the guard (Including the man with at least a baton or a hungry dog fed with vandals only). I cannot advice leaving somewhere vodka with cyanide since it's extremely dangerous and highly illegal.
I don't think you are the only *fisher there. Make a treaty with your neighbours about common defense so that everybody seeing vandals informs the others and then you catch them together.
And, if you are a programmer, and you can attach your *fishery to the Internet, you can simply move your workplace to your boat.
--
spam spam spam spam spam spam
No one expects the Spammish Repetition!
Scientists restrict study to entire physical universe; creationist
AFAIK their product is capable of tracking humans through a scene, while ignoring other types of ambiant noise, so the motion of the ocean may not be a problem. :)
Will
This statement is false...
A few points: 1)Why is it being an "open source solution" really that important? Just so it can get on slashdot? As much as people hate Windows, (or the MacOS) there are quite a few viable webcam software alternatives out there. Digital Radar by Connectix (Logitech owns it now) worked pretty good.
2)Say it sees something.. is he going to check the image before calling the cops? I'm sure the cops would *not* be pleased if he called them thinking his boat was being broken into every time a stupid seagull lands in the camera's view.
3)Who winds up being liable if the camera idea fails miserably? What would the insurance company say if the only security measure taken was "some Linux webcam rig?"
If something was really that valuable to me and needed to be watched, a webcam is the *last* thing I'd think about. If it's worth it, just shell out the money and have some sort of alarm installed. Most webcams suck at low light shots anyway. The 3Com cams were ok, but discontinued now.
There's a guy in my area that sells security systems along the line of your webcam ideas. He's got his own OS and is connecting it to a broadband (cable) connection so it can be viewed remotely. The images are stored on the hard drive, and can be retrieved at any point. Check out his web page at http://www.eagleeyedvr.com/
In order to be immortal you must be organize
Those interested in a Linux solution, do a search on www.freshmeat.net for "motion". This does everything laid requested minus the cellphone bit and "realtime" access, though the image can be looped back to webcam software. Motion archives mpegs triggered by a motion detection algorithm. I've set this up to watch my driveway and simply access the archived mpegs through a web-accessible folder. Easy to install and use, it does everything including organzing the files by date and naming them by time. Date/Time stamps are overlaid on the mpegs for reference as well.
As far as I remember, there is an open source package computing diffs between two images, given a certain difference tolerance. It could be used to compare the webcams shots, with a tolerance high enough to get rid of false alerts due to changes in sun illumination. Sorry, I do not remember the package name!
I'm disabled and this summer I too was going to run some webcams throughout the house I'm living in. Right now I'm living at home (even though I'm 21) because I just save so much in in-home care/medical bills (I. E. there aren't any : ), and the overall low cost of living here ($500 bucks covers my rent, food, telecom bills and groovy pain medication), makes it ideal for me to spend large quantities of my days writing software, working on my Linux distro, playing with my servers/network, and other various tweaks and hacks without worrying about the day-to-day crapola of, y'know, money/lifestyle-related stess. (It's great to be me. : )
/.'ers here who gave me additional ideas about my problem as well.
Anywho, this summer I'm moving my base of operations in the house from the rather large corner of the living room, into a back bedroom. I need the space for my growing stash of electronics, tech books and servers, but the bad thing is, there's absolutely no view of the front door or the driveway, two things I can easily see from my vantage spot in the living room.
As I can't get up into my wheelchair without existance, I wouldn't be able to A. Check and see who's at the door, or B. escape in the case of a robbery. Now, I live in the boonies, so I'm not too worried about home invasion robberies like in bigger cities, but there is a bunch of heroin/cocaine/escatsy (sp) junkies who live in a trailer park down a few roads just on the river, which contains people who bulgarize the surrounding farm communities (of which my house is a part of) every 3-6 months. Now, these people are stupid and cowardly. If even so much as a 8-year-old is at home by himself the criminals run, so I'm not too worried about being physically injured...but, gang warfare from downtown has been known to occasionally spill over to the country (with seemingly empty houses during the day used as execusion spots), and there's an honor farm on the other side of the river where inmates frequently escape.
Sorry, I'm a long-winded bastard.
So I was going to mount 10/100 network cams in the three porches on my house, as well as intercoms. The Cat-5 is already laid through the attic, thanks to one of my sysadmin friends, now I just gotta buy the cameras. The intercom/doorbell system will come later.
Thanks though to all the
--Bo Bankson
New member of CVALE!
http://www.cvale.org/
The Creative WebCam has a feature where it will only trigger if it senses change (with variable sensitivity). Then you have the option of either storing a single image (or a videa - time lapse specified by yourself) to the local hard disk. In addition it can publish image changes (one per event) to a web site. Your could setup the upload to the web site (it uses FTP) to be done via cell-phone/modem. You will be able to monitor the website for changes (displays from 1 to 10 images). Alternatively setup the cell phone (on the boat) to call your personal cell phone - it will not succeed with the ftp upload, but at least you will know that there has been a change in view at your remote site....
http://www.intech2.com/intech2.html
..when we were selling our last house. I bought a cheap USB internet cam that came with some software called Internet Comm Suite. The package has a sentry option that can detect movement and record the images. I then installed an FTP server (I have a cable modem) and took the ICS software to work. The movies recorded are proprietary, so I had to install the ICS at work to watch them. I simply left the camera on top of the PC and left the bedroom door open. Anyone coming in to see the house was automatically recorded. You can even set the time limit to record before the camera turns off. Reply to this msg, and I'll get you the camera info and double-check the SW name and mfg.
Cruising the internet on my TI-99/4A @ a whopping 300 baud!
just chain a dog to the pier and don't feed it for a few days, you'll know the vandals have been back when he's asleep in the morning sun with a full belly
Beware blue cats moving at
I recently set up a 16 camera system at work using some standard dig vid cams and a dig multiplexor/recorder from a British company. It has all the remote monitoring and motion detection stuff you need - too bad it costs over US$5k. Someone gave me a link to this company, Surveyor, which supposedly does the same for standard dig cams. It's likely not open-source, and I've never actually used it myself, but it just might be helpful. Here's the demo
--- Sigs are dumb.
There are 2 very different types of motion detection. One type uses a physical motion sensor and sends an analog alarm signal to the computer. Digital motion detection takes place completely inside the comp - you set up a detection grid and sensitivity levels for each cam, and the soft looks for specific changes in vid data to detect and record motion. This takes more work, but is exponentially more flexible. This is especially helpful for boats - my security system was installed at a Marina, so it was very important to block off the water areas from activity detection. Again hopefully this helps.
--- Sigs are dumb.
I enjoy reading strange and interesting web sites -- I remember coming across a website a good while ago explaining how a person's house was broken into -- and their web cam grabbed pictures of the 2 robbers.
Try the Site that I saw this on (or if it is having trouble try bringing up the Google Cache)
There, a family had been robbed and decided to set up a web cam (with a motion detector) and caught 2 thieves the next time they tried to break into the house... the thieves didnt take the computer but they sure did like that cellphone they grabbed... sheesh... (but then I suppose walking down the street with a computer and monitor would look strange in SOME neighborhoods).
-------------
----------- You look at life differently while suspended upside down and gagged.
... will save on data storage, so you don't need a continuous recording. I use Oculus for this purpose (with a Mac). It's great, you can set the sensitivity that triggers the recorder, which can be just about any video standard (it even supports some exotic standards). Other recomendations: consider lighting conditions (ie night-time lighting), and don't accept anything less than 1600x1200 cameras. Multiple cameras are a good idea too, with back-up power, and MULTIPLE RECORDING DEVICES (ie both on and off-site hard drives).
... and it works quite well! I have a 486 router doing the firewall/modem sharing thing, and it was a simple move to attach a simple camera to it, and it monitors the whole room. When the image seen by the camera changes more than x% (you'll need to alter this to suit your environment - windows on rocking boats and light/dark cycles will affect this), it starts clicking away.
The images are taken every 10 seconds (this was for a 56k connection), and uploaded to a blind server. The images continued to be sent until 5 mintes had passed AND the perceived image had not changed it's x%. And all this on a Windows box ... I'm more than sure a Linux box could do it.
Viewing the data was simple .. just check the webpage which displayed that directory .. could be passworded if you liked .. and the server could email/page you if it started receiving images.
Cheap, effective, and only adding the cost of a simple camera to your existing equipment. I'd advise getting a free account somewhere to house the images, it's pretty easy. I've been using xoasis.com which allows php, 20M of space, ftp, etc etc. It would be a good choice. You just need a 24/7 connection or your dialup set correctly.
G'luck!
--
McCarrum!
Robert Anton Wilson
Last year, i moved to an area which was known for minor car theft problems... Mainly people breaking in and searching for change. I found Gspy on freshmeat - http://gspy.sourceforge.net and pointed it and my van. Very interesting. Even more interesting was when a stolen car turned up outside my front door. - http://gspy.sourceforge.net/gspystory.html Another usefull package is Motion, which runs from a standard terminal. A few months later, this happened - http://www.geocities.com/osz/rob2/wanted.htm So, its been used by people, and its worked. I'm currently trying to get 3 diffrent cameras working from the one BT848 capture card - Sugarcube CMOS camera, CD camera with IR spotlight, and a zoomable, focasable Panasonic security camera!
I used to work as a tech, and one day some people came in to showcase a security system that they were trying to sell! Unfortunately, to the horror of all /. folk, it was based on a windows system. Alas, the name of the company escapes me now, but they had the computer dial up and send a text message based on the camera detecting motion.... also, a live feed was possible by dialing up (which they thought was the most secure)...
Since a cellular phone works in your area, you can probably also use CDPD. CDPD is a wireless data service that operates at 19.2Kbps. You can purchase this service, which operates with a CDPD modem (widely available in PCMCIA form), for about $55 a month from AT&T Wireless Services. If you're in the Chesapeake Bay area, you can probably also buy it from BAMS for around the same price. You can improvise whatever technical solution you like in conjunction with the CDPD service. While the CDPD service may seem pricy, it'll be much less than a cellular phone, and isn't much more than you'd pay for a home security service on land.
welcome to the rainforest... dialtone69@hotmail.com
The problem with your idea is the use of a cellphone. I have used my cellphone with a laptop, and the problem is that you can only transmit data at a whopping 14.4 on a good day! Furthermore, you have to pay "wireless web" fees in addition to all the min's it uses!
Also, you have to have a cellphone, and a laptop tied up, just more for vandals to take. I would sugguest using a standard camera/timelapse recorder set up for this problem!
Ok, security, I'm setting something like this up in my college dorm room next year as I have a collection of movies approaching 600, almost 1/3 of them are DVD. What I thought someone would mention is a small company named Xanboo. Their product can be bought in CompUSA. It looks as though this is exactly what your looking for. Yes, it calls your cell phone, blah blah blah, they have acoustic sensors, blah blah, they have almost everything you could imagine, for your boat.....even water sensors. http://www.xanboo.com
Check out http://www.xanboo.com. They offer security products that are accessible via the web, with notifications to your PDA, Cell Phone, etc. A to da K
Power: batery, maybe solar
Check out http://www.xanboo.com Seems to fit the bill for web-cam home monitoring. My boss bought much of their whole set up. Seems to be pretty cool.
This site works over WAP with an Ericsson R380s. It samples public webcams every 20 minutes. Web users get a neat simulation which renders that smartphone in the browser. The pics are grainy black and white WAP bitmaps (the best the hardware allows) but it is a commercially available GSM phone (in Europe anyway). And the quality??? Hey, did the first radio user complain about the hiss? ;-)