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Wireless Camera for Baby Monitoring?
cwinterb asks: "A friend of mine and his wife are expecting their first born. My friend is a commercial airline pilot flying all over Europe and frequently spends two or three nights away from home. He already has ADSL (256Kbps up/512 down) and 802.11b in the house, via a Draytek Vigor 2600We (draytek.co.uk). What he wants is a wireless webcam, with a built in server, so that as long as he can get web access he can see his wife and child. Streaming video would be nice but bandwidth and cost rule it out. A good quality static image that updates a few times a minute would be ideal. Audio is not required. A camera that works well in fairly low light conditions would also be a bonus."
"Privacy is obviously important. The camera should not have to be on all the time, his wife should just be able to switch it on and point, maybe with the camera on a mini-tripod. Username/password protected access to the server would be good, but SSL is overkill. One option is to use the VPN facility on the router. He already has a domain registered so we ought to be able to sort out access via an easy to remember URL and a dynamic DNS service (static IPs cost extra on most UK residential ADSL services).
What cost effective, secure and simple solutions have other Slashdot readers deployed?"
1. The X-10.com video cameras (yes, the ubiquitous pop-up adds) apparently broadcast over the same spectrum as 802.11b, and 802.11b receivers can monitor them.
2. The above comes from a Slashdot article on "war watching": monitoring other people's wireless camera transmissions, but I can't seem to find it searching Slashdot. An important point comment made in that article (not by me) was that without encryption, a camera can reduce your security, by showing a potential intruder what the inside of your home looks like, when you're not in it, and how to avoid vbeing captured on camera.
3. It's still unresolved what wireless transmission in the 802.11b bandwdth can do to human brains. I'd hesitate to use on in a baby's room, even though it's probably safe, preferrring to err on the side of caution where the developing juvenile brain is concerned.
Addressing point 2, does anyone know of a feasable way to encrypt an X10 camera? I have one I bought on a whim just to see what it could do, but I've never used it except for testing, becuase of point 2.
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You know what's surprising? I listed all these cameras on various web directories and they rank #1 on several google searches, but I still don't get all that many hits.
Somehow I'm not surprised.
Invite over some hot young chicks.
I can look at a hairy geek who'd wire his house for no good reason with a much more convenient low-tech device with a far higher frame rate. It's called a mirror.
Opinions on the Twiddler2 hand-held keyboard?
Oh yeah.. in reply to your question!
.htaccess and .htpasswd, which is trivial to set up and probably all you need.
I'm using a cheap PAL camera, bt878 capture card, and motion software, plus a cron job to copy the fixed picture to the web server. I used to use a java applet at the client end, but I haven't really got around to setting that up again yet.
At one point I also restricted access using
The cool thing about motion is that it detects when there's changes in the picture, and can record full-motion mpeg clips whenever something happens. It can also beep, page you, email you, or anything else you care to put in a script, so it'd make a pretty good baby-monitor.
I don't know about wireless.. the same setup would work with one of those 2.4GHz X10 cameras I guess, but be aware that the signal is unencoded and travels for miles, so your pervy neighbours might have access to the full video and sound..
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Dlink also makes a model that streams audio in addition to video, the DCS-2100+
As much as I hate LinkSys, they actually have a wireless 802.11b net camera with a built-in webserver. Supports 4 connections
See it here.
Cruising the internet on my TI-99/4A @ a whopping 300 baud!
You don't want to put a lot of noisy equipment in the baby room. Axis makes an all-in-one solution. Their webcams include the camera and webserver, with password protection. Output is JPEG, which is easily viewable from any browser.
The 2420 model looks promising. Let's review the requirements:
Plus, it runs Linux inside!
I've never used one, but I think this has everything that you want, and more, for a low low price of USD 1240! It comes with a 30-day trial period. If it's out of your price range, you might want to compromise a bit on your requirements and check out their other models.
Okay, so maybe you're rich and can afford to simply laze about while your child is pampered by the servants...
For those of us in the real world, naptime can be an opportunity to get some work done. As can early mornings or late nights when the kid's asleep. Unfortunately, at least in my case, I can't hear the kid downstairs when working in my attic office. So I have a standard audio monitor. When I hear the kid waking up, I zip downstairs. (Two and a half flights of stairs takes only a few seconds.) I would love to supplement the audio with video over the network.
So, I don't have the luxury of being able to sit next to my kid 24/7. Perhaps my work during naptime will get me there someday though. Until then, I too am looking for a camera.
As for my wife, she works too, and certainly doesn't want me hanging out in her classroom all day. Her home office is three stairs from mine, so if we're both working at home, sitting with the servers is near enough, yet out of her hair. Again, I would love to have your life where the three of you spend every hour of every day together, walking white sand beaches hand-in-hand... but I live in the real world. Sucks to be me.
Actually, my wife knows that the most caring thing I can do right now is work to pay the mortgage and put food on the table. Sitting on my tuckus all day wouldn't help the kid or the wife, either in the long or short term.
Stupid people will be persecuted to the fullest extent allowed by law.