Webcam snooping

[atgcpaul]

I had some tomatoes swiped from my vines this Monday. Culprit was either a
neighbor or her lawn guy or someone off the street--who had to enter through
the gate to get to them. Neighbor wasn't home at the time and didn't see
anyone suspicious.

Anyway, I'd like to set up a cheap webcam to record the goings on in my yard
when I'm not there. It would be setup in a window connected to my laptop.
I'd like an image snapped every 30secs or be able to view a live stream
remotely.

If you've set this up, please let me know what you bought. A lot of this also
depends on the included software package.


Thanks,
Paul

[DUD]

I set up one several years ago to watch an area of the park across the street. I then emailed the results to the Police Department, drug sales came to a halt. All I can remember doing was installing the software for the camera. Bill

[JR]

I'm interested in this, too. We've had a number cars broken into on our street in the last couple of months.

The official police lackey informed me that there is nothing really wrong. Apparently the fact that at least five of 13 homes have been hit is nothing to worry about, because further analysis by the experts reveals that two of these crimes happened to visitors to homes on our street, not to residents. A$$hole.

JR

[Ken Massingale]

http://www.digi-watcher.com/

[gad5264]

Just yesterday in the next suburb over from me a couple of guys were arrested for drilling holes in gas tanks and draining the gas out into containers. According to the news there had been break ins in the area and a guy set a web cam to video his property. He videoed the guys stealing his gas that same night.

[scorrpio]

A snap every 30 seconds is not a good idea. I'd rather find something that starts continuous video recording triggered by a motion detector, and records for 10-15 seconds after detector stopped sensing motion. No, never set anything like that up, but I am sure it is doable.

[DaveW]

http://freebsd.zaks.com/news/msg-1109281382-21245-0/ appears to offer a walk-through on setting up something like this - I've never tried it, so no guarantees... but just somewhere for you to maybe start from... HTH

[Ed62]

If you set it up, let us know what you used, and how it worked. I'm sure there will be several people interested in that.

Ed

[Hellrazor]

Iwho had to enter through the gate to get to them.

Hookup an electric fence box to the gate.. that will fix them

[atgcpaul]

Got it!!!

By jove, I think I've got it!

While researching this today (ahem, at work), I stumbled on a few sites that
would let me use my DV camera as a webcam. I knew I could do it with my
camera but never tried. Rather than buying a webcam, I decided to use my
Panasonic PV-GS31 to do the job. Here's how:

1) Download USB driver from Panasonic site and install. Connect camera with
USB and test camera.

2) Download and buy WebCamDV for $20. You do get to use it as a Trial
first. This "fools" your computer into thinking your DV camera is a webcam
and gives good resolution, too.

http://www.orangeware.com/endusers/webcamdv.html

edit: Tried it out this morning. You don't need WebCamDV if your DV camera
has USB and USB drivers. You can use those for free. WebCamDV is more for
the use of the Firewire port on the camera. Oh well.

3) Download YAWCAM. This is the most important component. It's freeware
that does all the streaming, capturing, and motion detection. Absolutely
fabulous piece of software. Will work with almost all webcams.

http://www.yawcam.com/

4) Start YAWCAM and it should use WebCamDV to stream your DV camera.

5) There are a lot of configs with YAWCAM. It pretty much configures itself.
Walks you through opening ports on your router and firewall to allow remote
viewing. You can also configure the motion capture to take pictures for
you and fire off an e-mail alert or save pictures to your hard drive. There's
also a feature to take all those pictures (time stamped) and string them all
together so you can watch them as a movie.


So I think I have my solution. I just need to find the cord that goes from my
battery charger to my camera and I'm set.

You can also buy a $25 to $35 webcam from Circuit City (Microsoft LifeCam
series) and use YAWCAM. The LifeCams may even come with their own
software but the YAWCAM software is so nice. I suppose I could have gone
this route, too, but I like the idea of using the superior optics of my DV
camera and that I can actually use my DV camera for things other than the
annual vacation shots.

One caveat I read about using a DV camera...some cameras shut off if you
don't record within a certain time. The work around is to remove the tape.


Paul

[DustyandLefty]

You might end up with pictures of a squirrel or racoon or groundhog swiping your tomatoes!

My brother set up a motion-activated flash camera in his yard; all he got were several pictures of his puzzled dog relieving himself at night (that dog was probably constipated after that...)

Still too early for big tomatoes out here in Almost West Virginia; and too dry lately also.
Good luck,
Very Dusty and Lefty

[reddog552]

Onion snow update

Picture taken on webcam Tis is going to be a BUMPER CROP

[reddog552]

try this again

Before & after

[atgcpaul]

Reddog

Definitely jealous of your crop. Our yard is decent but it's long and skinny and
bordered on 2 sides by a sidewalk. We moved in last year and I decided I just
wanted to have some tomatoes this year so I'm using pots. That's why losing
a handful of them got me so riled up. Next year we'll have to find a more
permanent location with more sun but we have a lot of landscaping to do.

This is from the camera which is now up and running in Stream and Motion
mode. To the right of the pots is the back of my shop. About 3' to the left
of the tomatoes, the neighbor's yard starts. Told you our lot was skinny.
Neighbor's gardener cuts grass on Mondays so I'll be extra alert then.



Even if I don't catch anything, I think it's just cool that this was pretty easy
to setup. Who knows, maybe I'll even setup my own New Yankee Cam in the
shop for demos on how not to work wood.

Paul

[crokett]

Wow. Thanks for the links on using your DV camera as a web cam. We are thinking about a web cam for taking to the grand parents and if I can get this working it will be way cool. Not sure if it will work for me though - no USB on my camera. I have to wash it through a converter to get to USB.