Turn a Webcam into a Motion Sensing Security Camera

Thanks to the cheapness and ubiquity of the webcam, it's now both easy and affordable to roll your own surveillance system. In this video tutorial, I'll be demonstrating how to turn a cheap webcam into a motion-sensing surveillance camera using a free Windows application called Yawcam.

Transcript and show notes: http://www.thoughtshots.com/2011/08/t...

Download Yawcam for free at http://yawcam.com

Background music featured in this video is by Broke for Free and is used with a CC-BY license from Free Music Archive. Visit:
http://brokeforfree.com
http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Bro...

Photos used in this video were used under CC-BY license from the following Flickr users: Rasmus Olsen, Mike Burns, Phil Campbell, Simone Riccardi, Keith Williamson, yoppy, Saad Akhtar, Peter Kaminski, Dan Previte, KOMUnews, Dushan Hanuska, Yury Primakov, Windell Oskay, and Cory Doctorow.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/cwest666...
http://www.flickr.com/photos/mike-bur...
http://www.flickr.com/photos/clanlife...
http://www.flickr.com/photos/doctorow...
http://www.flickr.com/photos/8905571@...
http://www.flickr.com/photos/elwillo/...
http://www.flickr.com/photos/spilt-mi...
http://www.flickr.com/photos/saad/230...
http://www.flickr.com/photos/peterkam...
http://www.flickr.com/photos/dprevite...
http://www.flickr.com/photos/komunews...
http://www.flickr.com/photos/hanuska/...
http://www.flickr.com/photos/24613260...
http://www.flickr.com/photos/oskay/24...

Thank you!

---

Closed Caption:

thanks to the cheapest and ubiquity of
the webcam
it's now both easy and affordable to
roll your own surveillance system
in this video tutorial i'll be
demonstrating how to turn a cheap webcam
into a motion-sensing surveillance
camera
the first thing you'll need of course is
a webcam depending on the quality of the
video captured
it's a purchase that could cost you
anywhere between 12 and a hundred
dollars unless you're trying to capture
really wide area you probably won't need
anything more than the most basic of
webcams an extensive security system is
outside the scope of this video if
you're planning on spending one of the
few bucks on this it might make more
sense to look into an integrated system
secondly you want a computer that you're
okay with leaving on all the time
if your computer isn't directly located
where you want to monitor
you'll need a USB extension cable which
at the absolute most will cost you about
a dollar a foot
keep in mind that using any USB cable /
5 meters or a little less than sixteen
and a half feet
we'll probably see a degradation image
quality there's a lot of different
options available for recording at the
extremely simple end of the scale you
can just use our webcams bundled
software and just press the record
button
there's a couple disadvantages to this
notably if your computer is stolen you
lose all the recordings on computer
since they're all safe locally you can
solve this by recording with the
streaming video service like you stream
or justin.tv
ustream however has a recording limit of
only three hours
justin.tv has no limit but it doesn't
prevent the hassle of having to scroll
through hours and hours of footage
instead of recording everything however
you can cut down on your viewing time by
only recording what something is
happening
if you're running Windows an application
called yo cam will only take a picture
when there's movement within the frame
you can download it for free from yoke
am calm within the application you can
control the different kinds of recording
by pressing any of the five buttons and
the control window to enable that
setting
in this video I'll only be going over
motion-sensing recording but your cam is
a deeply customizable application if
you're curious about the full extent of
its capabilities
check your cams website for additional
information on the other recording
settings to enable motion recording
press the motion button and then open
the motion settings window from the
windows menu you'll see this weird blue
pointless image from your webcam on the
left with two coloured bars underneath
the top green bar is the amount of
motion in the image of the bottom blue
bar is the motion tolerance
anytime the green bar is longer than the
blue bar your camera will record this as
emotional event and automatically take
the photo
the right side of the window has three
tabs
the first is motion events clicking on
emotional event will bring up the image
in a thumbnail below if I double-click
on the thumbnail i can open up a full
size version of the image from directly
within the application
the next tab is actions which will
determine what happens when a motion
event occurs
i'm going to just save the image on my
computer and send a copy of the image to
my email address if i click the Settings
button next to the save file option i
can adjust the image quality and change
the folder work saved among several
other options in order for your cam to
send the image you'll need to enter your
email account information in the send
email settings check attached image to
send a copy of the image to email and
make sure receiving email account has
the capacity to handle the attachments
free webmail services like Gmail or
Yahoo Mail are good options for this and
provide enough space to
even the most active accounts you'll
also need to enter in the smtp details
from your sending email account in order
to send me alerts which is information
you should be able to easily find from
your email service provider the final
tab is settings where you can adjust the
sensitivity of your motion detection as
well as a tolerance which sets level of
your blue bar
the easiest way to set this up is to
just press the auto detect button
so your cam can automatically adjust
your settings if your cameras pointed
out something outside
you need to keep in mind that the
difference in lighting and various
points during the day can alter the
effectiveness of these settings you need
to do some experimenting to get the best
settings for your situation
thanks for watching as always you can
view this video or any of my other
technology learning videos for free at
the shots . com where you can also find
a full transcript of this video as well
as show notes and related web links