[GLLUG] Security Cameras for Christmas!

[Karl Schuttler]

Jason,

You have the opportunity for something I found quite amusing. Nat.org
(from the Suse project) blogged an idea on October of 2005 a neat idea
of hooking a camera up to his tivo...


(from http://nat.org/2005/october/)
"This is something I have been doing for more than five years but I
have never heard anyone else ever mention it and so I thought I'd
write it up here for the rest of the world to enjoy.

The RetroScope is a device that shows you what was happening in the
past. Think of a security camera on a time delay. Except, voluntary.

Attach a video camera to your TiVo, put it on a tripod, and point it
at the room. Pause your tivo for the desired time delay, and then hit
play to watch what used to be.

The effect can be positively hypnotic. It's great at parties, when
people walk in, say hi to their friends, get a drink, and then return
to the living room only to see themselves walking in the door....

I usually mute the audio or you get this weird, slow, phantasmagoric echo.

My friend Tom Benson and I once sat on the couch smoking cigarettes
and watching the retroscope for four straight hours. The conversation
went like this:

    Tom:	Okay, I remember this part. In a second I'm going to lift my
head slightly.
    > a few seconds pass <
    Tom:	There it goes!
    Nat:	Cool.
    Tom:	In five minutes we have to remember to look for this moment
when we saw me moving my head slightly.
    Nat:	That is going to be awesome.

Lately I've been having these fantasies about a 3x3 grid of
televisions all retroscoping the same video source at different time
delays. So you walk up to it and see yourself walk up.. and then see
yourself walk up.. and then see yourself walk up... etc. They could be
time delayed at powers of four or something like that.

Talking about this at brunch this weekend, Rony had some even more
elaborate ideas. You could do a 10x10 grid of screens and set the
delays up so that the images flash in patterns across the grid; a
smiley face, then a star, then an exclamation point across the grid. A
separate video feed could autocalibrate the timings.

At a party, a fun thing to do would be to have screens all over the
place showing various pieces of the past... and of the future. How to
show the future? Stage it. Have a few prominent people show up the
weekend before wearing the same clothes they will wear at the party,
and act out the bitter ends of the evening..."

Karl

On 12/27/06, Jason Folkens <jason at acd.net> wrote:
> Hello again.
>
> I've got a sweet idea that I want to run past you guys for suggestions.
>
> I got a wireless security camera for christmas.   I laugh at it because its
> a wireless security camera...  (ie...  anyone can flood the radio channel
> that it runs over and effectively negate its use for security purposes), but
> I want to use it anyway.  If you are interested in deploying one of these,
> they are pretty cheap at Sams Club right now...
>
> But anyway, the reciever has an output for the funky white-and-yellow A/V
> cables that are for sale virtually everwhere.   I want to take that cable,
> and input it into a linux box running one of those MythTV linux boxes.
>
> I want to store the video both on the hard drive (in whatever compressed
> format is supported by MythTV) and also pass the video out as streaming
> video to an application that supports webcam streams (so I can watch the
> premisis when I'm at work, or on vacation...   or potentially even record
> the video stream offsite so the "evidence" can't be tampered with.
>
> Has anyone played around with MythTV to a degree that they can say how
> difficult this is going to be for me?  I've never deployed a MythTV box
> before, so its kinda like looking into fog.
>
> Thanks in advice,
>
> -- Jason
>
>
>
>
>
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