When I bought a webcam for my front door – mine is the Linksys WVC54GCA – I was faced with a predicament. The built-in motion detection software bombarded my email inbox with images of an empty frame. It was set off by the motion of a leaf or a reflection, rendering one of the most important aspects – notification of trespass – ineffective.
At an impasse, I decided to build a cyberbiomimetic AI using a cockroach brain and a vat of amino acids. The resulting system, while effective at spotting intruders, eventually threatened to become self-aware and so I had to shut it down. Finally, I tried Vitamin D. Problem, as they say, solved.
Vitamin D is a three-step piece of software. You point it at a webcam on your network (it’s compatible with a few models right now) and tell it what to do when it sees evil people encroaching on your turf. Be they the UPS guy or brain-eating zombies, the system will record a clip of their activity and can even notify you via email and an audible chime when it senses movement. In short, it allows you to create a very powerful security system in a few minutes.
You can add multiple cameras and the system grabs only the most important parts of the day, ensuring you don’t miss a single entry or exit. Because it’s compatible a number of webcams, including webcams over a network.
I was able to connect my webcam and start recording in less than a minute. It’s a great feeling to know that the webcam has suddenly become more than a way to watch your front step. Sadly, you need a PC or Mac running the Vitamin D software to record 24/7 video but if you set this up on an always attended-to system it makes for an interesting and valuable upgrade.
It’s free right now and you can download the beta here. A subscription version will be sold in early 2010.
Note: My webcam is sideways because that’s how I mounted it in my window. Long story.
LOL’ed at the post scriptum note, still a pity it can’t run on linux servers (a non-ui version), as that would actually make me consider buying some cams xD
dude are you like paranoid… I kind of have more important things to do than watching the ups man and mail man deliver a package.. but whatever we all get turned on by different things…
If you got the money, FLAUNT it, I’ve got 4 DCS-900’s and I haven’t had to talk to a jahovas whitness or buy windex for $5 a bottle since!
Nice view. Scenic.
for all its worth, the view from your “front door” surely is nasty. try moving to a better neighbourhood
I was going to say the exact same thing. I guess now we know who’s pocket all those ad dollars go into? (Hi Mike!) :)
Yeah. Our entire neighborhood looks like that. It’s like Pink Floyd, just bare walls as far as the eyes can see.
Wow! Your an idiot as well? Snap! (I’m sure the view 90 degrees to the left is better.)
p.s. you just won me a ‘lil bet.
Wow, Robert, you replied before me as well, nice one, that was clearly a cert.
What? Stop sniffing glue man. That stuff will kill you.
One interesting thing to note is that the underlying technology was developed by Jeff Hawkins, founder of Palm. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeff_Hawkins
The underlying AI is supposed to work in the same way the brain does.
Is this much better than the software that comes with most security/wireless ip cams? I think you can increase the size of the motion for triggering an email in most of them.
wireless ip cams with no comp is where it’s at. they route directly through a wireless router.
So is its motion detection algorithm solid? No false alarms?
none. you can see how it sees – it basically doesn’t trigger on less than 30 pixels
You have buskers in your neighborhood? Me too! Must be a brooklyn-wide infestation.
Haha. Hilarious comment about the cockroach brain and amino acids become self-aware!
Check out http://www.connexed.com … solves the same problem more elegantly with a cheap appliance that pushes relevant video clips to the cloud
Cameraman, in most of your comments around the net i miss the big picture and again you dont see the big pictuire here either. Explain me Mister Cameraman what the real difference is between these 2, can you do that….? And when 999 is cheap in your idea, i would love to sell some stuff to you you are EASY SELL!…..again the VCA market is very premature so every start-up or idea in this field can be the real thing. You read to much marketing stuff, end you belive it also! Dive deeper inot it man!
And another thing Mr. Camerman, dont play the ï know it all”…you just dont know it all. You are copying opnions and ideas from others and dont have a real own opinion. So this feels great, already wanted to do this for a few months, but i kept it nice…. :-)