Home Hacking Projects for Geeks

xi

Preface

You’ll build a small control mechanism to enable the lock to trigger events

for a “welcome home” sequence. A little imagination can tie this project into

every other project in the book.

Chapter 12, Watch Your House Across the Network (written by Tony

Northrup), is an evolution of the pet monitoring project in Chapter 3. This

time, however, you’ll stream full motion video across your home network or

the Internet to peek in on your home’s multiple, inexpensive video cameras

from any web browser.

Chapter 13, Build a Security System (written by Tony Northrup), brings

physical intrusion detection, event processing, and alerting capabilities to

your home. While it’s possible to buy an affordable security system for your

home, it will usually require a monthly maintenance fee, and it won’t allow

you much control over the system’s behavior. After completing this project,

you’ll be able to configure your alarm system’s behavior to your family’s

tastes using a simple Perl script. You can even build an off-site video storage

system to securely store video evidence of a crime, even if your computer is

stolen in the process.

Project Downloads

Many of the projects in this book include code. You can type it all in if that’s

how you prefer to learn; otherwise, you can download it from http://www.

homehacking.com. We’ll include updated and improved versions, too; af ...