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Part III: Home Security
Figure 12-1 shows the conceptual architecture of this project. You visit a
web page, and relay commands to your computer by clicking on links. Your
computer controls multiple cameras, and determines which camera is cur-
rently active. The computer feeds the live video across the Internet to the
your video player, which is embedded in a web page.
Figure 12-1. This project’s conceptual
design is basically the same one used by
any closed-circuit camera system.
Project Overview
This project has five phases, which
correspond to the layers in our con-
ceptual design:
• Video Cameras
• Video Capture
• Video Transfer
• Video Playback
• Playback Control
Each of these components is modu-
lar, so you can complete them in a
different order if you’re waiting for
a part to arrive or if you’re particu-
larly interested in a certain aspect of
the project. You can even pick and
choose the components you want to
use. If you only want a single camera
system, you can completely skip the
Playback Control phase. If you want
to monitor video on a computer that
is connected directly to the video
capture mechanism, you can skip
the Video Transfer phase.
Shortcut: Buy a video camera with a built-in server that connects to your home’s
local area network, and watch it from anywhere. The “Video Cameras” phase
describes these cameras in more ...