Home Hacking Projects for Geeks

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My wife, Erica, is an overprotective mother. We don’t actually have any

kids, though—just a cat. Sammy’s not even the kind of cat that you really

need to worry about; he’s healthy, young, and built like a goat. But Erica still

worries. Erica worries so much that we can’t take an overnight trip without

spending half the time wondering if the cat is okay.

Erica and I got married a couple of years ago and went on a honeymoon

cruise. We hired a pet sitter to come and feed the cat on a daily basis, and to

reassure Erica that everything was okay, I set up a cheap webcam and some

motion detection software. It worked terribly.

Of course, it was still better than nothing—we were able to connect to the

Internet from the very slow satellite link on the ship, and browse through

a directory of webcam pictures to verify that Sammy was alive and that

the pet sitter was feeding him. However, the motion detection software

was very unreliable. The video from the webcam had so much noise that

the motion detection software triggered almost constantly. It would even

take pictures throughout the night, when there was total darkness and

the camera couldn’t capture an image. Worst of all, I actually

paid for that

software.

The camera was in the room with my computer, but the cat didn’t spend

much time in that room. So we had to look at hundreds of pictures to find

a single one that actually had the cat in it. This was especially tedious

Remotely Monitor

a Pet

Cost

Time

Difficulty

$300 or less

three or four hours

3 out of 5

What You Need

• Three X10 lamp modules or wall

switches

• Three indoor X10 motion detectors

• Three wireless cameras

• A wireless video receiver

(compatible with wireless cameras)

• An X10 wireless transceiver

• X10 Powerlinc Serial Controller

• Eight AAA batteries

• A stable Internet connection

that allows inbound connections

(broadband helps)

• A computer running Linux

• A video capture card with

composite video input

• Sticky poster adhesive

• A screwdriver

For a list of specific parts used in this

project, refer to Exhibit A at the end

of this chapter.

hhpg.indb 41

11/24/2004 1:54:14 PM