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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