Easy Home Surveillance

Everyone wants to keep their home secure. If zombies have swarmed your house, you want to know it's not safe to return, RIGHT?

What better way to do this than to set up a surveillance system?

Now it's easier than ever to have.

And, you don't have to shell out hundreds of dollars to make sure the infected haven't infested your home. OK, I'll get back to reality... This instructable is good for catching thieves and mostly just keeping tabs on your pets throughout the day.

There are plenty of free websites where you can "subscribe" and they will host your web cam. But these sites often don't store all the photos taken by your cam -- at least the free ones don't. Most often, these sites simply post the most recent photo and then refresh it -- saving over the old one. In my book, that's just not good enough.

What happens if some low-life robber breaks into your place and steals all of your stuff? In order for you to catch someone in the act, you'd have to sit in front of the computer all day long. Otherwise, you have any idea of who's broken in.

In this instructable, I'll show you how to set up an inexpensive, yet reliable system to capture photos, upload them to your website, and rename them with a time stamp. This way, ALL of the photos taken are saved on your server, and you can delete them at your convenience. Now, even if your computer is stolen, you'll likely have the photo evidence to catch the low-life thief.

Step 1 Materials list

You will need:
• Webcam
• Computer
• Internet access
• Domain name and hosting account -- I use Godaddy, you can get a domain for 9.99 and three years of hosting for pretty cheap (Google search for hosting promocodes).
• Php enabled server -- ask your provider if you don't know if you have this.
• Some programming knowledge - though I will be providing you with the code you need, so you can really just copy and paste.
• FWink -- a free webcam program you can download here: http://www.lundie.ca/fwink/

Files -- I will give you the scripts for these:
index.php -- a page to display the most recent photo
stamp.php -- a page that renames the most recent photo with a date and time stamp (you'll leave this page up and running when you leave your home)
all.php -- a page to list all of the photos

Optional parts to make your cam pan from left to right:
• Arduino or, better yet, a DIY-Duino ; - )
• Servo motor
• 9 Volt battery
• Duct tape
• Some kind of stand to tape the webcam to, unless you are using your computer's webcam.

Comments

[gnoseon]

Question-does stamp.php need to bee open constantly on the server or the client computer?

[robonerd]

It needs to be open somewhere. It doesn't have to be on the client computer. It can be open anywhere. This page refreshes every 5 seconds and looks for a new photo. If one is there, it is renamed and saved. If the stamp page is not open, the most recent photo will save over the previous one.

[gnoseon]

does index.php have to be called index.php? is it possible to do this, have the photo be displayed on, say, photo.php, if you modified the code to sent the picture to photo.php?

[robonerd]

that should work if you modify anywhere index is called to be photo instead.

[gnoseon]

Ok, thanks. Do you also have to specify photo.php in the fwink upload settings?

[robonerd]

Anything that was previously index should be changed to photo.

[robonerd]

on the server end.
say your website is http:www.kickinsite.com
you wouyld want the location to be http://www.kickinsite.com/_fwink
hope this helps

[gnoseon]

oh, thanks.

[gnoseon]

what exactly is the "root directory" of you website. do you access it through the server end of your website, or the client end?