Security Cam/Time Lapse/Snooping Fun

[darryl]

So last Wednesday morning, my family and I went out to pick out a Christmas tree. (It were rained out the night before.) We found a nice little tree, brought it home and got it settled into the base. I pulled down the ornaments box, and was going to head into work, but thought it might be cool to make a time-lapse video of my wife and son decorating the tree.

So I pulled out the tripod, and set up my Canon S3's built-in Intervalometer function to take a shot every 1 minute for the next 100 minutes.

Then I headed into work.

Within a few minutes, I got an email notifying me that photos had been uploaded from my Eye-Fi card. What!? Oh, I had totally forgotten that the camera had the Eye-Fi card (I swap it around with our smaller Digital Elphs usually).

So I logged into SmugMug where I upload photos, and voila -- I could see the progress of the Christmas tree decorating. Uploads were not happening every minute... The S3 has a nice feature where it shuts down to save power in-between shots. But I ultimately got a few shots at a time. I'm not sure whether this happened automatically or if my wife happened to grab the camera to look at the previous shots. At any rate, it was cool! I could "spy" on my home!

Later I used a couple of open-source utilities to merge the images into a video. It ended up kind of jerky, because with people you need to take a shot more frequently than 1 minute to get a good effect -- next time I'll use CHDK's Ultra-Intervalometer. Fun stuff.

Anyways, I thought this was an interesting way to "broadcast" an event. A poor man's webcam, if you will.

Here's a link to my recipe for time-lapse photography with CHDK and the various open-source utilities (mainly Unix-based):
http://darryl.com/permalink.php?blurb=lapse

[dcoaster]

Very cool indeed! Nice idea.

[darryl]

Oh, by the way, here's a link to the Christmas tree video:

http://albums.phanfare.com/video/4;1005 ... 9a092a8ce1

My wife was saying next year we've gotta get a bigger tree -- this one was so small it took no time at all to decorate and the ornaments box was still half-full. It should make for a better time-lapse video too. :-}

[darryl]

I did another test -- it didn't automatically upload because in Intervalometer mode, the camera shuts down in between shots, and when complete, stays shut down. :-{

I'm going to test with the CHDK scripts next, as I believe when it runs the camera stays on for as long as your battery lasts.

[nageljj]

cute idea)) will try to make the same on this Christmas))

[maryjane]

It is really cool. And I also want install somethng like the wireless spy camera to catch a look of my families every moment.