More info on caldercam.com

Okay, I apologize... this is a silly place and the time and money probably ought to be spent elsewhere. But, I work long days on the road and it's very nice to be able to peek in on the pooch.

A few random points...

If you have questions, email me at weinhold @ berbee.com.
Technical details
I use Axis network cameras. They're priced a bit steeper than cameras from companies like DLink and X10, but I find the quality and the customizability is better. They run Linux and have their own Ethernet port so no PC is required. The outdoor camera supports pan, tilt, and zoom. I've implemented a governor to prevent the camera from being zoomed into the neighbor's windows (shame on some of you). All images you see on this site are served directly from the cameras.

A 768 Kbps ADSL Internet connection seems to be adequate for 2-5 frames per second (fps) of high resolution live video. The cameras generate about 20 fps inside the house. If you want to set something like this up at home, the upload speed of your Internet connection is important.

Snapshots JPG images are uploaded to a Linux server machine every second. These are compiled into MPEG movies with the Berkeley encoder. The movies are time-lapse with activity detection to skip past the dull moments. As a result, the movie clock will not move at a constant rate. The movies are a bit large, but the quality is pretty good.

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