A cheap way to have your own security video system

Would you like to know what’s happening in your house when you are away? Or try to record a funny video like this one?

Well then, there is a very cheap way to do it with a simple webcam, a linux server, and Motion. Motion is a program that records the signal of your webcam every time there’s a movement.

First of all, if you are using a USB cam, make sure you have all the drivers installed. Then, install Motion:

$ apt-get install motion

Default configuration (/etc/motion/motion.conf) is almost enough to make it work; you should only set the videodevice and where you want to save the videos recorded by motion.

# Videodevice to be used for capturing  (default /dev/video0)
# for FreeBSD default is /dev/bktr0
videodevice /dev/video0
 
# Target base directory for pictures and films
# Recommended to use absolute path. (Default: current working directory)
target_dir /home/motion/videos/

If you are using an ip webcam, you can set it with netcam_url variable

There are a lot more options available to optimize your videos..if you want to learn more, here you have a complete list.

Finally, you only have to start the program by doing:

$ /etc/init.d/motion start

* Starting motion detection daemon : motion         [ OK ]

and your house/room/office or anywhere you want, will be watched over!

Reference:

http://sysadmin.carlusgg.com/?p=42