Friday, September 16, 2005

CCTV, Motion Detection and Linux

Over the summer, I found myself with quite a bit of free time on my hands. I have also, for some time, been eager to install a small CCTV camera at my front door to see who's at the door (Quick, hide behind the sofa!). This is partly for my girlfriend and partly for my gadget obsession.

I read on BBC News and also seperately on The Register about a burglar who was caught when he stole the PC which was monitoring a house's security camera. The PC emailed every image of any movement detected on the camera to a remote email address which, obviously, was quite theftproof.

I thought it was a marvellous idea, having a visual record of any event on a security camera sent to a remote email account (far from where the event is happening and also very secure) which doesn't need any authentication to send to (and therefore leaves no passwords on anything that could be stolen) and also requires authentication (which any intruder/thief could not gain from the computer stolen) to be able to delete/view the images in question. Not only that, but the ISP logs and email images would provide quite substantial legal proof in any case coming to court, in terms of verifying times, dates, tampering etc.

Properly set up, only a pre-emptive phone line cut would be any use against it. Even then, however, there's always the possibility of having a mobile phone,possibly even inside the case of the computer or as one of those PCMCIA GPRS cards, dialling up to an ISP, or even more complicated setups like wireless links between friendly neighbours or to a wireless ISP.

Short of covering from head to toe, cutting the whole neighbourhood's phone lines beforehand (an event certain to attract an unwanted amount of attention), jamming the 2.4GHz that most wireless networks run on and making sure to steal the PC's and any video recording equipment which was running the camera, and then wiping that PC with tools secure enough to obliterate any history of any images being written to the drive, there's not much a burglar could do about sending out some sort of information about themself.

I loved the idea of such a system and also that it actually works in practice, as the above story shows. Some months before this news story I had seen a piece of software that did this and apparently that was the one used to catch this particular burglar. This renewed my interest in Motion.

It didn't hurt that the software was Linux-based, free to use, easy to customise and very powerful. Any camera input (USB webcams, networked or wireless PC-compatible cameras, BT848-based TV cards or, indeed, any video equipment with a Linux BTTV driver) could be fed into the system (in fact many feeds are trivially possible), have complex motion detection algorithms run on it, with still images, short movies and even the audio being recorded whenever motion was detected.

These images and sounds could then be stored, transferred, archived or emailed anywhere (I suppose that FTP or SSH is also easy to do, basically the software writes a JPG/MPG and then runs a shell script of your choice on it whenever it detects motion). Additionally, it would be possible to watch through the cameras at any time by using suitable authentication on the web-based interface, showing real-time images to whatever computer on whichever continent you happen to be.

Over the summer, I invested in a cheap CCTV kit with remote 8" monitor. This monitor could not only supply power to and read video and audio from two different cameras, it would also output one of their composite outputs again without the need for further adaptors or cables. This seemed the perfect setup... a camera wired to the monitor so that I can see what's happening in real time, with the output being simultaneously fed straight into a motion-detecting PC setup.

The setup was a cinch, just a matter of dusting off some WinTV cards and adding one short cable to the CCTV monitor. The software compiled and installed and within about 10 minutes I had it emailing images to an email account whenever my willing volunteer waved their hand across the camera. With some fine-tuning over the next few days of settings and image masks to take care of the timed external lights interfering with the setup, the hanging baskets outside moving in the wind etc. I had the perfect test.

We went to Scotland for a week, leaving the cat at home. We arranged for someone to come feed her during the week and I thought it would be a good test. While we were away, I would dial up to a cheap ISP, log into my home machine and watch the images live. I could also browse through my email account and find all the images of movement. I saw the neighbours walk past at 9.58 a.m. I saw the postman come at 7.00 a.m. and could even see the three items of junk mail in his hands as he walked up to the door. I saw our friend come in to feed the cat as promised. I also got one or two images of a plant pot falling over in the garden.

Now intrigued by the possibilities, I'm considering extending the system. We have a car in the private car park behind the house that can be seen from our spare room. I only wish my neighbours could all have identical systems so that when a car alarm goes off we all know who's it is without leaving the house and can ring up the offender and make them go turn it off!

I plan to install another CCTV camera as a spyhole in the front door to capture full-frontal images of the person approaching the door and maybe as many more as I can find USB webcams for (I know I have at least two lying around). All this and it will cost me a little less than £20 extra per camera to cable and put in an old WinTV card. The computer appears capable of running at least two or three more cameras in terms of CPU speed (motion detection is quite expensive in terms of CPU power) and my test/development machines are old, obsolete things that people were throwing out.

I'm even looking into using a wireless setup so that, for example, the computer running the system could be wired *and* wirelessly connected to my main desktop, other cameras or a second system in a more secure location (the loft seemed an ideal place to run the show from, given that most burglars probably wouldn't bother to go up there).

I also remember having some cards that slot into a computers rear slots and the power supply connectors. They supply 9V outputs on standard connectors that plug straight into most CCTV cameras. With those, I could have a cheap, ancient PC or could even invest in a mini-ITX board, that would be using only a single mains socket and maybe a piece of CAT5. That PC would then be connected directly and supplying power to two or more cameras (some USB, some via PCI TV Card) and even microphones, connecting to a central computer which could store and email the files.

It could even text me the pictures to my mobile or indeed ring me up with an automated message, set off an alarm system, email my neighbours to get them to have a quick look, or blast out MP3's of "Wanted", "Rescue Me" or "Stop in the name of love". It could even display the culprit's face on my home TV in full, glorious technicolour with the words "GOTCHA!" displayed over it, while playing a Wah, Wah, Wah, Wahhhhh sound over the speakers!



What an idea. Marvellous what you can do with technology.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

The homepage has moved to http://www.lavrsen.dk/twiki/bin/view/Motion/WebHome