There are lots of solutions for PC usage monitoring and logging, and we’ve covered a lot of them here at MUO. We’ve even offered a giveaway of the Elite Keylogger before, and I’ve written a few articles on ways that you can monitor how your employees or your family members are using your computers. They are still good solutions, but after coming across iSpy, thanks to Matt’s awesome review of the free webcam surveillance software, I realized that there’s an even better solution than anything I’ve ever covered before.

Use iSpy to Track What Others Do On Your Computer

Why is iSpy the best solution? Well, if you’ve followed how most of the webcam surveillance systems that we’ve reviewed work, they typically watch the camera area for movement, and whenever any activity takes place, the system jumps into action in whatever manner you’ve told it to. This can include recording the video, sending an email, or even launching an application.

The iSpy Camera Security Software does all of that – just as Matt described. However, there is something else that it does that I’m very excited about – it provides a powerful feature where you can set up a remote view of a computer desktop, just like you’d remotely view a webcam, and capture all movement on that screen.

To do that, once you install iSpy, just click the “Add” button and select the “VLC Camera Source” option.

You’ll need to choose from a variety of camera sources. The magic one is the “Desktop” tab on this screen. Choose the display that you want to monitor, the frame interval and what view size you want to resize the desktop to when you view it remotely. To set this up on remote PCs that you want to monitor, you’ll need to install the iSpy Server software, rather than the full-blown version of iSpy.

So, here I’ve installed the desktop camera to monitor all activity that takes place on the other monitor that I have set up. Here’s that monitor displayed in my “webcam” view inside the iSpy software. As you can see the live screen is marked at the upper right with the current date and time.

You could simply watch the screen remotely if you want to see what the person is doing there, but obviously that would take a lot of time and patience. And, if you’re more interested in seeing what’s going on at your PC when you’re gone, then you’re going to want to set up iSpy on a different PC to monitor your computer when you’re not around.

When you add the desktop webcam, you have to go through a few steps to set up that automatic “motion sensor” monitoring feature. The first tab is the camera tab where you’ll set up the recording frame rate. If you don’t have a lot of space to save recordings, just cut back on the “when recording” framerate. If you want to hear what’s going on as well, then yes, you can even activate the microphone (using the add button) and then “pair it” on this tab.

The Motion Detection tab is where you set up the sensitivity of motion when you want to start recording what’s going on at the screen. Also, if you want to monitor the motion over just a smaller portion of the screen, you can create a “detection zone” by drawing a box around that area.

The “Alerts” tab is where you’re going to configure the behavior of how the application monitors motion. Change mode to “movement” and then select how many seconds of movement there should be before recording begins.

That screen is also where you can select a program to execute in the “Execute file” field.

Then, on the “Recording” tab, you set up exactly how the app records. This is where you set how many seconds inactivity will last before recording stops.

The coolest part of this application is its ability to automatically FTP the files to any FTP account you have set up. This makes it easy for you to monitor the activity from anywhere at all. The software will FTP the files and you can access them from anywhere.

If you don’t want to focus on the motion feature, but instead want to see what people are doing on your PC during certain times of the day, you can enable the “scheduling” feature of iSpy on the “Scheduling” tab. Just set the days and the times you want to record, and let iSpy go to work recording all activity on that PC for you.

The videos are all stored in mp4 format. Here’s a 10 minute video I captured of someone using my computer to search YouTube for “crazy stunts”. Those silly kids…

As you can see, iSpy goes well beyond your typical keylogging or screenshot applications that most people use to monitor computer usage. iSpy actually lets you record a screencast of every movement and every action that the user makes on that PC.

Give the screen recording feature of iSpy a shot and see what kind of interesting things you capture on your computers. Did you catch anyone trying to do anything they shouldn’t be doing on your computer? Share your thoughts and insights in the comments section below.

Image Credit: Shutterstock

If you’ve been meaning to get a webcam, but already have an EyeToy, why spend the money? The usable drivers for this are third party and a little intimidating. Only follow these instructions if you feel comfortable installing non-Microsoft-approved drivers on your computer.

Also, be warned: as of this writing there’s no way to get the EyeToy working on a 64 bit operating system.

Windows XP

At one point an open-source project, the fittingly named “Eyetoy On Computer Project,” wrote drivers so Windows XP users use the Playtation Eyetoy on Windows as an Internet webcam. That project’s own page at SourceForge all but disappeared from the web, but their driver lives on at CNET’s Download.com. Here’s how to use those drivers for Windows XP:

First, download the driver here (courtesy of download.cnet.com). Then install these drivers by double-clicking the executable and following the on-screen instructions. You’ll see a few odd error message, including a windows that says “????” with an “OK” button. This is normal, for some reason, so don’t panic.

Be sure to pay attention to this window:

Failure to provide the proper answer, based on where you live, could potentially wreck your EyeToy””or at the very least cause it not to work.

Now that the driver is installed, go ahead and plug your Eyetoy into your computer. You’ll see the standard search for drivers options come up, and Windows will locate the driver you just installed.

Test to make sure your drivers are working. In the Start menu, you’ll find a “Eyetoy On Computer Project” folder, and the program called “VIDCAP32″ in that folder is a great way to test your EyeToy.

(Sorry about the whole “pointing the camera at the screen so as to see infinity” thing. I couldn’t resist.)

Windows Vista/7

The Eyetoy On Computer Project’s drivers were written in the age before Vista, so the simple process above will not work for Windows Vista or Windows 7 users.

I myself do not have access to a Vista or Windows 7 machine to test any particular process with, but there is a guide over at emagi.co.uk with links to working drivers and step-by-step instructions for using the EyeToy on Vista.

Essentially you need to download the drivers directly, outside the executable binary given above, then install them using the Windows hardware manager. As a warning: some Vista users commenting on this article complained about their computer crashing after installing the drivers, so your mileage may vary. It’s also worth noting that there are no drivers anywhere that will work with 64-bit Vista or 64-bit Windows 7.

Readers using Vista/7 who try this out: please help out your fellow readers by sharing your experiences in the comments below.

Ubuntu

Using Ubuntu? You’ve already got full EyeToy compatability. Simply plug in your EyeToy and you’re good to go. To test whether it’s working or not, I suggest you install an application called “Cheese” to test your new webcam; find Cheese in the Ubuntu Software Center or the package called “cheese” in Synaptic.

Mac

While not a Mac user myself, I’d be remiss if I left our Mac-using friends out of this article entirely. Sure, many Macs come with built-in webcams, but not all of them.

An open source project known as macam offers full OSX support for the EyeToy and a number of other USB webcams. Simply download the macam drivers and drag the file “macam.component” to “/Library/Quicktime.” Everything should be working after that.

Conclusion

The EyeToy is not a perfect webcam. The resolution is low and it has some serious troubles with daylight””many images will be washed out. Additionally, it’s not easy to get working with Vista or Windows 7 and impossible to get working with 64-bit operating systems.

Still, setting it up to work with your computer can be a fun diversion, and who knows: you might even end up liking it as a webcam.

One additional tip: don’t forget you can focus the EyeToy manually. If the image looks blurry, simply turn the lens as you would an SLR camera to adjust the focus.

How’d everything work for you? Have any tips for our fellow readers? Let’s hear it all in the comments!

Occasionally, a friend or colleague seems to have some difficulty configuring their video to work properly with the Skype software when there was no video stream displaying, so I’ve decided to put together a short list of some of the most common problems that cause Skype to have no video stream from either your webcam or from the person you’re calling.

Does Skype Have No Video? A Few Things To Check Out.

Before we get started, there are a few very simple reasons why Skype may have no video in your particular setup. Before you even start working through this guide to troubleshoot your problem, make sure that you’re not attempting to make the video call to a mobile phone or landline. Seems silly, I know, but I’ve seen cases where people think they can Skype call someone with a mobile phone because the phone has a camera – that’s not the case.

First, download the latest version of Skype for either Windows, Mac or Linux. This will ensure that you have the latest bug fixes and patches installed. For that matter, if you’re having a problem with the video stream from the person you’re trying to call, make sure they have the latest version of Skype as well!

1. Check Your Drivers

While you may not think it’ll make a difference, the latest version of the driver for your particular webcam could include updates that handle some of the methods that Skype software uses to access your webcam video stream. In particular, if you’re having problems with Skype having no video, you’ll want to make sure that your device supports at least DirectShow 9.1 standard. Check with the manufacturer website of your webcam for the latest driver update, and of course doing a Windows update can’t hurt (usually).

Check your current driver version by going into the device manager. For most versions of Windows, that’s in the Control Panel (classic), System, and Device Manager.

Hopefully, there’s no yellow exclamation mark on the webcam, because if so then your issue is a resource conflict with another device. Fixing that is beyond the scope of this article, but it would at least indicate your Skype no video problem. If things appear fine, then right-click on your webcam device and select “properties” and then click on the driver tab. Here, you can see the driver date, and if it’s fairly old (as mine is), you may want to click on “Update Driver” and search the Internet for the latest version.

Checking the Copyright under “Driver Details” will also provide you with the name of the company that wrote the software, so you can download the latest driver version yourself if you need to. You’ll also want to try downloading the latest version of DirectX as well (you’ll need at least version 9.0 for Skype video to work). Click on Run and in the command prompt type “dxdiag” to double check your DirectX version.

2. Make sure Skype is configured properly.

If updating your drivers don’t seem to fix your video problem in Skype, then it might be a good idea to just double check your Skype video settings to be sure that they’re set up properly. When you have Skype open, click on Tools and Options. You’ll find the video settings under either General or Calls.

If you see a screen like the one above, then you know that’s the problem! Skype isn’t configured to recognize your installed webcam. The first thing to try is simply starting up the software that came with your webcam and using it to switch your webcam on (or if your webcam has a hardware switch, turn it on.) Once you make sure the cam is turned on you may have to restart Skype for it to recognize your active webcam.

Go back into the preferences screen. Even though your webcam video is now displayed, don’t celebrate yet! Take a look at the two settings underneath your webcam video. If “Automatically receive video” is set to “no one,” it may be more difficult to receive the video stream from your friend. Change it to people in your contact list.

Also, under “Show that I have video to,” change it from no one to “people in my Contact list.” While these settings shouldn’t affect your ability to have a video chat, setting them to people in your Contact list can make initiating a video chat far easier. If you click on “Webcam settings,” you may see something off or disabled, but the odds are pretty good that the default settings here should all be okay.

3. Make Sure You Aren’t Hidden.

Once you start attempting another video chat with your friend, make sure that “Hide myself” or “Stop My Video” is not selected.

The option depends on the version of Skype you’re using, but either way if it’s accidentally selected, then obviously your video stream will be blank. If your friend’s stream is blank rather than yours, ask them to right click on their blank video window and check that setting. Yes, sometimes it’s that simple!

4. Make Sure Other Programs Aren’t Using Your Webcam.

If you’ve got to this point and you still can’t seem to get Skype to display any video streams, an easily overlooked item is whether there are already other applications running in the background that could be capturing the data stream from the webcam already. There are more applications today than ever before that now integrate the webcam, such as many of the most popular Instant Messengers and even the latest version of many Internet browsers.

If your webcam is one that’s enabled by software and the light was on even before you ran the webcam software to start it, or even before you started Skype, that could be a clear sign something is already running that’s using your webcam, and Skype won’t be able to. Try closing down all of your windows, especially any other IM and other Internet applications, and then restart Skype again.

If all else fails – it’s very possible that you (or your friend) could have an older webcam that just isn’t compatible with the Skype software. Skype actually has an entire section of its online marketplace set aside for Skype-compatible webcams. As a last resort, you might just want to replace your outdated cam with a new one that is guaranteed to work!

Have you ever had problems getting Skype to display video? Did any of the tips above help, or did you fix it using another approach? Share your own Skype video nightmare story in the comments section below.

While you might already be familiar with the many apps that are available for your personal webcam that you use at home, there are also many very cool applications that are especially valuable if you travel a lot with a portable USB webcam, or if you use many different computers that have their own built-in webcams. These days, most laptops or desktops have them.

I’ve shared my own obsession with webcam software here at MakeUseOf with my own articles, such as adding VZOChat to your blog to interact with your visitors. I’m not the only one! Simon also wrote about how to use your webcam to control games, and Mark mentioned a couple of useful motion sensor webcam applications as well. To add to the MakeUseOf library of useful webcam resources, I’d like to turn now to three free applications that let you use your webcam live and online to take and share photos, broadcast or “tweet” video updates, and even speed date however, whenever and wherever you like.

Take Hilarious Snapshots From Your Browser With Cameroid

MakeUseOf covered Cameroid briefly before, and for good reason. If you like the ability to quickly take a snapshot and modify it in a way that will make people really laugh – you have to check this out. This isn’t an application you have to install on your PC. If you’re on any computer that has a webcam, or you have a portable USB webcam with you, just visit the Cameroid website and you can start taking and playing around with your snapshots.

Obviously, you can take perfectly normal snapshots of yourself if you like, but the real exciting thing about this browser-based software is how quickly and easily you can insert various special effects. On the right, you’ll find the various types of special photo effects that are available, including adding a filter, distorting the photo (this can be really funny), inserting yourself into scenes, or framing the snapshot. My personal favorite is the hilarious “scenes” section where you can insert your face into any of a number of scenes.

Here, I decided to go on my first scuba-diving expedition with the rest of the MUO crew, and they thought it would be funny if they unplugged my air supply. Thanks a lot guys. Wait – my even more favorite section is the “filter” section where you can select from a whole list of filters that add a very cool sense of drama or intrigue to your photo.

As you can see here, the aliens were coming to get me and I had no way out. Luckily, I survived the ordeal and lived to tell about it, but the rest of the MUO crew got massacred during the battle – such a shame.  As you can see at the bottom of each snapshot you take, if you have the nerve, you can add the photo to the public Cameroid Gallery for all of the world to see. Otherwise, you can either save it to your hard drive or print it out on paper. No registration and no fees required – all from the convenience of your web browser and any webcam.

Speed Date From the Comfort of Your Home With Randomate

So you’re single, alone, and on a business trip. You’ve just suffered through a full day of conferences and you’re back in your hotel room with nothing to do – and you start lamenting the fact that you have no one in your life who even cares about you. So go down to the lobby where there’s a computer with a webcam, and log into Randomate to set up a free webcam speed dating session. You never know, you just might find the person you’ve always dreamed of.

How does it work? Basically, you sign up for a session, and when it begins you get to chat with the other people in the session who are also looking for someone. The catch is that it follows the rules of speed-dating, which is you get to talk to the person for only five minutes. Then you move on to the next person, who you talk to for five minutes. Honestly – don’t you know within the first five minutes whether there might be a spark there?

Sessions are ongoing constantly, but slots are limited – so if you know you want to take part in online speed dating, sign up for a session early and remember to be there when it starts!

Seesmic TV is Twitter with Video

Another very cool online tool that you can use from anywhere and with any webcam is Seesmic TV.  David reviewed Seesmic Desktop not very long ago, so did Jason, and made mention of Seesmic Web as well – both tools that you can use to better interface directly with Twitter.

However, Seesmic TV, the app which Mark briefly mentioned being integrated with Twhirl, is an interesting community where you can issue video Twitter-like messages in video format, and reply to other folks video updates just like you do on Twitter. On Seesmic TV, this amounts to an interesting collection of actual discussions with actual faces and actual voices…just like actual live. It really makes you feel like you’re right there having a conversation with the person face-to-face.

The interface where you record your message is just as simple as in Twitter. You simply title your video clip, add a description and post to the community or send it privately to the inbox of another Seesmic user. You can do this from any computer anywhere in the world as long as it has an internet connection and a webcam (or you bring your own USB webcam with you).

The beauty of all three of these applications is that they let you interface with Internet communities in ways that simply aren’t possible in a purely text or even an audio medium. Using facial expressions and tone of voice, you can convey your messages to the world much more clearly and effectively.

Have you taken part in any webcam-based community? Would you ever consider it, and if not, what holds you back? Share your opinions and insight in the comment section below.

It was actually writing that article that made me start thinking about other uses for my webcam. Then, as I sat there staring at the cellphone – an old HTC 8125 with just a 1.3 mega pixel camera – I started to wonder if there was a way I could convert this little phone into a portable webcam that could stream video from anywhere in the world where there’s a cellphone data network.

That curiosity and a little bit of Internet research led me to VZOchat, an interesting free online service where you can configure your own video chat account and whenever you’re online you can receive direct video calls from anyone.

So, what does this have to do with turning a Windows Mobile smartphone into a remote webcam? Well, the VZOchat service also offers a mobile version. This means that people can trigger a video conferencing call to your mobile phone, but it also means that you can set up your cellphone anywhere you like, and then fire off a call to the phone from your computer which will enable the streaming video feature of the VZOchat software on your phone!

Want to spy on the room where you accidently “left” your phone? Maybe you want to stream a really cool rock concert to your friends with your cellphone. The potential uses for streaming live video from your cellphone are unlimited. As if that’s not cool enough – there’s one more little feature that VZOchat offers – the ability to embed the video call feature directly into your blog or website so anyone can video chat with you straight from your blog.

I’ll cover each of these features in this article. Let’s get started.

Setting Up Your Own Private Videochat

When you first sign up for your free VZOchat account, you’ll instantly have access to a special web page where you can find your embedded videochat room. You don’t even have to install any software on your PC, only a plugin for your browser so that the videochat room works properly.

Yes, I know I look tired. I’ve been staying up all night writing this article!

Now, VZOchat is actually a video chat community, so if you want to you can set your status as public and let everyone on the social network see your profile and call you. I’m not exactly that much of a social butterfly, so I left that feature disabled – I’m only here for the cool Internet video chat software.

All you have to do to call another user on VZOchat is click “start videochat” and type their name. For my purposes – I want to initiate a video chat with my cellphone, and I want the cellphone to pick up automatically. So step two is setting up the mobile version of VZOchat on your Windows Mobile device (Windows Mobile only).

Setting Up VZOchat As a Cameraphone Webcam

Once you download and install the CAB file to your mobile and you log in using the credentials that you signed up with, you’ll see the following screen on your phone.

At this point, the green bar means that you’re online and ready to send or receive video calls. This means that you can remotely call your phone with your computer, but first you have to tell your phone to automatically pick up the call. Do this by clicking on “Options.”

Most of the settings within options are pretty self-explanatory. Most of the calling features you want to configure are in the “Integration” menu item. When you click on that icon you’ll see the following screen.

As you can see here, you can integrate the software to work with Outlook Mobile and the Today Screen – but what you really want to make sure to click here is the option to “Automatically accept incoming calls.” Once you do this, you’re ready to remotely fire up your cellphone as a remote cameraphone webcam!

To test this, I placed my old Windows Mobile 5 PDA on my kitchen countertop facing a Halloween art project my wife and kids created – a small tree with ghosts hanging on the branches. Running back across the house to my laptop (I seriously ran, I was that excited), I clicked on the green call button and watched as the software initiated the call. Suddenly, the video window changed to a view of what my cellphone was pointed to at that moment.

Now, I should mention a few things about this image. My particular camera is ancient, and a 1.3 mega pixel camera is hardly comparable to the sort of resolution available on most modern smartphones. Secondly, I noticed my image updated about once every 5 seconds or so, which I believe was related to my data upload speed over the cellular data line – and I hardly had a signal in my house. Again, a newer model will most likely perform much better.

Finally, if you do decide to use this technique to convert your cellphone into a cameraphone webcam, make sure you either have an unlimited Internet data plan or your phone is connected to the Internet over Wi-Fi.

Embedding the Video Chat Feature Into Your Blog

Now that we’ve accomplished the first task. I want to show you one more amazingly cool feature with VZOchat that had me smiling from ear to ear – the ability to embed a calling box into your blog or web page so visitors can initiate a video chat with you. Here’s how it works.

When you’re logged into your VZOchat account, click on the “widgets” tab at the top.

Here, you’ll see two options. The first is a neat little VZOchat widget using the iframe tag that lets you embed your profile call gateway into your blog, which I’ve done here on my blog FreeWritingCenter.

Now, the value of just offering such a feature on your blog or website is tremendous. Allow visitors to interact with you directly to discuss a topic you’ve blogged about. Or, maybe you have a tech support website and you could use this feature to let your clients contact you directly video chat right from your web page.

The one drawback with the widget is that when they click on it, it opens a whole different window on VZOchat for your visitor to talk to you. If you want them to stay right at your site, you can use the VZOchat Webclient code instead – and visitors can have a video chat with you right on your own web page.

Here’s me having a chat with myself right on my blog.

After about 10 minutes, I found myself pretty darn boring, so I just hung up on myself. The embedded video chat is still there, as is the sidebar call feature (for now). I’m going to leave it there to chat with MUO readers and others unless I find a better service at some point. If it’s still there and I’m online, go ahead and give me a call and let’s chat!

Can you think of any cool uses for turning your mobile phone into a cameraphone webcam? What about using the service in your blog, or combining the two features so visitors can call you on your mobile? Share your thoughts in the comments section below.

This has been a dream of mine for years, but I’ve always avoided the project because of the costs I assumed were involved. However, writing for MakeUseOf often forces me to think a bit outside the box. How would I accomplish a home security system inexpensively or free?

As an automation engineer, I often have to work with machinery or equipment where a central processor needs to read data from a number of distributed sensors. So, for starters I would distribute “sensors” – both wired and wireless web cams – in and around my property. The question still remains, what central processing software could handle all of those webcams and accomplish the “alert” scenario I want? After doing a lot of digging, I finally found a very cool software application called Active Webcam that lets you do just that.

How to Build a WiFi Home Security System

In this article, I’m going to describe how you can set up a system of security webcams that will alert you to even the slightest intrusion into the space the camera is monitoring. Before we get going, I do need to make it clear that the download link above for Active Webcam is to a free trial version of the software. However, the trial version offers all of the features of the full version, except there’s a small “nag window” in the upper left part of each webcam. If you can tolerate the window (I know I can), then the software is the top free choice for what we need to accomplish.

Recently, MakeUseOf covered similar applications for your webcam, such as Mark’s article on two cool motion sensor applications, and a while back I also outlined how you could use webcams from all around the world to go ghost hunting with your browser. However, what I’m going to describe today is a combination of all of those things. We’re going to create a remote surveillance system that could monitor your home, your camp, your apartment – or all of the above, all at the same time. In essence you can create a giant personal surveillance network without limitations. Sound cool? Let’s roll.

When you first install Active Webcam you’re offered an easy wizard that steps you through setting up your first device.

As you can see even from this first screen – the software has a lot of capabilities. Not only can you capture input from cameras connected directly to your computer, on your home network, or over the Internet – but you can even generate a web page that you could access from anywhere to watch all of your configured cameras.

The next screen of the startup wizard helps you select which type of camera you want to connect to. Keep in mind that if you’ve set up a remote Wi-Fi webcam that has its own IP on your network, you can connect to it directly by selecting “Network IP Camera.”

The next screen in the wizard lets you choose from the three standard methods of broadcasting your captured video. You can stream it all to an external web server, you can turn your PC itself into a web server, or you can upload via FTP. In my case, I’m hoping to receive an email with a nice snapshot of the intruders that I can take over to the police station, so on this step I’ll select “None.” Once you’re past the startup wizard and you’ve set up your first device, go to settings and select “Motion Detection.”

This is the place where we can accomplish the magic. A few things to keep in mind here. First, set the sensitivity to what you want to accomplish. For example, in my case my cameras are sitting in an empty house where nothing should be moving. Setting it to 95% will fire off an email at the slightest movement. However, if you have a small cat or dog in the house, you may want to set it for 75% to 80% so that it ignores smaller movements. The last thing you want is a flurry of hundreds of emails because your cat decided to start playing with the webcam!

You’ll also notice that there’s an impressive array of actions you can take when the camera senses motion. Playing a sound or FTP’ing captured images are standard with most of these motion detection applications – but the one feature that is very cool here is that if you want, the application will not only send you an email, but it can also send an SMS message to your cellphone. Now that’s slick. Of course, in my case I want an email with snapshots of the intruder, so I select “Send Email” and then go into the email settings.

The email settings are very easy. Just configure your SMTP settings and remember to add which email address to send the alert to. You can add multiple ones by using a comma between them. The interval setting will wait before firing off another email when there’s more motion, and you can choose how many snapshots you want the camera to take. During a test run with my single laptop webcam watching for motion, I received the following email.

Okay, so it works – but what about really putting it to good use?

Build a WiFi Internet Surveillance Network

My first thought is a distributed surveillance system where you wire up a webcam at every remote location you want to monitor. This could be your elderly mother’s house, your camp way up north or maybe even your office because you suspect someone’s stealing your favorite multi-colored sticky notes. Whatever the reason, all you need to do is install your webcams with either their own Internet IP, or plugged into an Internet-connected PC running Active Webcam. For my global distributed network test, I visited Opentopia and selected three random webcams from several Universities around the United States.

Now, two of these cameras were obviously monitoring very quiet locations. However, the third webcam on the lower left was a college workshop where students kept walking in and out of the room. So I quickly configured the motion settings as described above, and then waited for one of the three cameras to trigger my alert. Sure enough, within about five minutes, I received my email alert.

I captured three snapshots of this student who had just walked into the room and stood at the table. Just imagine if this was your home or business security system. No need to rewind and review security tape – your wifi surveillance system will automatically capture and store the mugshots, and you’ll know about it instantly over email or your phone!

Can you think of other creative ways to use Active Webcam? Do you know of any other applications that would accomplish the same thing? Share your insight in the comments section below.

All you need is a decent webcam which will take good clear shots – a concealed webcam (like the ones embedded in a laptop monitor) would be better, rather than one which is perched on top of your computer, all exposed as if to say “cheese!“. Or use Skype which I discussed in a previous article (that isn’t motion sensor but still another good option though for checking up on your house).

Setting up a motion sensor on your computer would be useful for things like :

• finding out who is on your computer when you are away. Maybe your roommate is secretly reading your emails while you’re in the shower?
• have it covertly installed on your laptop in case someone steals it and you want to get a snap of your thief.
• use it to check on your home while you are away. In the case of Secure Cam, you will need to have remote access to your computer and therefore able to check the hard drive folder from another computer or your internet-enabled mobile device.

Let’s now take a look at both Secure Cam and YawCam and see which one is best.

Secure Cam

Secure Cam is the most basic package of the two. This will snap pictures of anyone and anything that walks in front of your webcam and sends the pics to a folder on your computer.

After setting it up, you first need to choose which webcam you are going to use.   So go to Device in the top menus. Clicking on that will take you to a screen where you can choose your webcam in a drop down menu. Once you have chosen your webcam, click initialize and that will start the whole motion sensor process. You can also choose how large you want your captured images to be.

Once all that is done, click on the image and that will bring up your options :

The options you need to look out for are :

• Tick all the boxes for saving images
• Decide at what intervals images should be snapped, under “save every ***** second(s)“
• Choose the folder paths to the captured images folders.  You may want to bury these folders deep so no-one else can find them.
• Decide how long you want the images to be archived for
• The most important one – set the minimum “Motion Trigger Level” for it to kick into action and start snapping images.   Zero means every movement gets snapped and 255 means they would have to be headbanging to Bohemian Rhapsody before the motion sensor detects them.   To get everything (otherwise, what’s the point of using it?), set the sensor to zero to make it ultra-sensitive.
• Choose how many images you want captured and saved at the one time.   The default is 5.   If you’re hoping to catch someone “in the act”, for the purposes of a criminal prosecution, then you may want to raise this level to perhaps 10 so you don’t miss anything.

Once the options are saved, you can close the open Secure Cam windows so there is only a small icon left in the taskbar. But behind that icon, here’s what’s going on in the background.

When someone walks in front of the camera, whether a snap will be taken will depend on how sensitive you made the motion trigger level. When the webcam detects a movement, small red squares will start appearing around the image area where the movement was detected. When the detection meter reaches the sensitivity level you specified in the options, the software starts snapping shots and then saves them to the folder path you specified.

That’s basically all there is to this software. When someone walks in front of the webcam, pictures are taken and saved. End of story. A pity that there is no ability to send the images to a FTP server or email address but the next one I tried DOES offer these extras if this is what you really need.

YawCam

Now this is MUCH better if you want all the bells and whistles attached to your motion sensor. This is surprisingly good for a freeware product and it is very easy to set up.

When installing, if you don’t already have Java Runtime, then it will tell you that you need to install this first.   Then go straight ahead and install YawCam.

When you start it up for the first time, this is the first thing you will see :

The first things you need to set up are :

Settings–>Camera–>Select Camera – select your webcam.

Settings–>Startup–>Enable Motion Detection – to start the motion detector

Window–>Motion Detection – to go to the set-up window for the motion detector

The set-up window is this here :

Everything is more or less pretty straight-forward. On the left, that big blue blob is my head (but the X-Files poster and Star Wars poster on the wall behind me comes out pretty sharp). Underneath, you have the bars showing that movement is happening and being picked up by Yawcam. Just like Secure Cam, when it reaches the sensitivity level that you specified in the settings, pictures will start being taken and sent to you via a variety of ways.

On the right, choose how you would like to be notified. You can save the images to your hard drive, have them sent to a FTP server, have the images emailed to you, run an exe program or play a sound.  Choose either one or them all. It doesn’t matter. Maybe you would like them emailed to you, with a backup going to your FTP server and a loud siren blaring “INTRUDER ALERT!” scaring the hell out of your snooper. Go on, let it rip.

With the last two, you can set up a really loud scary sounding alarm to go off to scare the hell out of those pesky kids who won’t stop playing with your laptop. Remember to disable it though before Grandpa goes on the computer or you’re likely to give him a heart attack.

If you want the images emailed, you will need to specify your SMTP mail settings. Just look for the POP / SMTP settings in your email program. Gmail’s is here if you happen to use Gmail.

And of course, remember to click that “enable” button there to start the motion detection.

All in all, I much prefer Yawcam for its wide variety of notification features. On the other hand, if you just want something simple and basic, then you may be drawn to Secure Cam instead.

Which one gets your vote? Or do you prefer another? Can you think of other uses for motion sensor software?

We’ve discussed the webcam’s gaming aspect before, when we showed you how you could use your webcam for EyeToy-like gaming.

This time we’ll show you how you can use your webcam for Wii-like gaming!

Wait…..what? Using your webcam for Wii-like gaming? A Wii doesn’t even have a webcam!

So How Does It Work?

You’re completely right. However, we’re not at all planning on recording ourselves. It’s more like we’ll be recording objects and will be using the camera’s motion sensing ability to transform these into intuitive ‘controllers’.

That’s right, using the CamSpace software, you can transform nearly any object to an input device! Just check out the video below to see it at work.

You can use cardboard steering wheels for racing games, playing swords for fighting games, and a chicken drumstick for flight simulators!

The implementation also works a lot smoother than would be expected. You’ll need Windows for the software, and about any webcam can be used, though older webcams tend to work less well due to a lower frame-rate and problems with light adjustments.

Installing The CamSpace Software

The software is currently Windows only – though it definately deserves to be ported to both Mac and Linux – and can be downloaded here. Also make sure you’ve properly installed your webcam.

You can test out CamSpace by playing one of the CamSpace games. These are small mini-games that accompanied CamSpace. You ought to be able to find them in a folder on your desktop as well.

Item Recognition

CamSpace recognizes specific items by their shape and colour. In theory, you can use any object you want. However, you might want to avoid objects that have the colour of your skin or clothes and use obvious colours – like bright green or pink – instead.

The program will ask you to specify what item you intend to use by holding it in a specific area of the screen. You can also trigger the lock-function by pressing ‘Shift + ~‘ .CamSpace will now track your object so you can use it for simple interaction. It will monitor the size and rotation and will hereby determine the exact location of the item.

You’ll also be able to find several steering wheel templates on the site, this’ll save you some work and give you a general idea of what’s needed.

Playing Games

You can play any game with CamSpace, but to do so you’ll need a controller.

A controller specifies what in-game action is paired up with which motion. As you might’ve guessed, each controller is game specific.

You can either download one of the controllers that are developed by other people here, or make one yourself and upload it to the CamSpace developer site.

Making a Controller

Making a controller is relatively easy. You can start making one by opening CamSpace and selecting ‘Create New Controller’ under Developer Tools in the right-click menu.

If you then choose to edit your script (also located under Developer Tools), an editing window will pop up.

In this window you’ll be able to specify which action pairs up with which function easily. Scripting shouldn’t be necessary with basic controllers.

So what objects did you use?   Did it work smoothly for you?  Let us know in the comments.