Though the results are fantastic, you do need a lot of free software to get the thing up and running properly. It’s a lot to download, but there isn’t anything inherently difficult about it – just be prepared to spend a little time on this.  An easier possibility is one that Mark talked about back in 2007, which is to use Skype, although there is no motion detection involved with that method.

What You Need

• A Windows PC that’s always on. I’ll only be covering the Windows process and software today, but if you know of similar software for Linux or OsX, let us know in the comments.
• A spare webcam of some sort, one that is already working with drivers. (I’ll be using a PS3 EyeCam just because they’re great quality and affordable).
• Mounting bracket and USB extension cable if you’ll be mounting it outside.
• Free YawCam software (check out a review from Mark here) and the Java RunTime Environment.
• Microsoft .net v.2 or higher.
• Growl for Windows.
• Boxcar App for iPhone notifications (needs free Signup), as well as Boxcar Growl Plugin.

1: Install Yawcam & Check Your Webcam

If you’re trying to use the PS3Eye like I have, you’ll need to install the CLEye drivers from here before you can use the camera in Windows. You’ll also need to download the JRE from Java.com before attempting to install Yawcam.

Upon launching YawCam for the first time, select your camera device from Settings -> Device -> Change To menu option. The preview Window should now show you the output from your webcam.

2. Set Up Streaming

Click the enable button on the main screen to activate streaming capabilities.

Then head to Settings -> Edit Settings to bring up the preferences screen. From the left sidebar select Connection -> What’s my URL? to open a webpage with both internal and external links to your new webcam stream. By default, the app will configure your router for you, but if not you’ll need to read the help guide on forwarding the correct ports.

3. Set Up Motion Detection

Click the button on the main Window again to Enable Motion. Then open the motion detection screen from the Window menu. The preview area shows blue when motion is detected, but if you’re pointing it on your garden you may find trees showing up when moving in the wind. To solve this, I set up motion detection for a single area – the table and chairs, instead of the whole image.

To set up tolerance and sensitivity, the auto-detect works well, but you might also want to make use of spouses or children to set it up manually. It also helps if you enable the “show image” feature too. In case you’re wondering, the blue bar beneath the image shows the threshold – the bar above is green and increases when it detects movement. Once the green bar goes beyond the blue bar, it fires a motion event.

Once you’re confident it’s sparking detection events correctly in the event view, just set it up to save images for now or play a sound for testing. Here’s a strange guy it captured in my garden!

4. Install Growl For Windows

In order to setup notification between various devices we’re using, we’re going to need Growl For Windows first, then Growl apps on anything you want to send notifications too. Today I’ll be showing you how to set it up on your iPhone using Boxcar, but you can easily set this up on other devices too.

To setup YawCam to work with Growl For Windows, first, open up My Computer and locate the growlnotify.exe in your Growl for Windows install directory, and move it to your root C: drive – I had problems getting it to work right when left in the default directory.

Head back to the motion detection screen. On the action list, enable the Run .exe option and edit the settings. The command we want to run is:

c:/growlnotifier.exe "Motion detected" /cu:"http://178.34.54.09:8081"

Change the IP address on the end to be the URL you used earlier to view the stream.

At this point, you should be getting a default Growl notifier in the lower right of your screen whenever motion is detected, and if you got the URL correct, clicking on it will open your browser to the stream page where you can view the intruder live.

Next we will try to connect this to the iPhone for alerts on the go.

5. Install The Boxcar Growl Plugin & Get A Free BoxCar Account

Head over to boxcar.io and make yourself a free account. Boxcar is basically a free catch-all notifications service we’ve shown you before, but I’ll only be using it for the Growl functionality.

You’ll need to enable the Growl notifications from the boxcar.io website, and be sure to download the iPhone app and login before continuing.

Next, install the Growl Plugin to connect the two.

If you’d rather be sending notifications to other devices, check out this great tutorial we showed you before, or you can get Boxcar for Mac OsX too.

Then to activate the notifier, open up the Growl for Windows application, and go to Network. Check the Forward Notifications to Other Devices, and click the green + button. You should see BoxCar listed on the bottom (don’t choose iPhone, as it’s designed for a paid app called Prowl).

Set up the notifier with your account login details, and you should be all set.

6. Set Up A Quick Launch Icon For Your Video Stream

Unfortunately, there’s currently no way to forward the URL to your notifications when motion is detected (though the boxcar.io forum assures me they are working on this). Until then, the easiest way would be to browse to your video stream from your iPhone, and create a quick launch icon for your homescreen that you can easily access when motion is detected. Click on the + button at the bottom of Safari to do this.

Now when you get a notification, just hit your new stream icon to see what’s going on!

Conclusion

I must admit it took quite a bit of fiddling to get this all working correctly, so don’t despair. Post in the comments if you have any problems and I’ll see what I can do to help. You don’t have to use Growl notifications – there’s many more options to just save a file if you want, or to email you – and there’s also a lot more you can do with Growl if you like it! I also suggest downloading some dog growling noises, and setting them to play when movement is detected…

Now it’s time to troll the neighbours!

Wouldn’t it be cool if your computer acted a little bit more like one of those advanced computers you read about in science fiction novels, where you can simply walk up to it and it can sense that you are there and respond accordingly? I mean, these days almost every computer comes with a webcam of some sort, often embedded right above the monitor, so the potential for smarter, more automated computers is there.

There may be some newer computer systems that already do this, but for the most part people are still stuck with tapping the keyboard to disable the screen saver. I started thinking about this the other day and decided to try to put together a combination of applications and scripts that would accomplish this simple automation task (yes, these are the sorts of things automation engineers do for fun).

The Motion-Detection Screensaver Solution

What I came up with was an application-script combination that would constantly monitor the webcam for motion, and then instantly run a script that would remove the screensaver. Deciding on the webcam software was easy. I was tempted to use the Active Webcam software that I previously wrote about, but then I realized that YawCam, which Mark covered before, is much simpler and more effective for this sort of task.

Once you install and run YawCam (and give them a nice donation for offering us this free software), you’ll see the following screen over the webcam video.

Click on “Window” and then choose Motion detection from the dropdown list. On the next screen, you’ll see a page where the motion detection software logs each time a motion event takes place (when the detection is activated). Click on the “Actions” tab to set up the file that you’ll have YawCam run whenever motion is detected.

On this screen, you’ll see a “Settings…” button next to Run.exe. Select the checkbox next to “Run.exe” and then click on the settings button.

Click on the Activate check box for flood control (you don’t want the script launching 50 times a second), and put some delay (I put 10 seconds, but you can use up to 60 or more). The next step would be to click on the browse button and choose your script file that you want to run. Alas, you don’t have one yet. Don’t worry, I’ve got you covered.

You’ll notice that the default filter looks for .bat or .exe files, but you can also choose a Windows Script file (.wsf). For this article, I hunted for a whole list of ways to kill the screensaver via script. I searched for programs that already exist, or batch job methods that disable the screen saver. In each of those cases the screensaver stays disabled – not good. So then I turned to methods to send keyboard keys or mouse clicks to Windows – and sure enough, that was the solution.

After digging around Microsoft help files, I found the SendKeys code that simulates pressing the “Enter” button on the keyboard.

The following is the script.

<package>
<job>
<script language=”VBScript”>
set WshShell = WScript.CreateObject(“WScript.Shell”)
WshShell.SendKeys(“{ENTER}”)
</script>
</job>
</package>

Save this script to a .wsf file and point the Action event in YawCam to that file. Now, every time there’s motion in the webcam, it’ll kick off your script, which simulates pressing the keyboard enter key – which will disable the screen saver.

If you find that your script isn’t getting launched or the motion detection doesn’t seem to be working (or it’s too sensitive), make sure to check out the “Settings” tab in YawCam. Make sure that the tolerance is high enough so it’s not too sensitive, and make sure the sensitivity is high enough so that it picks up when you sit down in front of the computer.

As with most automated solutions, this one isn’t perfect yet because you have to turn it off when you actually want to use the computer or it’ll keep sending the “Enter” key whenever there’s motion. I’m sure there are other creative ways you can probably perfect this automated screensaver trick. The solution above will work best for situations where you have something running for hours (like a virus scan) and you want to just walk up to the screen and have it automatically show you what’s going on, but then the screensaver will reactivate after you walk away.

Did you install this automated screensaver setup? How well did it work for you? Did you find a way to perfect the system even more? Share your insights in the comments section below.

Image Credit: Vivek Chugh

Another one of these up-and-coming communities is a site called ChatHopper, which promotes itself as a “random chat” system with over 10,000 users and rising. However, I personally might never have noticed ChatHopper if it wasn’t for the fact that the website is introducing an innovative and entirely new concept in online gaming. With ChatHopper, you not only randomly chat with anonymous people, but you get to play games with them.

This is a cool temptation for those of us that really have very little to say to a complete stranger, but a fun little bit of competition is a whole different story. A game can act as an awesome icebreaker when you first meet someone new. Don’t have anything to talk about? Don’t worry about it – just have fun!

Playing ChatHopper Games

ChatHopper offers an entirely new concept in online gaming that incorporates intelligent video gesture recognition technology with fun Heads-Up style games. When I first heard that ChatHopper was attempting to create these sort of games, I really expected a difficult to manage interface that would fail to recognize what you’re trying to do nine times out of ten. Once I started testing the system with my daughters, it became apparent fairly quick that the folks at ChatHopper really did a great job with this system.

Before we proceed, I should point out that if the games don’t work on your computer, then you should try the following:

• Clear the cache on your browser.
• In- and outbound UDP-Ports may be blocked by your firewall. So check your firewall settings.
• The security settings of your browser may be too high, preventing the flash plugin from working properly. So check the security settings.
• You are using a Flash version older than version 10. So update it.

When you first visit ChatHopper Games, you’ll see yourself displayed in your webcam on one side of the screen. The system will automatically scan for any active users that are logged in and also waiting for someone to play a game with. Once they connect, you’ll see the other user appear in the right side window. At the time of testing the system, there were two available games to play – Power Math and Color Buzzer.

Once you’re both logged in and you both press “Play”, the game is on! In Power Math, you have to quickly answer math questions by actually pointing to the correct answer at the top of the screen. As you bring your finger closer to the webcam toward the correct answer, the system recognizes your hand gesture and recognizes the answer you’ve selected.

I couldn’t believe the system actually worked, but sure enough when I tried it, it always recognized the answer that I was pointing toward with my finger. After you get the hang of  it, it’s a little freaky how easily the system can recognize your selection just by watching you point your finger in the air in front of the camera. After a few misses, I realized that I had to make sure the tip of my finger was obscured by the correct answer. After that I was able to correctly press the button I wanted every time.

At the end of the timed game, each user screen displays the winner, the loser, the number of wrong answers and any time penalty. By the way, I totally let my nine year old daughter win at the math game…

ColorBuzzer is similar to the math game only in the way that you interact with the system. It’s always a matter of pointing to the correct answer. In this case, the system shows you a sequence of highlighted circles, and you need to press the colors at the top in the same pattern (similar to the popular 1980′s electronic game “Simon”).

Keep in mind that these games are only a way that ChatHopper is looking to enhance the anonymous video chatting experience, not take away from it. So, all of the features you’re used to when you use sites like ChatRoulette or ChatHopper is still available, including the audio chatting and text chatting functionality. You can text chat in the box right under the video display.

At the present time, ChatHopper Games is an entirely new concept in video chat, but I think it’s one that’s going to take the web by storm. Currently there are only two hand gesture games available, but I suspect there will be many more in time. Anyway, regardless of the game, half the fun of this setup is that friendly competition is the fastest way to break the ice when you meet someone new. So, if you’ve never tried anonymous chatting before – this is a great place to start.

iSpy is an in-depth program that can do just that. It has the ability to record video, record audio, provide online access to video and more. Let’s take a look at how this powerful free webcam surveillance software works.

Recording Video & Audio – The Basics

Once you have installed iSpy and launched it you’ll be greeted with the main window, which is nothing more than a large black space with some menu options at the top. iSpy is able to record multiple video streams at once, so this launch area is meant to provide the space needed to keep tabs on a large number of cameras. We’ll stick to a single camera in this post, however.

iSpy has a recording window open by default, so you can use that to set up a video stream. Simply right-click on the gray box and then click Edit. You’ll come to the Camera options screen. Click on the [...] button besides the Source label and then select your camera from the Open Local Device drop-down menu. Presto! Your camera is now added and can record. If you’d like, you can also adjust the frame rate and resolution at this time.

Adding a microphone is also easy. Just click the Add Microphone button at the top of the main window and then select the microphone installed on your PC using the same method described above for a camera.

By default, you can start recording by right-clicking on a video or audio stream and selecting Start Recording. Obviously some automation would be handy, however – and iSpy has plenty of support for that.

Recording With Motion Detection

The depth of iSpy becomes apparent once you start to explore the tabs alongside the Camera tab when you edit a camera. There are in fact too many options to cover in this post, so I’m going to focus on the most important ones.

Motion Detection is likely the most critical. A webcam being used for surveillance doesn’t need to be used all the time – just when things are happening. Motion Detection enables this. You can adjust the sensitivity of the motion detection, the type of detection used, and the frequency with which motion detection is processed. At the highest sensitivity level, even the slightest movement will cause the motion detection to activate. A level of between 50 and 75 is often more manageable.

Once you’ve set the motion detection you should visit the Recording tab. Check the Record on Movement Detection box and then choose the settings you’d prefer. The defaults should be fine, but you can make some adjustments. For example, Inactivity Record will determine how long the camera continues recording once movement stops.

Scheduling & Alerts

Motion detection is one way to activate surveillance, but it’s not the only way. You can also schedule a camera to record at certain times using the Scheduling tab. The options here are fairly clear. You can schedule recording at any hour of the day, any day of the week, and do the same to stop. This method may prove more effective if you don’t want to hassle with motion detection or you’re concerned about who is near your computer at a specific time of day.

Another handy feature is alerts, which are configured in the Alerts tab. When enabled, an alert can take one of any number of actions when movement is detected. Two included options are a beep sound and the displaying of the iSpy Window, which could be handy if you just want to scare someone off. However, you can also execute a specific file if you have some special alert in mind.

YouTube Uploading

Another nifty feature of iSpy is the ability to upload videos to YouTube automatically. Now, this is a feature that I suggest you use with some caution, because once set up it is indiscriminate. Have you ever taken a shower and then walked over to check an email before getting dressed? Unless you’d like to be on YouTube naked, don’t leave this option enabled 24/7.

However, this option is handy because it enables an easy way to make video files accessible online from any PC. Just enter the YouTube tab, click YouTube Settings, and enter your account information. You can adjust the YouTube category and tags if you’d like, as well. Just be aware that the upload won’t be instantaneous, and I suggest giving it a trial run as well. I had some issues with my firewall blocking the upload.

Conclusion

These are just some of the features found in iSpy. Overall, it seems like great software that could even be suitable for use in a professional environment. While I didn’t go into the details, the free webcam surveillance software also offers support for IP cameras, it can record multiple streams, and video streams can be directly accessed via an Internet connection. If you need basic surveillance, iSpy should fit your needs.

One solution to this problem is SMRecorder, a versatile free recording program for Windows. SMRecorder can record audio, video (from a webcam) or your desktop, and it provides a number of setup options for each choice. Let’s take a look at why this lightweight recording software kicks butt.

Starting A Recording

SMRecorder opens as a small window with a few buttons on it that aren’t labeled by text. To start recording you first need to click the button to the very left, which looks like the new file icon found in Microsoft Word.

This will bring up the New Recording Task window, which is where the meat of your options appear. There are three recording modes available with SMRecorder, and they are listed in the Capture Type drop-down menu at the top of the window.

• Desktop Video – Records the activity taking place on your Windows desktop.
• Camera Video – Records from any attached webcam.
• Desktop/Microphone Sound – Records from a microphone.

The options that are available in the remainder of the New Recording Task window are dependent on the Capture Type you choose, so let’s take a look at each option in turn.

Desktop Video Recording

Selecting desktop video recording will let you record whatever is taking place on your desktop. It’s the perfect way to make tutorial videos to put up on YouTube, but could also be used to record a game or video you want to make a commentary on. There’s just one limitation that will put a barrier on how you use this program – the desktop video option does not record desktop audio, but rather audio from your microphone.

The main options to change can be found in the General tab. Audio Input needs to be set to the appropriate source, of course, and it should default to whatever audio recording device you typically use with Windows. Capture Size is also very important, as it determines what part of your desktop will be recorded. You can record your entire desktop, or just a small section. The size of the capture area will impact performance, so keep that in mind if your computer seems to become unbearably sluggish while recording. Finally, the Duration tab lets you choose the maximum length of your recording in minutes.

The Video and Audio tabs also have a number of options. The default setting are fine, but will result in slightly choppy video. You can reduce this by increasing the frame capture rate, and you can also improve overall quality by upping the compression quality. Similar things can be said of the options in the Audio tab. They’re fine by default, but can be improved if you desire. Remember however that the file size of your desktop video will become larger.

When you are ready to record you simply press the OK button. The SMRecorder window will disappear, but can be brought back by pressing CTRL-P. This will pause the video. You can then continue the recording or, if you feel that you’re finished, stop and save the recording.

Video Recording & Audio Recording

The Camera Video recording options are simple. The main options to concern yourself with are the Video Input and Audio Input, as they need to be properly configured in order to record video. If you have a default webcam and microphone installed, they should be selected by the program automatically, so you likely won’t have to configure anything at all.

You can also mess with the duration in order to limit the length of the video. The Audio Settings tab only has one option available, and that’s adjustment of the volume.

Audio recording is also simple. You must select your input device, and you can set a length limit. The Audio Settings Tab also lets you adjust the Sample Frequency and the MP3 Encoding Rate. Choosing a higher encoding rate will improve audio quality, but will increase file size. The default option of 128 bit/s is fine for recording a podcast, particularly if you don’t have a great microphone.

Conclusion

SMRecorder is a great piece of free recording software. It’s very lightweight, so it should have no problem running on computers with limited processing power, and its ability to record desktop video is excellent. I can see myself using this to record video tutorials in the future – but what would you do with it?  Let us know in the comments.

The new Skype release brings 2 major new features to the platform.

Facebook Integration

Skype brings this into their app in 2 major ways — the Facebook timeline now appears in your main Skype window. This is the basic timeline that shows up on your facebook page:

It also brings your Facebook contact list into Skype, giving you access to everyone (who has allowed it) from Facebook.

Group video beta

Skype video chat used to be one-on-one only with no way to bring other participants in. With 5.0, Skype increases this to 5 maximum video chat users. I could really see this being popular with family groups for keeping in touch over long distances. I’ve known many grandparents who just go crazy about Skype after learning it can connect them with their children and grandchildren scattered all over the world.

The group video feature is free while in beta although Skype has hinted that this might be a pay function in the future. It uses the H.264 video codec, licensed from SPIRIT, which might be why they may charge for its use when it leaves beta.

Skype has also released some other features along with version 5.0. For the full list, read here. A summary:

• Skype Home Dashboard
• Contact List Integration with Facebook
• Offline instant messaging
• New contact search and improved contact adding
• Enhanced call quality experience
• User interface refresh

Skype will now automatically reconnect if a call is dropped due to connectivity or network slowness. This should help users have ‘seamless’ conversations with each other. The offline messaging is also a nice feature to have. It will leave a message for your contacts who may not be online. Once they log back in, the message is displayed to them.

Depending on what topic your blog covers, there is a lot of potential when it comes to autoblogging. When I refer to autoblogging, I don’t mean just adding external RSS feeds to your blog. I’m talking about cool stuff – like having your mobile phone automatically update your blog periodically with your GPS coordinates, or having your computer automatically update your blog with the most recent 24 hours of your computer activity. Or how about having a webcam snapshots automatically posting to your blog whenever something new happens?

It’s that last autoblogging feature that I’d like to describe how you can accomplish in this article. To accomplish the task, you’re going to make use of two applications that I’ve reviewed before here at MakeUseOf.

The first is the Active Webcam app that I used in developing a home security system. The second is the WordPress Postie plugin that lets you send email posts to your blog. By tying the two together, you’re going to build your own automatic webcam blogging system.

Setting Up Active Webcam

The first step of getting your webcam snapshots to post on your blog automatically is to download and install Active Webcam. The software will need to be installed on any computers that are connected to the webcam, unless you’re using a network IP webcam where it’s shared out to the whole network. Once you open Active Webcam, just click File -> New Camera, and select the type of webcam you want to set up.

For this example, I’m using a public webcam that’s streaming from a California engineering school. You could easily incorporate public webcams into your automatic blog updates if you like – be creative and use content from wherever you can find it, whether it’s your own webcam or streams from public ones.

Here’s the active webcam. You can add as many as you like and name them however you want them to show up in your blog entries. Once you’re done adding webcams, you’re ready to configure the software to issue blog entries by sending out email updates. You do this by configuring the Motion Detection area in Settings -> Motion Detection.

You aren’t actually going to use motion detection, you’re going to configure the schedule to capture camera updates at regular intervals. But first, click on “Send Email” and then click the “Email Settings” button. This is where you will actually create the post entry that will get sent to your blog.

There are a few important things to note here. Whatever email address you choose to use as the “sender”, make note of it because you’ll need it later. For “Recipient” make sure that it’s a unique email address that you aren’t using for anything else except this. If you need to, create a new, free email account. Set up the SMTP server settings with your correct settings.

The “Subject” that you type in will be the title of your post and the “Message” will be your blog entry. There are certain variables you can insert, like {Camera} for the camera number, or the current date and time. This is nice because it lets you create a dynamic blog entry. Also, make sure your blog entry starts with “:start” and ends with “:end”. This will ensure that the Postie plugin posts the entry correctly.

Finally, go into Tools -> Scheduler, and click “Enable Scheduler.”  You can set up the software to “check in” to the webcam at certain times, and if there’s any motion, it’ll go ahead and send the email that you’ve configured. Your automated blogging webcam is now set up!

Set Up Postie to Publish the Webcam Blog Update

The final step is to configure the Postie plugin to accept your webcam’s blog entry and publish it. Once you download the Postie WordPress plugin, follow the instructions in the Postie article to set it up for posting to the blog.

It’s pretty straightforward, but the important part is that the “sender” email you configured in Active Webcam needs to be an approved sender in your Postie settings. Additionally, the Recipient should be the Postie email address.

Here is the Postie plugin processing an incoming post from one of the webcam updates.

And here is what the automated webcam blog update looks like after getting published to the blog.

You can play around a little bit with the variables. This is an awesome way to update your readers with real-time information from any location in the world. Show them haunted locations, famous landmarks – any public webcam that you discover, or any that you set up, you can use to post status updates with image snapshots to your blog – and you don’t have a lift a single finger to do it.

Can you think of any cool uses for your own webcam-powered blog entries? Share your creativity in the comments section below.

Image credit: Quentin Houyoux

There are a lot of free online webcams out there that are good at being interesting.  For instance, check out the article about the best free webcams to watch when you are bored.  As you can see, many webcams are very interesting to watch, for some reason.

On the other side of the equation, some webcams just make us stop and wonder what people were thinking of when they set them up.  Check out some of them most boring webcams on the net.

Watch Paint Peel

Watch paint peel?  Like I said, sometimes I don’t know what people are thinking.  People watch it though.  I wonder how long someone has to watch this one before they get some kind of on screen action.  As for me and my house, we will keep the peeling to ourselves.

Watch Grass Grow

Seriously?  People actually go through the bother to set up cameras to watch their grass grow?  And they expect people to watch?  I know we’ve all had days when we didn’t feel up to doing much more than watching grass grow but come on!  From the person who mows the grass around this house, let’s find a cam where we can watch grass NOT grow.  Now that would be a feat.

Watch The Traffic

Did you know that you can actually log on and watch traffic cameras?  I can look out my window if I want to watch traffic – and the frame rate is even better.  On this site you have a map marking off all of the traffic cams you can look at.  Many hours of joyous fun can be spent here, I’m sure of it.

Watch Cheese

OK, the cheddarvision makes watching paint peel interesting.  Normally watching food would make me hungry but for some reason not in this case.  The only redeeming part to this is that they have also recorded a 12-month time lapse video of the whole thing.  I guess that makes it all OK.

Watch A Garden

What can be more interesting than watching grass grow?  Watching a whole garden grow, of course.  The frame rate is good and the plants look nice, but what’s the point?  Sure, it’s fun watching the plants flowing in the breeze but I can do that in my own back yard.

One cool part is that you can make their bubble machine blow bubbles.  Not sure why you’d want to but have fun with it.

OK, so you’d have to be pretty bored to want to check some of these free online webcams out.  I don’t know, maybe it’s the level of boring-ness that makes them irresistible to take a peek at.  Check them out, tell us what you think and share some more boring webcams in the comments.