Make better use of your IP cam
Posted: Sat Dec 19, 2015 11:14 am
I got a Foscam IP cam clone. It's a PTZ cam of about 30,-. It was standing on a high cupboard in the living room and was only in use as a surveillance camera when the alarm was on. But there is more possible with cam's like these then just collecting dust.
For example use it as an array of motion detectors. It's possible to divide the image the camera sees into different areas and to give each area it's own 'weight' when to trigger an event. I know this is possible with software like Blue Iris but that is a really heavy piece of software.
I found something different to use and it's working flawless for months now.
I use this little gem ContaCam for it. It's a light weigth program that only take 6% CPU on my Atom 1.6Ghz PC running HS. It can find your cam over IP so when it is in your netwerk it can connect to it and it can monitor more then one cam at a time. I configured it so that when it detect movement in a area a device in HS will be set ON and an event in HS handle the rest. In my case that is turning the music on only when the TV isn't on.
How it use it.
When ContaCam detects movement it starts a batch file and passes the parameter Woonkamer
This batch file contains this line
The batch file starts a .vbs file that updates HS
For example use it as an array of motion detectors. It's possible to divide the image the camera sees into different areas and to give each area it's own 'weight' when to trigger an event. I know this is possible with software like Blue Iris but that is a really heavy piece of software.
I found something different to use and it's working flawless for months now.
I use this little gem ContaCam for it. It's a light weigth program that only take 6% CPU on my Atom 1.6Ghz PC running HS. It can find your cam over IP so when it is in your netwerk it can connect to it and it can monitor more then one cam at a time. I configured it so that when it detect movement in a area a device in HS will be set ON and an event in HS handle the rest. In my case that is turning the music on only when the TV isn't on.
How it use it.
When ContaCam detects movement it starts a batch file and passes the parameter Woonkamer
This batch file contains this line
Code: Select all
wscript "C:\Program Files\HomeSeer HSPRO\Scripts\AZ_DoCamMotion.vbs" %1
Code: Select all
' Respond to motion detected with camera
Dim Debug
Dim strLogfileTitle
Debug = 1
strLogfileTitle = "<b>AZ_DoCamMotion</b>"
Dim hsi
Dim hs
Dim rval
set hsi = createobject("HomeSeer2.application")
hsi.SetHost "localhost"
rval = hsi.Connect("default","default")
if rval <> "" then
'wscript.echo "Connection failed"
end if
set hs = hsi.GetHSRef
Dim argument
argument = Ucase( WScript.Arguments.Item(0) )
If Debug = 1 Then hs.WriteLog strLogfileTitle, "Motion detected in " & argument
If argument = "WOONKAMER" then
hs.ExecX10 "B17","ON"
end if