About:
      Here we have yet another one of my camera projects. This is probably one of my smallest ones, in fact, this one is so small it
uses standard RC servos to manipulate the x and y axes. The actual camera itself is a Logitech USB Quick Cam, normally $70
because of its high resolution and fast refresh rate, but I bought it on Black Friday for only 9. In short, this sentinel is
just a remote controlled web cam utilizing a pic processor to recognize and execute commands.
      The inspiration for its construction actually came from work. Theres nothing more I cant stand than when someone borrows
something from your cube while your out of the office. They never leave any notes saying who they are or what they took. Well
no more! With this not only can I see who walked in, but also when. Also, since it can be remotely operated, I can see if anything
interesting is going on while Im out.






Features:
      * 100 degrees of freedom on the Y axis
      * 360 degrees of freedom on the X axis
      * Evil Blinking LED
      * Spot Light
      * 90 db Attention Siren







Communications:
      This device is controlled using a point to point serial connection, specifically, RS-232. Im using a standard stream: 8 data bits,
1 stop bit, no parody, and a baud of 2400bps. On the sending side of things, the data cable only needs to connect to the computers
serial port at pins 3 for transmit and 5 for ground. On the receiving side, the data cable connects directly to the sentinels
onboard pic at pin PortC-7 where I declared it to be the Serial-Receive (UART in). The pic is running a very simple program so it
wasnt necessary to program the UART to receive using interrupts, instead it just polls the receive buffer for changes once every 0.1ms.






Control Base:
      The control base for this unit could be any computer with a USB port and a serial port. So currently the sentinel is using this old
power server, which is basically just a tiny little computer specifically used for power monitoring. It has all the ports a normal
computer has, including an Ethernet connection and IDE. So I put an old HD in it, installed a stripped down version of windows XP,
strapped a power supply to the top (which powers both the power server and the sentinel), and hooked it up to the www. Bam! Now I
can control the sentinel and see what it sees from anywhere in the world! Muhahaha!



Software:
      There are two pieces of software running on the control base. One is for monitoring the video feed and the other is for controlling
the sentinel. For the video I am using what was once a free-ware program called Smart Sentry. Its a tiny little program that
connects to a video source and looks for changes between frames. If any pixels have changed from one frame to the next, it captures
that frame. So if you left the camera running for a week straight, when you return, the generated AVI will only contain movement!
So you dont have hours and hours of nothingness to go through.
      The other program is called, The Krillstation Controller, and obviously I wrote that one. Its a windows program with a GUI that
can connect to the computers serial port to issue the UART packets that command the sentinel.






Program Screen Shots:

Krillstation Controller

Smart Sentry

Additional Pics:

Viewer Comments

Name: km Time: 11:41 AM Date: December 22, 2008 Comment:     Doesn't this have an alarm too? Would be funny to blare the alarm while someone's there =P

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