Spent Sunday with the wife setting up our annual Halloween decorations in the front yard. Came home Monday after work around 5:30 to find them strewn around the lawn. Too many neighbor kids to place place blame. Set them back up. Got home Tuesday and the same thing happened. Tombstones knocked over, stakes pulled out of the ground, etc. etc.
So today I found a program on my laptop that uses the webcam and will start recording when it detects motion. Set it up in the front window during lunch today. We’ll see what it catches.
Hah… you’re too kind.
I would’ve rigged a small explosive charge wrapped with a ziploc full of indelible ink or copier toner*.
Christmas crackers make excellent tripwire pull detonators.
Jus kidd’in, mods, really…
Keep us posted.
*or some other foul substance. You don’t own a dog, by any chance?
I hope you catch whoever did it.
And post it to YouTube.
Dont do this - the culprits would probably just be proud.
Should be getting close to when you can view it - did you catch anyone?
Yeah, but we want to see it. Including the part where the cops and/or the parents bring them over to apologize.
Got home today and…
nothing.
Nothing had been disturbed. I’ll probably set up the camera again tommorow just to be covered.
BTW, can you tell me which program you downloaded?
Thanks,
hh
Definitely do it tomorrow. And the day after. You’re setting the camera up inside and so nobody can see you doing it, right? Hope you catch the little shits.
I’m also curious. I’d like to keep see what my dogs do during the day.
The program came preloaded on my Sony VAIO laptop. It’s called ArcSoft WebCam Companion 3. Looks like it sells for $40 off their website.
It’s pretty slick in that in only records when it detects motion.
All right, cool. I’ve been wanting to record my gay roommate but didn’t know what program to use.
I asked a question about webcam software here last year and got an answer of ustream.tv. I don’t think it does motion sensor type stuff, but we got to watch our dog all day to see what was upsetting him.
But that implies that it’s always watching… :eek:
Be sure to stream his suicide, too.
Regards,
Shodan
Thanks for the idea!
I’ll be sure to give you partial credit, don’t worry.
[del]Not now that I know he’s recording.[/del] They probably moved on to the neighbors for some random reason.
Well yeah, it’s a camera outputting a video signal. Of course it’s always watching. 
The software isn’t actually detecting motion, but rather a change in the video image - it would interpret a light turning on and off as “motion” even though nothing is physically moving.
Does it allow you to designate pixelated grid sections as active or inactive? You might check if you’re getting false positives from windblown branches, passing cars, etc. Sure cuts down on the review time.