This page is intended for all the technology geeks out there cause I know they will be interested in some of this stuff. Before launching into that I would just like to acknowledge a few people and say thanks.

Acknowledgements:

I will attempt to break the system down into logical units. These are as follows:

Camera(s)

Originally I wanted to use wireless cameras as this would be the least painful and my wife wouldnt have wanted wires all over the house. So I bought two types of camera from simply automate they were the high quality wireless camera (DG380P) and a professional driveway camera (WS380AC).

Now these were very good, even exceptional for their price but every now and then I would get interference from somewhere, which I couldnt track down. So decided to go for a wired camera and then use a wireless network to transfer the pictures around the house. I opted for the Sony night and day camera (SonyND).

This is a superb camera the picture quality was much better than the wireless cameras, but the price reflects that, plus its wired. The quality difference can be seen below.

They are also all night vision cameras and the night and day camera ranks top in this category because it turns the picture black and white when not enough light and has a ring of infra red lights around the lense, enhancing the picture as though its not dark at all. The wireless cameras were ok but nothing like the night and day camera.

Just a quick note on the colours, sometimes the colouring isnt that perfect, I dont believe this is the camera. This (I believe) is happening because of the mixture of the capture card and the software I run and the different changing lights in the room, not the camera's.

Internal Server(s)

Basically there are 3 boxes involved in the setup. 2 mini-itx boxes which act as the webcam servers and 1 main server box which prepares all the files and uploads to the webserver.

The mini-itx boxes run Linux Redhat 8.0, with the open source project motion (http://motion.sourceforge.net). This is a fabulous piece of software. It can run multiple cards, multiple cameras and is free. I run version 3.0.5.

The main server also runs Redhat 8.0 and uses the imagemagick software (http://www.imagemagick.org) to manipulate the jpeg photo files. The files are then ftp'ed to the webserver run by the isp. I use lftp which is a utility supplied free with Redhat.

Network

As mentioned before I use a mixture of wired and wireless lan hardware around the house. Wired within my study and wireless for the rest of the house (no unsightly wires). I have a Netgear ME102 access point talking to a Netgear MA101 usb device on the mini-itx boxes. I had to use the atmel linux driver (http://atmelwlandriver.sourceforge.net) for this device to work. It works well with encryption on or off. The only problem I have found is the range in my house. The walls have sand in them for sound proofing and the range is servely cut down, so I have bought a DLink AP900+ as a repeater (really because Netgear dont make such a product and didnt want two ME102 sitting back to back in the hallway). Now this seems to be ok, had quite a bit of pain getting it to work with the Netgear stuff and doesnt seem to work with encryption on, but to be fair the DLink site does state that it wont work with other manufacturers products in repeater mode. Well it does (although I cant get it to work with WEP enabled). The other thing I found about this repeater is that it stops working after about 24 hours use and have to turn it off and on again. I think mine may be faulty so will be sending it back so if you see the pictures stop it is probably because of this device.

The files are then transfered over broadband to the ISP's machine. I use the Alcatel Speedtouch PCI card under Linux Redhat 7.2 to connect to the ISP. If your looking for a driver for this card under Linux my pal Scott (page with link on it) has it.

Webserver

The webserver is Microsoft Windows Server 2003 and is run through the provider InToTheNet they were exceptionally helpful and would just like to mention Alex who works for them, he really went out of his way to help. I found them by accident really cause my broadband supplier Eclipse Internet was completely the other way very unhelpful and didnt have the components that I needed to host wheresscruffy.com, they are great as a broadband supplier but not at hosting.

The components are asp, xml and xsl that reside on the webserver.

And Finally

If you are looking to do something similar and you need some help then please contact me, or if you are just curious then please email us.

I am willing to answer any questions you may have. Or perhaps my company could do some consultancy / write a system for you, although this is not really what we specialise in. Just fancied doing something different, which was the real motivation behind this site.