Detect motion (activity)

Using an XO for animal motion detection.

Positioning

Position the XO in a location that will see movement by animals, such as a bird bath, bird nest, or mouse hole. For example, this B1 XO was set in ebook mode and suspended from hooks:

Try to avoid positions with grass or vegetation that may move in the wind, otherwise you'll get pictures of the grass moving.

Software

Not yet packaged for the XO, but a binary package is available, which was built from CVS including the new V4L2 API provided by the XO camera kernel module.

• open a root shell on the XO
• download the binary package

# cd /tmp
# wget http://dev.laptop.org/~quozl/motion-2007-03-05.tar.bz2

• unpack it

# cd /
# tar xfj /tmp/motion-2007-03-05.tar.bz2
# cd /motion
# rm /tmp/motion-2007-03-05.tar.bz2

• edit the motion.conf configuration file according to the documentation at http://www.lavrsen.dk/twiki/bin/view/Motion/ConfigFileOptions ... you may wish to use the full frame size:

width 640
height 480

• start the motion detector

# ./go

• if you change motion.conf while motion is running, send it a SIGHUP so it will reread the file

# killall -HUP motion

• access the webcam view in a web browser, using a URL composed from the IP address or host name, followed by port 8081, for example http://example-xo-1.laptop.org:8081/

Examples

• http://dev.laptop.org/~quozl/2007-04-09/ mice in a house
• http://dev.laptop.org/~quozl/2007-05-15-critter-detection/images.html birds bathing