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. Though it is possible to configure the detector to deal with them.

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