The Finished Article (or at least the first release)

So I actually finished the first release a couple of months ago but wanted to have it running for a while so I can be sure it is stable before releasing it.

I have modified the firmware with a startup script (which you can download for viewing here) which checks for scripts to be found on either the associated SMB share or a USB stick on startup; this should allow for the camera to load additional code at boot without the need to revise the firmware constantly. The other advantage is the firmware has very little available space, and there wasn't enough space for the graphics to be stored for the text and volume meters.

The firmware can be found here; as before, whilst it works great for me, your mileage may vary.

The firmware released by Trendnet has been updated due to the security holes found by Console Cowboys - I have a new version of the firmware here.

I have also included the files I have put onto USB sticks on the camera, if you extract the following files (found here) into the root directory of a FAT fomatted memory stick and insert it into the camera it will start the baby camera volume meter on reboot.

The additional files are very conservative with the timings so the camera boot time takes about 1 minute longer. I don't consider this to be an issue as they are rarely restarted.

You can also pop the files on a samba / windows share and connect to it from the camera's interface and it will load the files over the network on reboot - freeing up the USB (although as the network link is torn down when I unload the existing camera module to load my own so it doesn't work for me with my apps)

For visualisation I am using Jogglers from O2. I bought these from the O2 store when they went on firesale for £50 and they are perfect for the job. I have leveraged work done by far smarter folks than me and they are now running Ubuntu 11.04 and I am using VLC to display the video. I added a couple of shortcuts to the desktop so the other half can easily start the video if they are rebooted. We have had them running for about 2 months without a restart so I consider them to be perfectly stable enough for our use (they even survived my typical curse; whenever I go travelling for work it is inevitable that something I have hacked together fails - in this instance they have survived all trips without needing any assistance from me)

The URL's I use for VNC are:

http://admin:admin@nurserycam/cgi/mjpg/mjpg.cgi

- or -

rtsp://nurserycam/mpeg4

you will need to substitute the appropriate hostname for your purposes.


I still have some to-do's which I will get round to shortly and post updates:

Add OpenSSH Server:

This is compiled and tested, I just need to add it to the startup script

Update Busybox

This is compiled and tested, I just need to add it to the startup script

Add USB Temperature Sensor support

This is proving to be tricky, the USB support on the camera seems to be the bare minimum to support storage devices, I can't seem to get generic support working - if anyone out there has any ideas I would be grateful for suggestions

Add 2 way audio / mp3 playback

The little fella finds it easier to sleep with white noise and I would like to be able to fire it off with perhaps a gradual fade out over time to ease him to sleep. This does require adding an external speaker to the camera which is not ideal.

If any of you have any other suggestions, please let me know.

As ever, I welcome your feedback, please let me know your thoughts (good or bad).

Building a baby monitor

We have a baby on the way, and in her infinite wisdom (and knowing my love of hacking around) the other half has requested a baby monitor for the nursery. I have a love of all things gadgetry and decided we needed to be able to view and hear the baby as well as monitor the temperature.

I drew up a short list of the functions needed and then had a look around to see if anything ticks all the boxes.

The requirements are:

1. View and Listen to the baby on devices we already own

• This includes iOS devices such as the iPad, iPhone and Apple TV2
• PC's

2. View and Listen to the baby on a dedicated device (and ideally something else we already own)

• I have an O2 Joggler Picture Frame which I bought for doing other things with - this would be ideal

3. Allow us to view and listen remotely.

• I'm not planning to be a bad parent (honest), but i travel a lot for work do being able to virtually peek my head around the door and check in on the little might would be a bonus.

4.Monitor and alert on events; specifically:

• Temperature
• Noise

5. Be easy to use

• Unlike many of my hacks; it shouldn't require specific knowledge or constant pampering to operate, it should just work.

6. Be family friendly

• We don't want to have a maze of wires and dongles floating around - it needs to be self contained

7. Have a privacy setting.

• The last thing we want is guests to see the good lady breastfeeding before popping the little mite to bed; there needs to be an easy way to turn of the video and audio and for it to automatically restart should we forget to turn it back on
• Ideally, the other monitoring; i.e. temperature and volume should continue to be monitored

With all these requirements in mind I started hunting around for the perfect device. Whilst there are many good baby monitors (some with camera's, screens, temperature monitors etc) available, none of them ticked all the boxes (and to be honest I relished the challenge).

I then started to look around the market for an IP camera which could be modified to meet our requirements. Having had some experience with embedded devices (such as linksys routers, gumstix and pogoplugs) I thought it would be relatively trivial to enhance something out there based on an opensource Linux platform.