Tip #2943 - CatSpy
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CatSpy
Web cams have been
a very popular item for us in our online store over the past year or so.
People just seem to really love them. The thought of video conferencing
with friends and family over the Internet for free or even just capturing
some video or still shots is all very fun and exciting. Well, I think
they are a blast as well. You can really have a lot of fun with them and
with this week's free download, we are going to tap into some more of
the versatile Web cam attributes.
Web cams, as you may
have noticed, are popping up all over. They are a great and inexpensive
way to keep your eyes on things while you are away. With CatSpy (the download),
you can take your Web cam and turn it into a motion detecting surveillance
camera. That’s right, you heard me correctly. This thing is great.
I have been playing with this software all morning, just running it through
its paces and pushing it to the limit so to speak; and I have nothing
but good things to report.
Basically, with CatSpy,
you can turn any Web cam into a surveillance camera that will
sit idle until motion is detected, where by, it will spring to life and
start recording (per your settings). When the capture/surveillance is
finished, CatSpy automatically saves all the video to a folder in your
My Documents, My Videos folder for any later use. You're not limited to
one camera either. Say you have two or three cameras lying around. Well,
just hook them up and CatSpy will take care of all of them for you. All
you have to do is basically open up another surveillance window, point
to the new camera;, make the changes to the settings if you need to and
you're good to go. You can connect as many cameras up to your PC as you
want, but this is something that possibly will affect the performance
of your computer and it may cause problems. This is especially true in
older, less powerful computers, so do keep that in mind.
I will list the system
requirements to CatSpy at the end of this article, but first, let's take
a look at the wonderful features CatSpy has.
Features:
CatSpy has been designed
to meet some general purposes:
- Be as fast as possible.
- Be as lean as possible.
It uses a standard
GUI interface
without any customization to spare. The system resources for the real
task are capture video and detect motion in it.
General
- Multiple settings
files with different camera setup, which can be opened simultaneously.
- Multiple cameras
per settings file.
- Notification window
with all interesting events in one place.
- Adjustable video
capture path.
- Auto start detection
on settings file open.
- Unattended mode,
disabling all error dialogues.
- Specify video size,
frames per seconds, video mode and tuner related settings for TV cards.
Motion Detection
- Adjustable gray
level.
- Erosion algorithm
to remove the noise from the cameras. The algorithm can be processed
a number of times.
- Adjustable number
of pixels, which must have changed to detect a motion.
- Minimum motion
time delay.
- Coded using Intel
MMX-assembly instructions to be as fast as possible.
Time Schedules
- Create individual
schedules for each settings file.
- Use one schedule
with more than one camera (so define once and reference it in the camera).
- Schedule rules
can contain the day of week, the time, the day, the month and the year.
- Makes it possible
to create rules like: "Let the camera be active Monday through
Friday from 17:00 until 6:00 and Saturday and Sunday the whole day."
Active Area
- This feature enables
you to create individual masks for each camera, excluding unwanted image
areas from the motion detection.
- Really "paint"
the mask with tools like Rectangle, Fill, Circle and Line.
- Zoom capabilities
in the Mask Editor.
Video Capture
- Supports all
DirectX 9 compatible video devices.
- Respond to special
events, such as "disk full" during recording.
- Support on-the-fly
registration and removal of plug-and-play devices.
- Preview window
with motion view, frames-per-second-counter and different pixel counter.
- Date/Time stamp
and camera name recorded to the video.
- Selectable compressor
that will be used to compress the videos while capturing.
- Pre-Event-Recording,
adjustable time frame.
- Using WMV and AVI
file formats for saving the recorded videos
System Requirements:
Hardware
- 256 MB RAM (depends
on the operating system, the number of cameras, the size of the pre-motion-buffer,
etc).
- 600 MHz Pentium-Class
Processor with MMX.
- DirectX compatible
graphics card.
- DirectX compatible
video grabber card or Web cam.
Software
- Windows ME, Windows
2000 or Windows XP (XP preferred).
- DirectX 9.
- Windows Media 9
codecs.
CatSpy will automatically
install MFC (Microsoft Foundation Classes) and GDI+ in its private application
folder.
One note on
the operating system:
We strongly encourage
you to use Windows XP, because it is the fastest operating system for
this application. Both Windows ME and Windows 2000 lose a lot of processing
time in their kernel modes (we do not know why), so Windows XP is the
best solution.
Please refer to the
Microsoft Web site to download the DirectX
redistributables and the Windows
Media 9 codecs.
This program is great.
I just can’t say enough about it and I didn’t even tell you
the coolest part yet. If you know how to access a remote computer (Remote
Desktop), you can view your surveillance camera and captured video
over the Web. Now, that’s pretty cool! I hope you enjoy CatSpy.
I know I will be using it for some time to come!
You can download CatSpy
here.
~ Chad Stelnicki
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