Time Lapse VR from PC

[jimandy]

Anyone know of a source of circuits or construction notes for turning an old PC into a time lapse recorder for cheap? Yes I know there’s software out there but it’s usually for a pretty high powered machine running an advanced OS with a whiz banger video capture card. But it doesn’t take high-def to identify the kids who keeps stealing our American flag and trashing our neighbor’s mail box. Seems like it would be a great way to re-purpose some of those old PC dinosaurs that end up in thrift shops.

[hp]

You will still need a capture card with a camera or a webcam. The PC would also have to be one that is at least a pentium due to the fact that most webcams and capture cards require usb or a pci slot.<p>There is alot of freeware software on the web that take snap shots in intervals that you can set. All you would need to do is look through all the images that the program takes to find a picture of the kids.<p>A picture is worth a thousand words. And in this case, it should be enough.<p>Harrison

[jwax]

Cool application, jimandy!
I bought a used ATI video capture/TV tuner card on ebay for $16, add another $15 for cables, and my old 300 MHz AMD does video!

[dr_when]

I have used Gotcha (from Prescient systems) that is motion/time lapse software that ran fine on a 100mhz 486 PC. I had a PCI capture card from Winnov systems and used it with an inexpensive color composite-video camera from X-10. Camera's are dirt cheap (<$40.00) and the Gotcha software was about $50 and the capture card about $100. I used it to capture driving into my backyard driveway while I was at work.<p>"Gotcha" was nice because you could not only set all the parameters like frame rate, etc. but could also set the detection level and "mask" out things like moving tree branches, etc. Additionally I could have Gotcha send me emailphotos/video when there was an intrusion. Also time stamps everything. I also used a similar setup to catch people lurking in my "cube" at work. FUN!!!!<p>Bob

[dyarker]

Resolution starts at the camera. The greatest capture card made won't help you ID the kids if you use a lo res web cam.<p>Cheers,

[jimandy]

Great suggestions! <p>Also, I have been told there is a small TLR on the market that uses a flash card for storage. It loops back over previous frames on a 24 hour cycle so never "fills up". As long as you realize an intrusion or theft has occurred within a day of it hapening you can take the flash card out, keep it as evidence, and put in a 2nd card to keep surveillance going.