The camera I grabbed was iHome brand basic webcam for around $15.  Most webcams will work with this system from what I can tell. I literally did no research beforehand, which I do not recommend. I got very lucky that the camera I chose worked without much trouble (which practically NEVER happens for me).  I highly suggest checking to make sure the hardware will work before buying this or any other camera for this application.

The program I am using is called ZoneMinder, which is a fully featured open source CCTV security system .  It was written by someone who had a similar experience to me.  This program allows you to have multiple cameras which can be set to only record when they detect motion, and you can even break the camera images into separate zones of detection. This program can also integrate with X10 hardware to control all sorts of toys.  All of this is hosted on a web server so you can access it from anywhere in the world if you desire. I’m only going to set up something locally to only record if motion is detected.

Again, you want to make sure your  hardware will work with the program, so head over to the ZoneMinder Wiki hardware compatibility list as well as the UVCvideo compatibility list since ZoneMinder can use the UCVvideo drivers for linux.

My camera happened to work with the UCVvideo drivers, so I had to install that first. You can skip this section if you already have a working camera.  To begin with I had to install patchUtils form synaptic. You can do the same with the command below:

sudo apt-get install patchUtils

Then I downloaded and installed the UCVvideo drivers [1 ]

git clone git://linuxtv.org/media_build.git
cd media_build
./build
make install

At this point I kept having a bit of a problem, but I found the answer on another blog. This involved running two commands to actually insert the UCV modules:

sudo depmod -a
modprobe uvcvideo

Everyone will need the following commands to install the dependencies for ZoneMinder. Again, it runs a webserver, so there are a few important dependencies to be installed. Luckily I found a good tutorial to help figure out what all I would need.

sudo apt-get install apache2 php5-mysql libapache2-mod-php5 mysql-server
sudo apt-get install ffmpeg libarchive-tar-perl libarchive-zip-perl libdate-manip-perl libdevice-serialport-perl
sudo apt-get install libjpeg62 libmime-perl libstdc++6 libwww-perl zlib1g

At this point, you *may* need to reboot for Apache to configure correctly. I didn’t, but the author of the tutorial I used did.
Now, finally we can install ZoneMinder itself. I installed it form synaptic, but you can get updated installations form the ZoneMInder website. Otherwise run the following:

sudo apt-get install zoneminder

After installing ZoneMinder, you now need to configure and start Apache:

sudo ln -s /etc/zm/apache.conf /etc/apache2/conf.d/zoneminder.conf
sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 force-reload
sudo adduser www-data video

At this point, open Firefox and go to the ZoneMinder dashboard by visiting

http://localhost/zm

Now before I could Add a new monitor (add my camera to ZoneMInder) I had to use another program to connect my camera to ZoneMinder. I found a good video series that explains the steps for installing and configuring my camera and ZoneMinder.  The program I needed was mjpg_streamer which you can get and install from sourceforge.
Of course to install this, you can just double-click the .deb file and install it as normal.
Now you have to run mjpg_streamer from the commandline using the following command:

mjpg_Streamer -i “input_uvc.so -d /dev/video0 -y -r 640×480 -f” -o “output_http.so -p 8080″

A short explanation here: “-d /dev/video0″  is the device you want to use. To find out which device your camera is, enter “ls /dev/video*” into the terminal. If you only have one camera, then it will pop up as the only result. Use that address. -y stands for YUYV format MPEG files. “-r 640×480″ attempts to set the resolution. My camera technically supports this resolution, however, that is if you have the correct drivers, which I do not. The -o “output_http.so -p 8080″ means that you are going to stream the video feed to port 8080 on this machine.

Additionally, you can add the flag “-b” to this command to run it in the background. If you do this, you have to manually kill mjpg_streamer when you want to close it.

killall mjpg_streamer

If you didn’t get any errors, we can check to see if the video is streaming correctly. Open a new tab in Firefox and go to

http://localhost:8080/?action=stream

If you see video, then it is working. If not, go back and double-check you’ve followed all my instructions correctly. If that doesn’t solve your problem, post on the ZoneMInder or UVC forums. I honestly do not know enough to be able to troubleshoot any more than I am explaining in this guide.

So now that your camera is streaming video, we can connect it to ZoneMinder (FINALLY!) So, go back to the ZoneMinder dashboard in your Firefox browser ( http://localhost/zm ) and click “Add New Monitor”. A window will pop up that looks like this make your values match the ones seen in this image):

Name this monitor whatever you like (no spaces or special characters), change the “Source Type” to “Remote”, change the function to Modect, check “enabled”  then click the “Source” tab. This window should look like this, expect with blank textbooks:

Fill in the textbooks as I have in the example image above. Basically, you are telling ZoneMinder where to find the streaming video. The “remote Host Name” should be “localhost” since you are using the same machine. Port should be the same value as what you used in the mjpg_streamer command above (8080). The “Remote Host Path” is everything after the backslash form the web address we used to test the camera above “?action=stream”.  Now notice the Capture Width and Height is different from what the mjpg_streamer command was.  This was an issue with my camera. It could not handle the 620×480 resolution and it defaulted to what is seen here. Be sure that the resolution in these boxes matches the resolution of your video stream. You can check this by looking at the page title of the webpage we used to test the camera “http://localhost:8080/?action=stream” It should read something like “(JPEG Image, 320×240 pixels) – Mozilla Firefox”. Those are the values you should use here. Click “Save” when you are finished editing these settings.

That popup should close and the ZoneMinder dashboard should refresh. If everything is working correctly, your new monitor should have been added. If the text “localhost” under the “Source”  column is red, then you have a problem and need to make sure your settings are correct, and that mjpg_streamer is running. Otherwise, the text should be green.  Click the motor name to open a live view your new security camera.

With the current settings, it will only record an event if it detects motion. When this happens, the dashboard of ZoneMinder will add numbers in the “Events” column. Click this number to view the event. (Click “Refresh” on the dashboard if it doesn’t update those columns fast enough for you). This will now play back the video of the specific event. The window below shows an example of what an event would look like.

That is it! We are finished. Now I have a smart motion triggered security cam that will archive footage if anyone goes near our cars. Your mileage may vary of course depending on the cameras, lighting, etc. of your particular situation. I was surprised how easy all of this actually was! I’m going to play around with this a bit more and see if I can make it a full fledged security system for our house.

If you have had success with this, please post a comment and tell us about it.

The next step was to create the payload box. The professor had done this before so he gave us tips on using foam core poster board, hot glue and HVAC tape. We chose to cover ours in mylar by applying a spray adhesive to the surface, then laying a sheet of mylar on it, and using credit cards to squeegee it flat as best as possible. The mylar was applied to the insides of the box before gluing, and the outside afterward.

The inside was filled with a medium density foam from a second hand art store (the scrap Exchange in Durham is AMAZING!).  The GPS was velcroed to the top of the box. A hole was cut on both the inside and outside of the box in the mylar just where the GPS was so it could receive signal.

The launch was Saturday May 22nd at 12:40pm. There were scattered showers and a thunderstorm. Just before the launch, 5 “hot hands” packs were thrown in the center of the box, foam was added, and the box was taped up for launch.

The Carolina Edge of Space guys had their GPS/HAM radio setup sending APRS tracking data. All the payloads got a HOBO Data logger with internal and external temperature readings. There were 3 cameras in total.

We launched at 12:40pm, just as the rain turned to drizzle.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VUTKn0rQM5g]

Since we launched in the drizzle, and just before a thunderhead hit, all of our cameras got wet and subsequently froze upon entering the lower temperatures of the stratosphere. All the cameras eventually stopped working, The one in our box stopped just inside the cloud. The other two stopped just after passing the cloud top, looking face first at the thunderhead. You can just see the beginning of the blackness of space behind the cloud. View the entire Flickr set here!

The arduino payload didn’t record data either. Just before launch I tested to make sure it was recording data, and it was. however, a last minute addition of a second parallel battery pack may have overloaded the already hot 5V voltage regulator. It seems that just as I connected the last battery, the entire circuit shut off and on due to an internal thermal overload switch in the voltage regulator. I didn’t notice this because as it was toggling, I saw the “reset” light flashing on the arduino. This LED is also connected to the SD card data line, so it looked exactly as if the SD card was being written to.

The only data that was recovered was of the data logger in our payload.  The internal temperature stayed a toasty 130 degrees F (which added to the problem of why we got no data.) The external temp showed a very good profile of the balloon punching through the tropopause before plumeting back to earth.

External Temperature

Overall, the balloon went 74,642ft. before the balloon popped. It flew across two counties and the state line before landing.  I exported the APRS data to a Google Earth KMZ File.

Google Earth export of the APRS data

It happened to land in the yard of a man who worked in the photo lab at NASA during the 60s and 70s. He told us some of the stories from their lab, and showed us large prints of iconic photos he had developed. One in particular was of a lunar earth rise!

A second launch was planned for Fall of 2010. Luckily it faired better than this launch. I’ll post the vids and pics of that adventure soon.

Working with a professor at my college and Carolina Edge of Space in May of 2010 I, along with a small group of friends, sent a weather balloon 74,642 feet into the sky.  This post is mainly about the payload I designed, built and tested for the project.

This project was inspired by many seen recently online where students have been sending cheap payloads into the stratosphere. It started around December 2009 when we all met for the first time to discuss the project. It turns out that one of the professors in the Earth Sciences department focuses on remote sensing (gathering data about earth from satellites, etc.) who had done some weather balloon projects in the past. We all got together to discuss a possible launch.

Originally, the group included a lot of people, however, as time went on, fewer and fewer people showed up at the meetings or participated in the email conversations. There would be several payloads. Carolina Edge of Space would have a GPS tracking radio, the professor hosting this would carry two cameras in a payload with a HOBO data logger, one Grad student would build an “ash detector” and my group would build something to take a multitude of measurements.

First the payload sensor were picked out. Of course we wanted pictures. The professor provided us with Nikon Coolpix digital cameras and 2GD SD cards. These were chosen because they have a built in intervalometer and were very small. I tested the camera in my freezer (which gets down to -20 degrees Celsius (-40F) and usually got about 2 full hours of pictures every 30 seconds before the battery died. this was plenty as we expected about a 2 or 3 hour flight. Turning off the flash and increasing the time between pictures helped extend the life of the battery.

As for the custom payload, we wanted a barometer to see the change in air pressure, accelerometers to see how hard the payload would be whipped around in the winds, some ozone sensors and such to measure concentrations, a GPS so we would have a good clock as well Latitude, longitude and altitude. What seemed like a great custom embedded systems project turned into a simpler Arduino-based project as time and money became an issue.

I tried to get nice ozone sensors, however, everything was way too expensive and none of the companies I contacted were willing to donate to our cause. Then I remembered that I had seen some neat gas sensors at Futurlec, such as ozone sensors, and “air quality” (what ever that is…) that were quite cheap.  I grabbed a couple of each to play around with. I tested the Ozone sensor by placing it inside a bag with a running DC motor. The brushes of the DC motor arc as they move across the sections of the commutator and ionize the air. This effectively produces a bit of ozone (its that almost metallic smell DC motors or high voltage electronics give off.) The graph below shows the results of this test as raw ADC values from an arduino. Here you can download the raw ADC values and graph from this test in Open Document Spreadsheet format.

Testing the Ozone Sensor

I also bought a few different barometric pressure sensors. The one I bought specifically for the weather balloon was hard to use as it was a differential and had to have a known pressure on one side to compare to. It also has two output pins which required an op-amp circuit to output the difference in pressure. Testing proved this was not the easiest sensor to use as I didn’t figure out the best way to seal off one side of the sensor. Instead I settled for a sensor that had a built-in vacuum on one side, and a single output pin, the MPXA6115A . This new pressure sensor would only go down to 15kPa (about 33,000ft I think) but I assumed that if we took external temperature as well, we could correlate it with the pressure up to a point, and when the senor stopped working, we could calculate the pressure based on the temperature data using a barometric formula.

Additionally, we wanted to use a GPS to get altitude data. I’ve been told that some GPS unit manufacturers limit the capabilities of their units to below 60,000 ft and a certain speed for safety reasons but I couldn’t find any info on that for my particular unit, the San Jose Navigation FV-M8 GSP module.

Acceleration was also something we wanted to measure. We used a Sparkfun ADXL300 3 axis accelerometer. Actually it had a 2 axis gyroscope built in as well, but we ran out of analog input pins on the Arduino and wanted to keep this as small and simple as possible, so we left those off.

All data was stored to a 2GB SD card.

I breadboarded the GPS, accelerometer, barometer, and gyroscope package and slapped together a simple SD card interface. The libraries I used were TinyGPS and fat16lib (for SD card use). Weather_Balloon_Code and schematic in case you’d like to build it yourself.

Schematic of the hardware

I flew this in a modified model rocket. I had two flights, one with an E-15-4 engine and the other with an E-30-4 engine. Here’s the Excel file of each of those two launches that show the values and plotted graphs of each flight.

First Flight Raw ADC data and graphs.

Second Flight raw ADC data and Graphs

I’m not sure which one used which engine. Here you can see a graph of the raw ADC pressure sensor values from one of the rocket launches. The air pressure decreases as the rocket altitude increases. You can see the wind and other affects from the rocket  sitting on the launch pad, then then drastic drop in pressure at the launch.  The ramp up on the end of the graph is when the rocket was floating back to the ground under a parachute. Calculations showed it went about 600ft I think.

Barometer data from Rocket test

To calculate the height the rocket went, we simply need to know a few little things about the set-up. (This gets a bit mathy, but not too bad). First, we knoow that the Arduino was set up to use a 5V ADC reference voltage, and it was set to do 10-bit conversions. Knowing that we can calculate the voltage that each raw ADC unit represents.

ADC Voltage / Max number the bits can represent

Formula 1

Formula 2

Multiply this by the lowest barometer reading we got (794 raw ADC units)

Formula 3

This is the voltage that the sensor was outputting. Now we look at the datasheet of the barometer (MPXA6115A) to find a conversion formula from volts to a measure of air pressure kPa.

Formula 4

Solve this for P since we already know the voltage:

Formula5

Now we can convert the kPa into a value we can use in an online Pressure to Altitude calculator such as inches of mercury. (1 kPa = 0.295333727 inches of mercury)

Formula 6

Now inserting this number into the online Pressure to Altitude calculator, we can get a rough altitude above sea level for the rocket, about 1280.6ft (390.3 meters).  This is above Sea-level, not the point that we launched. I happen to know that the height of the ground at the launch site is between 500-700ft  (150-215 meters).  So I subtract the average height (600ft) of the ground from the Altitude calculation I got previously to get:

1280ft – 600ft = Rocket height of about 680 feet.

*Formula graphics provided by this Online LaTeX Equation Editor.

I needed to put my anthropomorphic house theory to the test. (Yes, I had to look up how to spell anthropomorphic.)  For Halloween, I decided to use my house face palette to create a scary face.  Adam and I had different visions for our beauty, so we sketched out our ideas using paint to end our squabble.  Yes we are that anal retentive.  Our ideas were:

Idea 1: White Pointy Teeth with Black Background

Idea 2: White Square Teeth with Black Background

Idea 3: Black Square Teeth

Idea 4: Black Pointy Teeth

Although we thought Idea 1 would likely look the best, we decided to go with Idea 4.  We figured cutting out black teeth would be easier than trying to create a black background.  This is how we did it.

Materials:

• Big Black Garbage Bags
• Permanent Double Sided Tape

Tools:

• Good Quality Scissors

We cut the edges off each garbage bag to create black squares of material.  From there, we cut out isosceles triangle shapes to use as the teeth.  We didn’t measure any sizes, but we did use the square pattern in our garage door to measure sizes.

In the two top windows, we added a pupil to add to the eye effect.  Using the double sided tape, we put up each tooth one at a time.

Because we didn’t officially measure the teeth sizes, the last two teeth had to be cut smaller to make them fit.  We did this to the last two teeth so there wouldn’t be one tooth that was noticeably smaller than the rest. This way the overall visual sizes of the teeth look balanced.

More double sided tape was used on the bottom teeth than the top because we were concerned water or wind might more easily remove these teeth.  The bags had a bit of static cling which also helped them stick to the garage door nicely.

We lost daylight pretty quickly, but I couldn’t help but snap a nighttime shot.  Of course that adds to the drama of our scary faced house!

Here is a daytime shot from the next day.

Overall this was an easy and fun project.  It only took Adam and I less than an hour to complete the entire project, including creating idea sketches in paint.  Can you turn your house into a face?  Send us your results!

Because there is tons of fun in doing-it-yourself, I scoured the internet for diy rug options.  I was pleasantly surprised at all the choices I found.  They really push the boundaries of the the term “rug“.  Because sewing doesn’t agree with me and braiding/crocheting  seems time consuming – these are options I think would be simplest to do.

Plywood Rugs

I discovered my most favorite unexpected rug option at Sugar Bee Crafts -you can make a ‘rug’ out of plywood!  Oh the options for a plywood rug!  You can stain it or paint it (or both).  You can use stencils or tape.  You can make it fit your style. (The vinyl rug below has the same customization options).

At our old place we had a low pile carpet.  Office chairs roll nicely over this carpet.  Our new house’s carpet, not so much.  This plywood rug might just be the ticket for this space!

Vinyl Rugs

The thing I love the most about vinyl rugs is the potential of putting a remnant piece of vinyl to good use.  Based on the tutorials I read, any vinyl will work; however a thicker vinyl is a must.  You can either paint vinyl like Addicted 2 Decorating’s post (pictured below) and Design Dazzle’s post or…

Or you can cover vinyl with fabric like In My Own Style.

I am also in love with Momtastic’s quatrefoil version of a fabric vinyl rug.

Fabric Rugs

Staying on a fabric roll, fabric rugs also have a lot of simple, diy options.  You can simply add a backing and lining to fabric you heart like High-Heeled Foot in the Door’s chevron beaut.

Rugs are not just meant for indoors.  An outdoor burlap rug is featured on ohdeedoh’s how to post. One of the easiest rug options is to update an existing fabric rug with a little paint like Sarah Wandering did here.

Or like A Little Bite of Everything’s Moroccan inspired design here. It is fab and super simple.  The only color painted on was the white for the pattern. LOVE IT!

Roll Up Blind Rug

To add the cherry to this post, the easiest DIY rug I found was Re-nest’s idea of converting a roll up blind to a floor covering.  Very chic!

So which rug am I going to make?  Right now I want to make them ALL!  They are added to my ever growing home to do list…

• Tip: Plan out your drawing and practice it first.

20 seconds is not as long as it seems.  If you are planning to draw an elaborate picture or write out a few words – you will quickly run into obstacles.  Time and space are the limiting factors, so plan accordingly.  It embarrassingly took me a few  trials to get the letter “S” orientated in the right direction.

• Tip: Work with a partner!

Divide and conquer is the idea.  I decided to write the word “Sheek” at the top of the picture space and Adam decided to write the word “Geek” at the bottom.

• Tip: Use a very dark space.

The two above “SheekGeek” pictures are the result of ambient light infiltrating our photos.  After cutting off all lights in the area, the resulting backgrounds were much darker.  Changing F stop and ISO settigngs can also help.

• Tip: Use different color LEDs.

The red and blue pictures are the result of using an LED that blinks red and blue.  Other colors can be combined to create really creative designs.

It was great amusement to create these pictures.  I encourage you try this project out.  Provided you already have the materials needed, view it as a couple of free hours of entertainment ;0).

Materials:

• 1 Old Dome Chair Frame
• 2 Pieces of PVC Pipe (to serve as a base for making a seat)
• Less than 1 roll of Nashua 357 Duct Tape
• Scissors

This is the dome chair I used for this project.

The first thing I did was make the seat.  I wrapped the duct tape around the PVC pipe three times to add strength.

Next I positioned the seat into the dome chair and attached it to the front of the chair.  Adam helped and having two sets of hands really helped hold each part in place.

Then I attached the seat to the back of the chair.  To ensure comfort, I made sure the seat hung down in the back.

The chair didn’t feel sturdy enough, so more braces of tape were added.

The seat of the chair wasn’t very comfortable at this point, so more tape was added to help distribute weight.

I went through and folded tape over all of the edges.  This eliminated all the sticky tape goo feeling.

The chair is complete!  It holds my weight easily (see my proof below).  It does need a pillow if you want to lay your head down – but overall the chair works just fine.  I did attempt to reuse packing material (bubble wrap, in fact) to make a permanent pillow, but Adam said it looked too junky so I decided to stick with an “old fashioned” pillow :0).

If you have been wanting to create a duct tape project I say go for it!  This project was quick, easy, cheap, and FUN!

A couple of years ago when I wrote for Hackaday I did an article about the Hacker’s Soldering Station. Since then, that station became too bulky and impractical for my office.  I needed something that was easier to move, or possibly break down to take up less space.  I looked around at what I had on hand and slapped together this quick fix that is the perfect solution for my needs.

For parts, I gathers a bunch of scrap 3/4″ PVC pipe and pipe connectors, a 24″ long fluorescent lamp (actually recycled for the hacker’s soldering station project), two screws and some zip ties.

The first thing I did was to gather and arrange my parts.  Once you are sure how you want the thing to work, then cut all the pieces to length.  The pic below shows that I had to splice together a few smaller pieces to math the length of the lamp.  be sure to leave enough room for the power cable for the lamp (the extra length of pipe on the right-hand side in this pic).  Mark where the screw holes need to be with a permanent marker.

Using one of mankind’s greatest inventions, the step drill, drill out a hole large  enough for one end of the power cable of the fluorescent lamp to fit through into one of the 90 degree L bends.

Again, using the step drill,drill a small starter hole in each of the PVC pipes you marked for the screw holes.

Make the two side supporting bars by making two T shapes.  The longest pieces of PVC should be the center support of the T.

Now put it all together and feed the power cable through the pipe. put the screws in the screw holes and place and hang the lamp on them. I added some zip ties to make sure it didn’t fall off while I’m working under it.  Here you can see the extra piece I added on the bottom, back left.  I added this for extra support since that side is closest to the edge of the table.

Since there is no glue involved in this project, it can easily break down, but an added bonus to this design is that you can spin the pole the light is attached to.  This allows you to direct it where ever you need it, and add some indirect lighting if you need it.

That’s it for a handy tip on one way to reuse lemon juice containers.  Have fun and send in pictures or links to videos of your results.

It might not be well known to you guys, but I love PVC. It is the perfect medium in many cases for all sorts of neat furniture and DIY projects. Anyway, let’s get started. While searching for a design, I stumbled across this great site that uses a PVC stand to hold up photography backdrops. This is the perfect design! In fact, that is what our banner holder will double as when Jessi wants to take pictures.

To start, we held the banner up on a wall at about the height we wanted the final product to be. We measured the height from the ground to the top of the banner. This was about 6 foot 3 inches. We then measured the banner we expected to hold up. It was 97 inches long (8 foot 1 inch) by 24 inches wide. With this in mind, we added a couple of inches to each of the measurements and calculated the lengths of PVC we were going to use. The final measurements are shown in the sketchup screenshot below or feel free to download the sketchup file from the 3D Warehouse.

Click the pic above for a screenshot with the measurements.

Luckily I had a bunch of 3/4″ diameter PVC fittings lying around from a previous project so we decided on using them. This lead us to choosing 3/4″ PVC as our building material. To hold the banner up, we used a combination of small rope and S-hooks. these together cost somewhere around $4.00. I had to bend the S-hooks a bit because I wanted something that would stay on the PVC and I could just hang the banner on once everything was set up.

Enough chatting, here’s the pics:

We used about 4.5 pieces of 10-foot 3/4″ PVC.  It only cost about $8.00. Simply cut these to length using a PVC cutting tool or do what we did and use a dollar store hacksaw. Both tools work well.

We made fine adjustments to the measurements as we went to make the banner look better.  I recommend doing this for your own project.  Also, if you are unsure, always cut longer pieces than you need by a couple inches.  You can always shorten them up, but you can never make them longer if you cut them too short.

After everything is cut to length, simply put it all together. Below are the knots I used to hand the S-hooks.

Left shows the front and the right pic shows the back of the center post.

The left pic here shows the top corner and the right pic shows the bottom.  Notice the gap on the bottom between the banner and the lower PVC pipe.  This is a result of an extra inch or so when I cut. I left this here in case I eventually tie up the banner with rope alone or it becomes loose it will still look nice.

The finished product!  the next step from here will be to design and build a over the shoulder carrying bag for all the pieces out of ripstop material.