Using an iSight with Daydreamer


How to use a local iSIght camera with Daydreamer.

I ended my last entry wondering how to capture a still from the iSight. That problem was solved when I discovered a command line tool called isightcapture. Just download it from Axel Bauer's site, and install it on you computer. If you feel comfortable in the Terminal, you make make a cron entry, using crontab -e, something like

*/5 * * * * /Users/don/Applications/isightcapture /Users/don/Pictures/Daydreamer/iSight.jpg

which, if entered in a user's crontab, will run the command every 5 minutes. Of course you would need to change the path to isightcapture and to the place you want the picture saved according to where you installed isightcapture. It's highly unlikely, for instance, that your user account is don.

Now if this gives you the willies, you can do something similar using Applescript. Open Script Editor and enter the following:

on idle
    do shell script "/Users/don/Applications/isightcapture /Users/don/Pictures/Daydreamer/iSight.jpg"
    return 5 * minutes
end idle

Once again, change the path to what is appropriate on your computer. Now, save the script as an Application, and make sure that you check the "Stay Open" checkbox. Now when you run the application, it will take a picture every 5 minutes. You can change the interval by changing the return statement. You can use minutes, hours or days. Of course, if you want seconds, you can just enter the value in seconds you want.

Now that you have the iSight shooting a new picture on a regular interval, you can open up a new Daydreamer document and point to that picture. The URL you will want to use (again, modified for what you enter in the command) is

file:///Users/don/Pictures/Daydreamer/iSight.jpg

Set the interval to the same interval that you are shooting the picture, and you have made a time-lapse movie maker.

This takes care of simply making a time-lapse movie and it provides the source material for a security system. But we need some kind of motion detection for the security system. I'll cover that in my next entry.

Posted: Sat - June 10, 2006 at 09:55 PM          

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