A child in a family geek or baby monitor with his own hands

I constantly read Habr, but because of the January vacation, an article entitled “A child in the family of a geek or we have our own approach” passed by me. And only now, quite by chance I stumbled upon it in a search engine. Wonderful article, the author is a huge plus!

There was such a sentence: “Many people buy a baby monitor - a radio station that is turned on by sound. So, nafig this baby monitor. Once you are sitting on a habr, you probably have a router, which means that the best option would be a web or an IP camera. And if you add an infrared light, you can look after the child in the dark. Again, you can occasionally connect from the tablet and monitor the situation. ”
But he is right! In the furnace ordinary baby monitors!
')

Entry, which you can and miss

So, the essence of the problem. When a child is small, he usually sleeps more than adults. During such periods, most parents turn off the front door bell and sound from mobile phones. Partly, because they really care about the baby’s sleep, and partly, because few egoists (who know, they will understand) and think about the longer he sleeps, the more calm he will be.

And the most important thing in such moments to be always nearby. If the child’s sleep is a bit, then he may periodically start to stir and look for a mom or dad. If he finds it, he sleeps further. And if not, then you can forget about the continuation of sleep.

It is for this purpose that such wonderful devices as radio and video nurses came up. You leave the transmitting unit in the child’s room and take the receiving unit with you. You can safely go about your business in another room, listening through the receiving unit, that the child is all right.

I immediately thought about the video monkey, as I prefer to see that everything is in order. You never know, suddenly the microphone has spoiled the baby monitor? The simplest thing is to take and buy a ready-made kit. And everything is good, but all of these devices have a significant limitation - the range. Indeed, everything can work more or less within a small apartment. And if you needed to go to the neighbors (you were invited to the birthday party, and the child is sleeping)?

Eureka!

I began to look for another solution to remove the limitation of the range and use the existing equipment to the maximum. In the future, I planned to keep a record of what is happening if I need to invite a nanny. I didn’t have a new Toshiba laptop with Debian installed and without a display. Yes, yes ... turned away only for 5 seconds, and the child decided to pull the glowing thing, called the mouse.
You can access this laptop only via SSH.
I also had an iPad, to which I wanted to display a picture (I confess. I would have bought Android myself, but my wife wanted an iPad.

It remains to pick up the camera. At first I wanted to use a webcam. But then, I decided that pulling the wires was not very convenient and easier to take a Wi-Fi IP camera.

As a result, I found an Edimax camera on one of the sites.

Let there be software!

My provider does not provide external IP. Therefore, I wanted to create a VPN tunnel to one of my virtual machines in order to access the monitoring server remotely via the Internet.

First, the old-fashioned way I planned to use Motion. Began to look for installation experience on Habré and came across comments on Ivideon. Service video surveillance via the Internet. Began to read about them. Advance like a Team Viewer or Skype. Everything is free for non-commercial use. I watched the video instruction how to start everything in 3 minutes:


I was able to repeat it on the second laptop with a webcam. Immediately I saw myself on the iPad, but with a 4-second delay. Earned a sound, earned a view of previously made records.

The basic principle. To view via the Internet, you need a simple registration by e-mail (as I understand it, there is also a local view without the Internet). After registration, you can “attach” any number of cameras to your personal account via e-mail. There are rights management and other things, but I did not use them. The most interesting feature, IMHO, is the ability to display videos on your site. And, judging by the Ivideon blog, not only browsing is supported on devices that have Flash, but also on Apple via HTML5.

The trouble is that I have Linux, and Ivideon has software for Windows. Well, I think wine will help me. I started to search google if anyone installed Ivideon under wine in Linux and found that it turns out they have a Linux version .

And there is not one, but as many as 2 installation options. The first is a ready-made virtual machine image that you can download and get a working solution. Apparently, for the lazy. And the second is the installation of packages from the APT repository.

A remark is required here. Ivideon for Linux is not at all the same as for Windows. It is installed as a daemon and is configured via a web interface.

Reading instructions, copy-paste commands and after 15 minutes everything worked for me even without a tambourine! I went to the web interface and saw what they had shown on the site, only without a girl :)



Offtop. Interestingly, this girl is a programmer Ivideon?
What I liked the most was the fact that there is a quick start guide in the web interface itself!

Installation

And now in order. The Ivideon website says that packages are used on Linux-based nettops for sale. Therefore, packages during installation modify the Apache configuration and the default web site is the Ivideon web interface. For me, this is not a hindrance. And those who put on the Desktop, should pay attention to it.

Connecting the Ivideon repository:

$ echo deb http://packages.ivideon.com/public/full_install stable non-free >/etc/apt/sources.list.d/ivideon.list $ wget -O - http://packages.ivideon.com/public/keys/ivideon.key | apt-key add - 

Update the list of packages and install:

 $ apt-get update $ apt-get install ivideon-server 

Everything. Is done. Now you can access the Ivideon Server web interface by typing http://127.0.0.1/ in the browser’s line. In my case it was not localhost, but the address of the laptop. The default password is 123456.

Impressions

What can I say? I use no more than 3 weeks. And all this time the server itself is spinning without falling and freezing. CPU usage allows you to connect at least another 10 such cameras. Of course, uptime 3 weeks is not an indicator, but still.

We watch video from the nursery, being in the big room. Hear the sound. Already two times went to visit with the iPad.

Didn't completely get used to the video going through the Ivideon servers. That is why I turn on the camera only when it is needed. On the other hand, I still have Skype, Windows, TeamViewer, and tons of other software that theoretically can access my camera and microphone. And mail on Google contains much more private information than video from the nursery. In the extreme case, you can configure direct access to bypass Ivideon servers, since they provide a direct connection function (seen in the settings).
I turn the camera on and off with power. Catching up on the fly. Video archive is written only when there is movement in the frame. Although in the case of video monitors it is particularly useless.

I am very sorry that I bought a camera without infrared illumination. Therefore, we had to invest in a separate Chinese infrared “flashlight” in order to “see” in the dark.

Of the disadvantages:

- there is no application for Android. The site says that it is in development. It would look at the phone.

- there is no possibility to remotely turn on and off the camera. Although it would not hurt.

- if you watch the video in your account and minimize the browser, it starts playing from the moment the browser is minimized.
The rest - normal flight.