Ed's Big Plans

Zinc grows an eyeball.

So, before Cara and I left home yesterday, I decided on a whim to quickly attach an ancient webcam to Zinc to use as an ad hoc surveillance device — well ok, it’s mostly for fun. This webcam was actually purchased and used with Bronze (my very first laptop), so the refresh rate, white balance and optical zoom are all from circa 2004.

Here, Zinc’s eyeball has been mounted with macam and works like a charm. The frame rate is inexcusably horrendous– but over a VNC connection, I seriously don’t care.

Eventually, Zinc will use macam’s quicktime application component to automatically shoot a photo once every x minutes, and send an e-mail to me if there is significant optical difference between the two images. In a stagnant room– this is not very challenging technically.

Giving Zinc an eyeball has granted us more peace of mind whenever we decide to travel– thus improving again the value of the mac mini… wait till you see what I’ve got planned next…