Recently my wife and I suspected that some unwanted guests had been visiting our garden. After a discussion we decided that we needed a motion activated camera that could send us emails once it detected movement. We also wanted the ability to view the live video stream from the camera on demand.
As a fully fledged Raspberry Pi geek I knew right away that I wanted to build my own solution. My wife was not so convinced, and starting listing the dozens of unfinished projects I currently have on my backlog. After promising her that I would see this project through to the bitter end I finally got permission to build a proof of concept
This project required no coding, but quite a bit of configuration. It took about 6-7 hours to complete once I had the parts in place. I spent most of this time wrestling with Linux and this blog will hopefully help anyone attempting a similar project.
Each Friday is PiDay here at Adafruit! Be sure to check out our posts, tutorials and new Raspberry Pi related products. Adafruit has the largest and best selection of Raspberry Pi accessories and all the code & tutorials to get you up and running in no time!
Adafruit publishes a wide range of writing and video content, including interviews and reporting on the maker market and the wider technology world. Our standards page is intended as a guide to best practices that Adafruit uses, as well as an outline of the ethical standards Adafruit aspires to. While Adafruit is not an independent journalistic institution, Adafruit strives to be a fair, informative, and positive voice within the community – check it out here: adafruit.com/editorialstandards
Stop breadboarding and soldering – start making immediately! Adafruit’s Circuit Playground is jam-packed with LEDs, sensors, buttons, alligator clip pads and more. Build projects with Circuit Playground in a few minutes with the drag-and-drop MakeCode programming site, learn computer science using the CS Discoveries class on code.org, jump into CircuitPython to learn Python and hardware together, TinyGO, or even use the Arduino IDE. Circuit Playground Express is the newest and best Circuit Playground board, with support for CircuitPython, MakeCode, and Arduino. It has a powerful processor, 10 NeoPixels, mini speaker, InfraRed receive and transmit, two buttons, a switch, 14 alligator clip pads, and lots of sensors: capacitive touch, IR proximity, temperature, light, motion and sound. A whole wide world of electronics and coding is waiting for you, and it fits in the palm of your hand.
Have an amazing project to share? The Electronics Show and Tell is every Wednesday at 7pm ET! To join, head over to YouTube and check out the show’s live chat – we’ll post the link there.
Amazon Rekognition is nothing close to “free”. While there may be merit in trying to decipher hundreds of still-images (per month) according to their pricing model – you’d be better off financially by hiring a team of security guards working 24/7 to protect that “garden” rather than analyze just one single real-time video feed for any duration.
My solution only sends images to Rekognition when it detects movement. At worse this is 50 images a day, but mostly it’s 10-15.
Under the AWS Free Tier (https://aws.amazon.com/free/) I can send 5,000 images a month completely free for the first twelve months.
If I continue using my camera after the free period, and average 50 images a day, then Rekognition will process 18,250 images on my behalf. At the current pricing ($1 per 1,000 images) I’ll pay $18 a year.
How many security guards are you planning on hiring for that?
Sorry you are not impressed by my "garden". I’d like a bigger one, but the property prices in Oslo are just insane. I think we are experiencing a bubble :S
Each Friday is PiDay here at Adafruit! Be sure to check out our posts, tutorials and new Raspberry Pi related products. Adafruit has the largest and best selection of Raspberry Pi accessories and all the code & tutorials to get you up and running in no time!
Thanks for sharing my blog! I’m currently working on a new blogpost where I explain how I used artificial intelligence to filter out the false positives. Part 1 is available here : https://utbrudd.bouvet.no/2017/01/10/smarten-up-your-pi-zero-web-camera-with-image-analysis-and-amazon-web-services-part-1.
Cool captcha by the way 😀
Amazon Rekognition is nothing close to “free”. While there may be merit in trying to decipher hundreds of still-images (per month) according to their pricing model – you’d be better off financially by hiring a team of security guards working 24/7 to protect that “garden” rather than analyze just one single real-time video feed for any duration.
$xx,xxx.00
https://aws.amazon.com/rekognition/pricing/
Jason:
My solution only sends images to Rekognition when it detects movement. At worse this is 50 images a day, but mostly it’s 10-15.
Under the AWS Free Tier (https://aws.amazon.com/free/) I can send 5,000 images a month completely free for the first twelve months.
If I continue using my camera after the free period, and average 50 images a day, then Rekognition will process 18,250 images on my behalf. At the current pricing ($1 per 1,000 images) I’ll pay $18 a year.
How many security guards are you planning on hiring for that?
Sorry you are not impressed by my "garden". I’d like a bigger one, but the property prices in Oslo are just insane. I think we are experiencing a bubble :S
If anyone is interested, the second part of my follow up blog (where I discuss AWS pricing) is now up : https://utbrudd.bouvet.no/2017/01/10/smarten-up-your-pi-zero-web-camera-with-image-analysis-and-amazon-web-services-part-2/