Monitor a room with Grabmotion

If you are looking for a cheap and reliable way to monitor a room you could take a look at the freeware Grabmotion which uses webcams to monitor rooms. Grabmotion constantly monitors the room and starts default processes once a motion was detected. Processes that can be defined include sending an email with an attached image showing the room during the time the motion was detected, sending an sms through a gateway, saving an image to the hard drive or playing a sound alarm.

The main advantage of Grabmotion is that it is plattform independent because it was programmed in Java. It will work with most – the developer claims all – webcams and evidence will be saved even if the computer itself will be stolen or destroyed. (an email will be send with the image). It is also possible to request an image from Grabmotion which will also be send by email. It is possible to schedule monitoring times, it does not make sense to run Grabmotion if you are at home working on the computer.

Installation instructions:

1. Download the grabMotion software (2.5Mo)
2. Install Java JRE (Java Runtime Environment) for windows download it at Java Sun site.
3. Install JMF (Java Media Framwork) download JMF
4. Open the command prompt
5. Type : java -jar grabpack.jar
6. … if you get an error try to type the full path like :
   
   c:\java\jdk1.4\java -jar c:\mydownload\grabmotion\grabpack.jar

Grabmotion can be easily bypassed by simply turning of the power supply for the computer. It is still nice to see if your brothers, sisters or friends do snoop around in your room while you are gone.

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Author: Martin Brinkmann, Sunday May 6, 2007 -
Tags:grabmotion, monitor room, Security, webcam