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General question: Making this automatic

edited October 2014 in Home automation
Hi folks,
I'm new to security spy. Haven't quite "signed on" yet… but am interested in your opinion.

I am not really looking for "survelliance" software.

I want software that will turn my surveilliance cameras into an alarm.

They are different.

For example, I'd like to be able to easily just turn the whole thing on or off. And I'd like it to do interesting things when something interesting happens, automatically. And of course I need to be able to enable/disable parts of the property as "zones" easily, since we live in one of the detection zones. Don't want that doing things at night while we sleep, optionally archiving photos to see who in the family stole the peanut butter. Ok just kidding about that.

Does that make sense? I hear If I want to automate some of these things by getting creative and writing applescript I can, but this is the thrust of what I'd like to achieve: An alarm system. I would even like to add sound detection or other things (like a door sensor) in the future if possible.

Greg

Comments

  • Hi Greg,

    A certain amount of this functionality is already built into SecuritySpy. For example, you can set schedules for each camera to start and stop them recording at certain times of the day.

    SecuritySpy also does audio detection, and can receive input from external switches (such as door sensors) with certain cameras' digital input ports (Axis, Canon and D-Link).

    If you need to do anything more complicated, then scripting is the way to go - we have some AppleScript examples that cover most things that users generally need, and we are on hand to help with anything that's not covered within our online help pages.
  • Hi Ben and thanks for your comments.

    Extensibility is really cool. And applescript is great for interop.

    Applescript is … It's also very strange and every application has a different way of approaching it. I find that no matter how well documented an application's dictionary is, the only true way to figure out how to use it is with tons of examples and often tech support. The examples I see on that page seem to prove that out.

    I will try it out and see how it goes and make sure to keep you in the loop if I hit a wall.

    It's not a bad idea IMHO to bundle some of these applescripts and utilize it as your own extensibility interface to build these functions into a more formal part of the UI. That gives us control while making it even easier to use out of the box.

    Greg
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