Recently we needed to give the flat keys to a builder so he could paint the front door of the flat. Landlord had organized it so we had no idea who was about to enter the flat and I wanted to be sure I’d know he (or they) stays in the entrance. As I didn’t have an IP camera I started thinking … A-ha! Playstation Move. I bought one a while back and hardly used it. I’d also want to be able to see the captured images remotely and only collect data when there’s a change - storage is cheap but still limited. Dropbox would do.

Here’s what you need.

• Playstation eye camera
• Ubuntu laptop (well, any Linux device should do. Think: Raspberry Pi)
• Dropbox (account + installed)
• ~Half an hour, including testing

Here’s how to make it work.

1. Stick the Playstation Eye to an USB port of your laptop

For me the camera worked out of the box, I tested that I can get a picture out of it using Cheese:

$ sudo apt-get install cheese

2. Install Motion

Motion is an awesome piece of software that will analyse and capture video stream from a web cam, in this case the PS3 Eye.

$ sudo apt-get install motion

3. Configure Motion

$ sudo nano ~/.motion/motion.conf

Search for target_dir (ctrl+w) and change the target_dir to your Dropbox directory. Mine for example is:

target_dir /home/sami/Dropbox/security

I also like to have my pictures placed neatly in directories based on the date the images were captured

jpeg_filename %Y%m%d/camera-%t-%v-%Y%m%d%H%M%S-%q-motion

This will get you something like:

security/20140413/camera-1-01-20140413134840-01-motion.jpg

4. Run and test

$ sudo motion

… step in the front of camera and you should see images being captured.

I’m watching you builder! (if you enter the flat )