I am just starting with Arduino and as my first serious project I want to accomplish the following:
Attach a motion sensor outside my house near the frontdoor and connect it to my Arduino Uno.
When motion is detected:
the Arduino sends a message to my microsoft Surface RT tablet (on the wall, always on) to make a beeping sound and show the live video stream of the security cam near the front door for 1 minute.
The idea is that I can see who is approaching my house, before they even ring the doorbell.
I know how to attach the motion detector sensor to the arduino. The next step is communication with the tablet. I think I can best do that by using an IP-shield and use the LAN.
Does anyone know if I can send a command to the tablet to start showing the video stream? And should I use TCP or UDP?
Any ideas are welcome! Thanks.
Eugene_M:
The next step is communication with the tablet. I think I can best do that by using an IP-shield and use the LAN.
Sure. Or Wifi. Or Bluetooth, if the tablet is physically close enough.
Does anyone know if I can send a command to the tablet to start showing the video stream?
I'm sure you can, but it may require writing your own application to run on the tablet and listen on a TCP or UDP socket and wait for the incoming message from the Arduino. Then it can make the appropriate system API call to launch the streaming video player, passing the camera's IP and port number as arguments. This is outside the scope of an Arduino forum though; perhaps you can find a Microsoft forum to help with that bit.
And should I use TCP or UDP?
Either will work for this application, but I think the Arduino library is happiest with TCP.
Any ideas are welcome!
I'm assuming you are using an IP camera networked to the tablet separately from the Arduino. The Arduino would only be sending a network message based on motion sensor activity, and not be involved in any way with the video data stream.
I have a wireless web cam that provides motion detection and alarming. When triggered, it will email me a sequence of images, and I can connect at any time to see the live feed. It's also remotely steerable. From the sound of it, this is the sort of thing you need. I think that any DIY solution would be less capable and more expensive. The only motivation I can see for the DIY solution would be to customise the motion detection algorithm in which case I'd suggest a PC-based motion detection algorithm and simple web cam. There are lots of good free motion detection / security sensing applications available for the PC, or you can write your own using OpenCV.
You might want to look at security cams or cams like the Foscam that may already have the features you are looking for. There are driveway motion monitors that sound alerts.