So during the holidays we had to leave Jack alone (apart from neighbours and cat-sitter). And of course we wanted to check in with him from time to time to see how he is doing.
So I got a cheap Webcam and a very old Aspire Aspire One 150D (I painted It red at some stage... ). Lubuntu running on it btw..
First I had to open up the Webcam and disable the LEDs. I had no way of switching them off with Linux. And by disabling I mean just cutting them off.. ;)
Next step: Hook up two 2€ servos and a bit off leftover wood.
And the whole thing from the other side.. took like 5min...
Since it tends to be a bit dark in Hamburg sometimes there is also an LED from an old torch:
The LED works fine directly on the Arduino pin which was a bit unexpected.
I don't need to write about the Servo
libraries for Arduino.
To
communicate I use Skype (no need for dyndns, there is an IP
grabber)
You have to set Skype to auto accept calls.
And to communicate with Arduino I just log in to the shell via ssh.
Commands to the Arduino with:
echo "command" > "your ard e.g. /dev/ttyACM0"
Careful! The Arduino reset needs to be disabled in order to use the echo command:
The whole setup:
And a screen-shot from a Skype session during the holidays:
I know... he was a bit confused...
