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iGuard
Peace of mind for the road-weary 'Baker. | |
I often find myself tired and in want of a nap when I happen to be in
a
public place, such as a library or laundromat. Being the slightly
paranoid survivalist that I am, however, I find myself unable to relax
enough to allow myself to drift off into oblivion. What if somebody
tries to pull
a
fast one while I'm out? When I have my trusted
companion Corona with me (my dog, not the beer), however, I don't
have that problem because I know she'll alert me if someone gets
too
close for comfort. Even when I'm in a deep, sound slumber, there
are
three things that are sure to wake me: my dog growling, the click of
a
doorknob turning open, and my phone going off. I don't always have
my dog with me, and not all public places have doors with knobs.
But I
*always* have my trusty phone.
Now, there are lots of apps out there that take advantage of a
smartphone's camera. There are apps for scanning barcodes, and
apps
for orienteering by comparing what the camera sees with photos of
landmarks stored in a database. There's some really wicked sh**
out
there for smartphones! In my personal and professional opinion, my
app is the wickedest of 'em all: iGuard.
iGuard utilizes a smartphone's camera to run the video recorder,
without actually storing the images, and detect motion while you
sleep. Simply plant yourself against a wall or large tree, tuck the
phone
in your shirt pocket with the camera aiming out, or stand it up on a
stable surface a foot or two in front of you aimed at yourself, and
drift
off into dreamland. If motion is detected, it beeps at you to wake
you
up. If the phone itself is moved, it will also beep at you, triggered by
the internal accelerometer that every decent smartphone has. That
part is Baked already, but I would incorporate it into this app's
design
as well for the total security package. The only part I haven't figured
out yet is how to preselect a desired distance range in which to
detect the motion and alert you. I originally was thinking that a
phone's camera would be blurry enough that it couldn't detect
motion beyond a short distance, but I put it to the test, and my
phone's camera seems to see an awfully long way... looking through
it I can see almost as far as with my naked eye. Maybe it detects
moving objects that fill a certain percentage of the screen?
Note: when searching for prior art, I noticed an idea in the same
category called i-Witness that seems to use similar technology. They
are not the same thing. i-Witness is a good idea, however, and I give it my full blessing, and a warm bun.
[link]
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Lordy, no other comments, you must have sneaked this one on at midnight..
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Hmm, you could just the same things with PIR, and it'd be a bit more 360 degrees horizontally. Also wouldn't work in the vertical, so trained monkeys (or even self-taught monkeys), rain, bird crap, snakes..depends how much wildlife you have in your area.
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Me, I'd just go for concentric claymores, with tripwires. with some ritzy hazard cones, "Extreme danger of death. Concealed landmines" so no one could complain afterwards.
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Anyway, give it a go. When you're rich you'll remember your old mates on half-bakery, won't you? |
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If I ever become rich, so will the 'Bakery. This is my vow.
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Anyway, I do appreciate the buns, but some explanation for the
negative votes would be equally appreciated. Why the bones? |
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"Why the bones?"
Not me, mate. Could I suggest a slight variation on a theme? IGuard cultural plug-in. It's already got GPS, so it know which country it's in. So loud beeping if you're getting too close to walking on that green rug in an office in an Islamic country, about to walk into a (ahem) barbershop in South Korea, about to try tipping a taxi driver in Japan, trying to show something to someone in your backyard in Thailand that involves them walking under a washing line, that kind of stuff, I'm sure you can think of a few more. Been there, had that red face. |
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Running the camera costs battery life; running the camera and the processor costs even more. [-] |
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Better; get your canine companion registered as an assistance dog. There are seeing dogs for the blind, hearing dogs for the deaf, why should you not have a watching-my-back dog for the mildly (and quite justifiably) paranoid ?
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Humans have been selectively breeding dogs as companions, trackers, hunters and lookouts for over 8000 of your Earth years. It's going to take a while for your pitifully primitive technology to catch up. |
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Back when I was an inventor one of my crazy ideas
was to have a personal CCTV camera in the form of a
shoulder dragon, parrot or owl. Essentially such a
thing would need to be articulated, to cover blind
spots, and be sensitive to noise. Sending out an
automatic "rescue me" signal makes sense too. |
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Absinthe, if you haven't seen solar-powered cellphone chargers,
look them up. They even fit in a pocket alongside a normal travel
charger, so you need never be without power. |
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8th of 7, I presume you have seen Boston Dynamics Big Dog, I admit it's probably not up to "fetch the stick" quite yet, but still oddly impressive. |
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[+] I like, but would recommend adding a fish-eye lens attachment to the camera.
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That would decrease the distance the camera could see (reducing false alarms from motion that's too far away to be important) while at the same time increasing the viewing angle, so that it could see (important) things that would otherwise be off to the side. |
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BB, that's awesome. The fish-eye lens could even be
incorporated into a protective case without having to modify the
phone at all. |
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