Filed under: Portables, Software, Hacks, PowerBook
Smile. You're on "candid laptop"
TUAW reader Dylan O'Donnell has set up his Macbook Pro to snap a picture using the built-in iSight whenever its lid opens. He put together a simple command line capture utility and triggered it with Bernard Bahr's SleepWatcher. Then he added automatic uploads via FTP and displayed the results with the open source BolGallery.
"I initially did this as an anti-theft measure as the script will upload the photos to any FTP site for you, and the PHP gallery will autothumb and display the photos. Apart from the nauseating effect of seeing my ugly mug repeating, the result is good and I hope to maybe do a time lapse in quicktime sometime down the track!"
It's a cute idea, completely open source, and an excellent example of ingenuity in action. It's also a good example of the completely self-conscious reasons that I do not personally own a webcam. Me, in the morning, before I've woken up and had my caffeine? Not a pretty picture.
![TUAW [Cafepress]](http://www.blogsmithmedia.com/www.tuaw.com/media/tuaw-cafepress-promo.png)
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
eggman25 said 4:51PM on 1-25-2007
reminds me of one of the characters in neal stephenson's 'cryptonomicon' who set up the same thing as a security measure. brilliant book btw.
Reply
sam said 3:56PM on 1-25-2007
What I want is a program that will display goatse at a random time, take a picture 1 second later (just enough time for it to sink in), and then upload it to an ftp server for all to see.
Then I will distribute the software for people who want to pull pranks on their unsuspecting friends. "Can I use your computer?"
"Sure, just let me start this program real quick..."
Reply
kevjohn said 2:22PM on 1-27-2007
Now all he needs to do is drop this thing off on the nearest sorority house's front porch, and let the magic begin!
Reply
Mike said 5:02AM on 1-26-2007
Great app. Can you get it to snarf the IP address at the time it takes the snap too. This would assist slightly in tracking a stolen laptop. Maybe you could munge the IP in a form 81_23_100_29 and use it in the image name.
The image name should contain the date/time string too.
Reply
south said 9:18PM on 1-26-2007
looks like a classic vacant "porn viewing" face, bottom-center.
Reply
Dylan ODonnell said 10:11PM on 1-26-2007
Honored to make the front page! Sorry about the 'porn faces' .. I have 30 seconds to delete queued photos until it uploads just in case I leave my wang exposed! Just joking.
A few notes ..
1. Some users may need to remove the "passive" command from script or get zero byte files depending on their FTP / Firewall setup.
2. The IP of the computer is recorded in the FTP logs on the webserver. Whether you have access to these is a different story of course.
3. All photo contain the regular EXIF data such as date / time etc.
If anyone has any other questions feel free to let me know. Its totally [CC] script though.. so go forth and improve! Would love to see what others do with this.
Reply
Kevin said 7:17AM on 1-27-2007
Can someone tell me how to "chmod to 755". I am trying to follow the directions but am stuck, the iSight Auto Upload Script mentioned needs to be chmod to 755, do I do this in the terminal?
Thanks
Reply
Rob said 10:56AM on 1-27-2007
First you will need to download his script as a TEXT file. I don't think Safari will let you do this. So click on the link to his script and copy and paste it into Text Edit. Then click Format on th emenu bar and click Make Plan Text. Then save the file (e.g. iSightLoader).
Now open up Terminal and cd to the directory where this file is located. e.g. cd Desktop.
Now type "sudo chmod 755 iSightLoader"
You will be asked for your admin Password.
(You must be in an admin account to do all of this).
If you need more help type "man chmod" in the terminal.
Rob
Reply
Philip Brown said 5:50PM on 1-27-2007
Could someone help me setup the ftp settings, I have tried two different ftp accounts, neither of them received images. I have tried, as mentioned above setting turning of passive mode. I don't fully understand how .netrc works or if I have it on my system (Intel Macbook Pro OSX). I am new to scripting so please keep it simple.
Reply
Josh H. said 11:44PM on 2-23-2007
Or you could just download iAlertU. It works with the remote that comes with your computer and is sort of like a car alarm system...and it takes pictures when it is activated so see who was messing with your computer. There is a video of it on youtube, just type in ialertu...i have it for my computer and its great!
Reply
buzzdat said 6:14PM on 3-14-2007
I've created a slightly more advanced version of this script with instructions Here. My script has the following features:
- simple configuration at top of script. no need to hunt for variables to change.
- supports FTP or Form Post methods for uploading picture
- uses curl for FTP transfer - no more .netrc tinkering
- places all files in /tmp rather than user directory
- easily specify file format for pictures in one configuration entry
- appends user's IP address to end of image filename
Pardon the crufty old phpNuke site...
Reply
buzzdat said 3:02AM on 3-30-2007
Hmm, clipped my post. Here's the url: MacCam!
Reply
buzzdat said 6:56PM on 3-14-2007
OK, I give up. URLs are not posting properly. Go to www dot flatulentfish dot com, there's a link to it on the main page. If this gets clipped, I'm done trying.
Reply