

YC-Funded HighlightCam Makes It Easy To Remotely Watch Babies, Pets And Burglars - anateus
http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/07/28/yc-funded-highlightcam-makes-it-easy-to-remotely-watch-babies-pets-and-burglars/

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fuzzythinker
Hmm, can someone tell me why I should pay for this vs. ~$50 webcam + < $9/mo
for electricity (quote for a plug-in wall pc is $5/mo for electricity) that
comes with motion detection capture? Here, I have full access to the video and
analyze it if needed after 2 weeks or years?

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davidw

        apt-get install motion
    

And a bit of hacking should get you something _similar_ , if very possibly not
quite as polished.

Of course, their target market is people who don't want to do any hacking -
and there are a ton of those people, so something simple and convenient might
do well.

 _Edit_

From their comments above, it looks like it's a little bit more complicated
than just capture on motion detect. I think they need a killer demo, as they
really need to point out how they're better.

~~~
catch23
There's also the ultra complicated open source solution zoneminder.

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justin
Congrats guys! Looking forward to a great partnership.

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zhyder
Congrats on the launch!

Feature requests:

1\. You should have a more complex timeline control or at least annotate the
video with the time you're currently looking at. I need to know when the
highlights are happening (when did my baby cry, is my baby crying at some
regular interval, etc.)

2\. There should be some visual cue showing the switch from one continuous
segment to the next. You could potentially incorporate this as part of the fix
for 1..

(My apologies if these already exist; I didn't see them in the demo video.)

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eugenejen
Good jobs! I am glad finally someone make this! And I hope your service
booming!

The point is to show only the important changes in the surveillance video. And
it is right to target market for babies, pets and burglars watch.

I asked my friends 3 years ago when I saw a Panasonic internet surveillance
cam (though the price of cam then was around $200) and they though it would be
great to have this type of service to watch kids and pets at home when they
are at work. And I thought the whole video has to be trimmed to only
interesting part. And I thought that can be a good way to team it with my
uncle's surveillance camera manufacturing business. They are good in hardware
but they need some killer apps to expand demand for surveillance camera in
consumer market.

But one of my friend said that people already did that. I just can't find it
cheap enough for consumers. So I decided to work on other products.

I get a lesson from Anateus: I need to trust my own instinct more than advices
from peers.

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rfreytag
Maybe it is too early in your startup for this but I saw an MIT Media Lab
effort that could highlight the person or car that took an unusual route.
Being able to pick out novel action (rather than any action) would be a huge
value add to the existing solutions.

Demo: put a camera on a donation plate and pick out the non-stereotypical
motion of someone removing rather than adding to it.

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pclark
you need a better demo

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oldgregg
It will be really interesting to see how the partnership with justin.tv
develops, could be a partial answer to their high s/n ratio.

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greengirl512
Cool...now, if only there was a way to scold my dogs for chewing furniture
from a distance! :)

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leelin
Grats guys, you had my vote on YCPTD, btw!

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catch23
congrats! amazing that there's so much less negativity on TC comments
recently...

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aberman
Congrats guys. Good article by TC.

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sethwoodworth
Hells yes. Kittens!

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lzhou
Grats guys! Really love your product =P

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auston
Or I could just use Ustream: <http://www.ustream.tv/channel-popup/lulu-tv>

