brainstorm a 'presence' sensor

toxicmouse

Senior Member
Hi all,

There is a very nice park near my house but unfortunately there is a guy carrying a shotgun who robs people who use the park. In the past 6 months the police have been unable to catch this guy, and the robbed toll has hit 50 people (including me). I think that this guy hides the gun in the park and enters without disguise- so I have hacked a digital camera to take pictures of everyone who enters the park, hoping that I will get a nice photo of the robber, and give the photo to the police.

The picaxe problem is this: the hacked camera works fine, but the sensor which senses that a person is approaching is not working well. I am using a PIR sensor, of the kind that is used in home security. The PIR goes off randomly, especially during the day. I think that the problem is that the sun is VERY strong here and the terrain is mostly rocky, so I think that the sensor is getting overloaded with IR reflected off the rocks. The sensor is mostly alright at night (when the camera is useless and I use a picaxe datalogger to record the time.)

I would like as many ideas as possible on sensors that could reliably pick us that someone is approaching from 5 to 10m, that is easy to hide and install (preferably next to the camera), and importantly- uses little power. The device needs to be on the ground for about a week undisturbed. I have tried premade devices that have a camera and sensor in one but as I said- the PIRs are unreliable outside in the sun, and I need a pretty good resolution on the photo.

Hopefully a picaxe and a little determination can get this guy caught, 50 cases of armed robbery with aggravating circumstances is not a joke in any country, and will probably put this guy in prison for a decade.
 

westaust55

Moderator
Hi all,

The PIR goes off randomly, especially during the day. I think that the problem is that the sun is VERY strong here and the terrain is mostly rocky, so I think that the sensor is getting overloaded with IR reflected off the rocks. The sensor is mostly alright at night (when the camera is useless and I use a picaxe datalogger to record the time.)

I would like as many ideas as possible on sensors that could reliably pick us that someone is approaching from 5 to 10m,
Yes there is IR in sunlight. Even in a house you should put PIR's on the walls with windows so the face away form the window.

How about a Ultrasonic sensor. Rev Ed have the SRF005.
You can find the datasheet from the DATASHEETS link on the orange bar at the top of this page. Scroll down and you will see SRF005.

They are actually made by Robot Electronics ( http://www.robot-electronics.co.uk/acatalog/Ultrasonic_Rangers.html ) so there are other sources for these as well.

Now the SRF05 has a max range of around 3-4 metres.
The SRF08 has a range up to 6 metres but this is an i2c comms type so you would need say an PICAXE 18X to have onboard i2c control.
 
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Jeremy Leach

Senior Member
Very sorry to hear you've been a victim of this guy and can understand wanting to have him locked up. But have you tried to get the Police to do the photography? Also I expect people here might be a bit reluctant to encourage you to do anything that might put you in a dangerous situation (i.e guy sees you rigging up elaborate 'trap' for him), and the consequences of this forum helping you.

Another point is the legal side of taking pictures of all the other people too, without their knowledge??

Having made these points, and looking at it purely as a problem to solve ... I would think a hidden underfoot switch (or array of switches) of some sort might be good because they would obviously use no power. A break-beam system using a laser pointer would probably use a lot of juice over an extended period but might work (but might be detectable).
 

demonicpicaxeguy

Senior Member
another option you probably haven't thought of is to simply have the camera take a photo every so many 30 seconds or so, with the capacity of some of these memmory cards these days surely that wouldn't be a bad way to go,


i've done somthing similar to my olympus only i've taken it a few steps further, it not only takes a photo every 30 seconds, got the pic rebooting it every 100 shots and enabling the usb connection, coupled with a simple vb program that moves the images from the camera to my hdd then goes back to taking photos again, i've got quite a good little security system for the street,

i only keep the last 3 days worth of photos, and delete anything over 3 days old,

so far we've handed over some nice hi res images of the people who broke into our neighbours car to the police, naturally our police aren't much help

to enable the usb connection all you need is simple relay that connects the gnd pins between the camera and the usb port
 

Dippy

Moderator
That's terrible.
The easy solution is as suggested by DPG.
You can get time-lapse type cameras and HD recorders very cheaply these days but they are a bit of a lump.

You can also get those little cameras with take a piccy every few seconds and stuff it onto an SD card. They're pretty cheap, but not sure about quality. But they are small. Ciggy packet sized. Battery duration unknown, suspect not long.

Both PIR and Ultrasonic will be unreliable outside.
The former can be set off by convection currents and interfered with by sunlight.
The latter are upset by wind, moving branches and VW Beetles.
And weatherproof sensors don't have a huge range.

A commonly used method uses PIR and Microwave. There used to be a company who made a 'DualTech' product for security sensors. So, both the microwave and PIR sensor had to be 'triggered' to get a signal.

NAIS (Panasonic?) make some fairly directional PIR, maybe you could 'AND' a couple?

Outdoor sensing is tricky and to get good results the 'background' has to be physically stable unless using break-beam which is impossible in many locations.

Microwave is excellent, but getting hold of the transducers is not so easy I suspect.
There is a UK firm that makes pcb based microwave transducers and, from personal experience, they are pretty good. But they would need some electronic input from you.

You don't mention coverage-angle in your question.
I made an infra-red 'radar' some years ago, but it was flat out at 6m , about 10o of spread, consumed <5mA (eat your heart out Sharp) and used expensive lenses.
But by the time you've developed something as good or better the villain will have retired.

Best give him 'early retriment' using the 9mm method.
 

manuka

Senior Member
Toxicmouse: Theft only -has anyone been hurt? You have to give rascals their dues, since (although misguided) many can be very smart indeed. For all we know he may even browse this esteemed forum for nifty ideas. How are you intending to disguise & power the setup? The accused may well "case the joint" & run off with all your gear. Any park webcams in action? Will such citizen's evidence be legally admissable in RSA? You really need to give us more insights about the park & environment,with a Google Earth view at least. Even in J'Burg your parks may well be Gaza strip sized- oops not a good example-for all we know.

It's tempting to say "you can always move", but even here in the South Seas crime rears it's head- I had all power tools in my garage stolen a few years back. Yet amazingly, while in UK 2006, I left my cell phone accidently on a postbox all day, only to find it still there untouched 8 hours later. Half of Britain must have walked past it, but head down looking for coins & fag ends on the pavement maybe.
 
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Dippy

Moderator
Oh, were they your tools Stan?
Sorry, I'll send them back.
I was at a loose end one day....

Stan, your phone was left untouched because it was old one. If it had been a Nokia N96 even old Grannies would have mugged you:)
 

toxicmouse

Senior Member
Thanks for the responses. Yes, almost everyone who was robbed was beaten. On christmas eve they beat a 15 year old girl and kicked her while she was on the ground- she had a nasty head injury. the park is about 5km in length, so yes, about gaza strip size, but it has a limited number of entrances and holes in the fence. It is illegal to show the picture to a victim as it will influence their ability to recognise the attacker, but it is legal to give it to the police to help them find the attackers (but I cannot then testify in court as I have seen the pic). So it is a serious problem, the police are very busy and cannot dedicate much time to this, and it is not illegal to take the pics.

The camera is to be focused on straight paths near entrances, so a narrrow pickup angle is best.

The cameras are disguised inside signboards that tell users not to dump building rubble in the park. I got permission from the woman who runs the park (who was also robbed)

I was thinking of those wires that the canadians use for border control, burried underground and senses the change in capacitance above ground- or something like that. I cant find much on google though.

I am going to work on getting the PIRs to work, any ideas what I could use to cover the PIR lens with to make it look less like a PIR lens? something opaque to light but transparent to IR?
 

Dippy

Moderator
Good luck with PIR.

Those little NAIS ones to which I referred are about 15mm diameter and come in black or white.
The white ones would be fairly well disguised if the sign were painted off-white.
The black would be fairly well disguised if they were part of a black painted letter, number or line.

They have the amp built-in and are available as digital output or analogue if you wish to do your own processing, which gives you a chance to do some anti-false-alarm testing. Like i said before, you could use 2 of them and do some 'coincidence' processing.

Opaque to light but transparent to (long) IR?
Well, maybe NASA has something to do that, but for you and me, no chance.
Obv the black will attenuate visible light more, but maybe this may affect longevity in sunlight. Whether or not that is important depends on your project duration.
All the ones I have ever seen use polythene fresnel lensing.

Can't see capacitance being reliable. Maybe pressure? Is that QT cable any good?
 

alband

Senior Member
What are these entrances like? That google earth pic would be useful.

MY cousins have a bedroom toy laser trip wire system.
Have you considered mounting a very small IR laser across the gate or wherever (you'll know best) and a IR only sensor (old TV perhaps). Set it up using a camera phone or other video + screen devise so that you can see the IR dot. Get the sensor attached to a tree or something and get the laser pointing at it. Once the system works like that, protect the sensor from other light sources using two circles of black card with wholes in, so that the is a small "tunnel of vision" for the sensor. Then cover it in moss or leaves etc.

It depends what the entrances are like, but this would be very reliable.
(I'll make a picture of the sensor set-up as I probably wouldn't understand my description).
Good Luck!
 

alband

Senior Member
Another thought, are the muggings happening at night? You could use and IR flash so that the guy doesn't see the flash. The camera would see him though.
Like this:
 

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Dippy

Moderator
Trouble with laser is their superb beam.
Slightest wobble of laser and it will have missed your whole hole.
 

Dippy

Moderator
And hope de wind don't blow.

Might be a bit visible at night?
Unless you use IR laser?

Insects walking over your hole, heavy rain, golf balls, passing moths, birds, aardvarks...

Proper break-beam uses multi-beam or wide beams so that the above are less likely to cause false triggers.

Nice theories, but not-so-nice in practice.
Always check out what the Big Boys do first, it's their business and profits....
 

alband

Senior Member
Does anyone else hear aardvarks and emediately thing of Arthur? :rolleyes:

IR laser? What did I put?

False triggers aren't a problem (might end up with a rare snap of the ellusive laser seeking moth ;)). Missed triggers are a problem.

There are lots of options for securing it. That is up to Toxic to figure out.

Toxic, do you have any of those old house alarm detectors that flash a light when something moves? I've got one staring down at me now. You could connect the GND's and then use the LED wires as the PICAXE's input. This is one the Big Boys have made.
Good Luck.
 

Hooter

Senior Member
The Aritech AR 435 uses dual technology - Pir and Radar - not microwave. From memory you can link select fixed radar ranges up to 12 meters. May be a bit thirsty though. Be careful if used near water masses or sources of running water ie. rainwater downpipes. The radar range selection is very accurate. When used as radar only it will see through walls and windows albeit with a slightly reduced range. Link below.
http://www.sourcesecurity.com/docs/fullspec/AR435.pdf
Hooter
 

Dippy

Moderator
How much do they cost?

Maybe an Optek OPV302?

Standard burglar alarm PIRs are not really suitable.

Ah, Hooter, you've moved it.
If they use non-microwave 'radar' what method is it out of interest?

Edit:Just seen your reply on the other thead.
That is very clever.

Edit2:
Query: If they ping and time the returned signal then how can they look through walls? Won't they look for first returned ping? The ping from a wall would be magnitudes bigger than the return from a target behind the wall.
And these time scales must be tiny. These devices must work very, very fast and surely cost over a fiver?
Or are they doppler too?
I find it incredible.
 
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hippy

Technical Support
Staff member
For long-term remote datalogging ( which this generically falls under ), ultra-low power equipment isn't necessarily a requirement, the alternative is in providing a beefy power supply which can last as long as it is needed. For the amateur and hobbyist that could be the ubiquitous car battery.

I'd have thought it would be possible to hide, even bury, a high Ah battery and regulator ( if required ) in a suitable enclosure if it needed to be hidden and run wires as required to whatever is being powered. How far anyone is prepared to go in doing that and what cost limits there are will depend on how important the task is felt to be.

Once the power issue is out the way, that opens up the possibilities on how to do any datalogging. One option may be continuous video streaming via WiFi or 2.4GHz. It may be possible to use multiple cameras and a shop security four-cameras on screen mixer placed with the power supply to get multiple signals over the link, or sequentially switch between sources.

The later may be quite suited to a PICAXE switching the appropriate CVBS video from cameras through a suitable analogue switch. PIR's can be used to determine which zones are active and dictate how long each zone should have its camera selected for giving a better chance that whatever needs to be captured is.
 

Dippy

Moderator
Nice.
Size, distance and velocity 'window'.
Excellent.

If there are no probs with budget, physical positioning, power-supply, cable installation, radio range , disguise, thieves, vandals , weather, dirt, animals and schoolboys, then you can have anything you want.

I suspect what is needed is something small, low-cost (in case of loss), robust and efficient.
 
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Andrew Cowan

Senior Member
Good luck with PIR.

Those little NAIS ones to which I referred are about 15mm diameter and come in black or white.
The white ones would be fairly well disguised if the sign were painted off-white.
The black would be fairly well disguised if they were part of a black painted letter, number or line.

They have the amp built-in and are available as digital output or analogue if you wish to do your own processing, which gives you a chance to do some anti-false-alarm testing. Like i said before, you could use 2 of them and do some 'coincidence' processing.

Opaque to light but transparent to (long) IR?
Well, maybe NASA has something to do that, but for you and me, no chance.
Obv the black will attenuate visible light more, but maybe this may affect longevity in sunlight. Whether or not that is important depends on your project duration.
All the ones I have ever seen use polythene fresnel lensing.
I've used those small ones, and they are very easily hidden.

A
 

gengis

New Member
Some of the better home intrusion detectors use dual technology so both sensors have to see a signal at the same time. Like Doppler ultrasound with PIR. Both sensors have false positives, but its very unusual for them to have them from the same cause at the same time.

Another possibility is seeing if there's something in the false positives that can allow software in the 'axe to discriminate a real from false one. Most of the PIR's have a "walk" test mode that allows the sensitivity to be adjusted - that walk test may remove some of the dime delays and integration built into the PIR and give you a signal the axe can play with.

Radar too has false positives and most use Gunn diodes which are cheap and powerful but power hogs. Ramsey Electronics had a tiny Doppler radar that used a transistor oscillator and detector and didn't eat a lot of power. Sensitivity could be better and it was omni directional, but a small reflector might solve both problems. I was using one to count people passing in a corridor through two layers of wall board and metal studs and it worked very well. I don't see it on the site ramseyelectronics.com, but they have a lot of stuff there and may still have the kit manual even if the kit is discontinued.

I'm having some success using visible light and dual narrow angle LEDs sensing an unbalance between the two (similar to what a PIR does). I haven't had the time to develop the idea fully but so far it looks very promising. LEDs output their characteristic voltage when a light shines on them - I'm using red and green leds but IR probably works too - so you might use an IR illuminator then pair of IR LEDs to "read" the scene in front of the illumination. OR just an out and out IR retro reflective proximity sensor - with multiple sources if the range isn't enough.

Good luck!
 

Dippy

Moderator
Dual technology previously mentioned....

Low power microwave available here:-
http://www.microwave-solutions.com/

But you have to develop your own supplementary electronics.
I used these Doppler versions for speed measurment.
Work well.

If I was going to use Microwave transducers I'd probably go for a pulsed Doppler method.
Trouble is if you want to keep most of the effort in-processor (i.e. minimal hardware) you really need some heftier procesing. I used dsPIC and FFT.

I also tried the balance method but with biased photo-diodes. Good results but fussy about location outdoors.

You can also try 2-station (aka break-beam) microwave detectors. The elctronics is not dead-simple.

So many ways... so little time :)
 

boriz

Senior Member
A few false positives shouldn’t be a big deal. To keep things simple, I’d go with PIR or Ultrasonic. The sensor unit(s) could be placed away from the camera and send signals via RF modules to the camera. Likely the problem you are having with the PIR is that the subject is moving towards the sensor. They work best when the subject moves across the field of view.

Placing a PIR on a post or a tree in a position that the subject would walk past, with an RF trigger to the camera which is placed elsewhere for a front-view picture might work best.

There is another method that no one has mentioned yet. Dunno what it’s called, but it triggers when the image from the camera changes. Commonly available for webcams, it can usually be configured for sensitivity and to include/exclude certain areas of the image. It would probably require an RF video link though.
 

toxicmouse

Senior Member
Thanks a lot for your ideas.

I think that the QT cable would be worth trying out, could it be much simpler?

Thanks for the radar ideas, I did not think of that.

I have found some plastics that are opaque to light but transparent to IR, plastic milk bottles and plastic carrier bags work nicely. In the case of the carrier bag, I found one that is dark green that I could use as part of the lettering on the signboard and hide the PIR sensor behind that. The plastics have no noticeable effect on the PIR sensor indoors.

I noticed that there is a carbon trimmer for sensitivity in the PIR, maybe I could replace this with a digital pot and recalibrate the PIR sensor every hour with the picaxe. False positives are not serious if there are only 5 per hour, but currently I am getting 261 false signals per hour. Because of the massive effect that the sun has and this varies through the day, automatic recalibration might be the way forward.

Alband, thanks for the ideas. I suspect that the IR sensor is going to have the same problem as the PIR sensor in that the sun is burning down. It is so bright during the day that it is extremely uncomfortable to go out without sunglasses, add to this the mostly reflective quartzite rocks, and there is plenty of interference. I will probably still try it out though.
 

manuka

Senior Member
I've been distracted by our own near lethal Kiwi sunshine, & upon Forum return am amazed that suggestions are still ignoring the nature of this park itself. 5km a side-private owner-multiple entrances. Sounds like a South Seas island. What of a PICTURE/GOOGLE EARTH & insights into terrain,paths,vegetation & lighting etc? First know your enemy!

History shows detailed backroom planning & pondering can be useless (or even lethal) without crucial on the ground insights. Take your pick from any number of past military disasters -1916 Somme offensive & Gallipoli campaign perhaps-then compare them with triumphs such as the WW2 Normandy landings or 1996 Entebbe rescue.

Most rascals now would be smart enough to consider electronic monitoring, & may factor this into their "activities". Maybe double blind them with a "winking light dummy"?? Entrance may not even be at ground level- witness border tunnels/sewers/drains etc abounding in Gaza & Mexico. The little I know of Sth. African troubles implies mugging is certainly not restricted to J'Burg parks either- what is the surrounding neighbourhood like?

A sting may even be in order -place a "Help Wanted" sign for a security man & specify applicants must have a good knowledge of the park (& electronic surveillance devices)!? The old "exploding dye pack in the payroll " trick may have some mileage too, as could the likes of hidden GPS/GSM tracker devices.
 
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gerrymcc

New Member
Have you considered an ultrasonic radar- of the type used for car reversing sensors? Some, at least, of the problems may be overcome by using pulse mode, and only looking for a reflection during a suitably wide receiving window. These are available in car accessory shops, but I have no knowledge of them in detail. The Australian magazine Silicon Chip published a design to do this a few years ago, but I can not quickly find a reference to this article on their web site.

After reading the original request, I started thinking of a video camera idea- but I think the numbers do not stack up very well.

Use a small, B&W LCD camera of the type used for video/audio front door intercoms. I think this idea could have merit- but is probably beyond PICAXE capability- and I assume you want this done very quickly and without being a big engineering effort.

Here are my thoughts (bear with me here): The world record for the 100 meters is about 10seconds, or 100mSec/meter. If a person is running at half world record pace, this is 200mSec/meter. If the camera can patrol 2 meters of the path, then we have 600mSec to detect the person and take a picture. Move slower, and you have even more time to make a decision.

Assuming that the b&w video camera is PAL compatible (50 frames/sec), then 1 frame is 20mSec. One of this type of camera I saw, had 300 lines/picture. So, one line is about 60uSec. (I am not an expert on video, so please forgive me if I am wrong.)

What I suggesting is that several points across the picture be examined by recording the video amplitude at these points. Both the horizontal and vertical sync pulses would give accurate, repeatable starting points for a pair of timers to repeatedly mark/indicate the same points in each frame. You might think 4 or 8 points around the video waveform, which would be distributed across the picture.

Rather than trying to do full video capture and analysis, (no way!!!), I am thinking that the video waveform voltage be measured at each of these points, and, over a long period of time, a set of "background" values be established for each of them, when looking at the path with no people present. Then, examine each of these points, looking for a very sudden change, which would be due to a person getting in the picture. By a weighting method looking at the points, you could establish a confidence level that someone (or something) is suddenly in the picture. By making these background readings change dynamically over time, you could allow for changing light conditions etc.

My only difficulty is seeing if you could reasonably accurately record the value of the video waveform. National Semiconductor has their very old and very cheap LM398 with a 10uSec acquisition time. So, perhaps you could record the average video voltage over a 30uSec period in the middle of a video line- which is half our 60uSec/line. The difficulty might be to be able to A>D this voltage in the time available. It might be better to use discrete hardware to do this part, and only get the values for each line into the PICAXE.

Just a wild engineering thought- which would be interesting to do if the situation was not quite so pressing
 

toxicmouse

Senior Member
view sat phots here:

http://maps.yahoo.com/;_ylc=X3oDMTExNmIycG51BF9TAzI3MTYxNDkEc2VjA2ZwLWJ1dHRvbgRzbGsDbGluaw--#mvt=s&lat=-26.170492&lon=27.997976&zoom=16&q1=melville%2C%20johannesburg%2C%20south%20africa

there is a fence around the entire area, and most importantly there are a few holes in the fence which is where I will be focusing my efforts. The sat phot was taken in winter, it is now summer so the ground looks very different. In summer it is much more green. As you can see, the area is enormous. On the northern edge there is a cemetary where I am convinced the robbers wait. The terrain is mostly rocky, very steep in parts. There are very few people who go in there now, perhaps a couple dozen a day.

the idea behind the photo is that the police do not know what they are looking for, so they are working blind. One photo of one attacker would make a huge difference.
 

Jeremy Leach

Senior Member
Why not put up a sign that will get his attention (assuming he can read english) - "WANTED - pictures of attacker" etc etc - and position the sign in a way that he HAS to be standing on one particular spot to read it, which might make triggering a lot easier. Would be sweet justice if you got your evidence that way.
 

manuka

Senior Member
TM: Thanks for the pix (below)- but which park? African "Parks" tend to approach the size of whole countries elsewhere-Australian/Texan million acre "farms" are similar. Even the cemetry looks the size of an UK town.

This thing looks too big for hobbyists, & IMHO requires (electronic) monitoring techniques at the heavy duty level. Discussions earlier had tended to assume it was akin to a pocket handkerchief...
 

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Dippy

Moderator
I had assume he was talking aout that big brown thing with a road through the middle(?).

The irony will be the robber/robbers lying in wait watching TM installing something and then steal it.

If you are going to play with PIR in daylight with a high ambient temperature I suggest you dabble in your back garden. Just THINK about how PIR works and how its relative sensitivity changes with ambient temperature and target temperature.

Sorrry, when you said 'opaque' I thought you meant it as in the Dictionary definition:
"not transparent or translucent; impenetrable to light; not allowing light to pass through."
I didn't know you meant "80% (or whatever) Opaque".

If you get his sorted then maybe you can sell the technology to the UN who can't seem to detect dozens of Pirates in boats in the Indian Ocean :)
 

alband

Senior Member
To get his attention with the signs, how about also adding a random picture of any guy of the internet (not him) and putting it up saying:
HAVE YOU SEEN THIS MAN
That would get his attention and perhaps make him falsely confident.
 

alband

Senior Member
I've found it on google maps where you can get a bit of a closer look but not much. Just search "Johannesburg". Find where it actually says "Johannesburg" on the map and then go north about 3km and west about 3km.

Toxic: you have already taken some pictures? Can we see them?
 

w7ky

New Member
When you get the picture...

TM.. If possible, submit the pictures to an officer you know. Park patrol may be a policeman's secret job. Police here in the US are in the news regularly for working both sides of the street.

w7spy
 

slimplynth

Senior Member
would be great to have bottomless pockets, i for one would fund your project. As murder is technically illegal :D the much favoured 9mm method will have to be a back burner until the meek take over the world (if thats ok with everyone else)

But as UAVs are out of the question how about using remote sensors?

Dr Acula did some great things with these...

http://www.picaxeforum.co.uk/showthread.php?t=7701&highlight=repeater+units

the solar cells could be located well away from the main unit to make it more discrete.

an array of sensors postitioned radially, transmitting to the sign-post base? maybe having the camera mounted on a servo... though i'm guessing the sound would be a dead give away, hide the gubbins inside a stuffed pigeon.. no one would ever suspect the pigeon would talk.

if the sensor at 12 o'clock is triggered have the servo move (slowly) to point the camera in the direction of the sensor...
 

alband

Senior Member
Sounds like I wish I had one of what you just descried, except use a stepper motor instead of a servo; much quieter.

In reality, this would be quite possible - yes? However, I think it might arise some suspicion if Toxic starts ripping up signs and then stuffing electronics and remote control equipment up their holes. :D What conclusion would you draw if you heard that on the news..? :rolleyes:
 
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