Here’s a lame but useful TR trick…

Instant Surveillance Cam

I live in a house which has an awfully poor doorbell ringer. It’s very weak and I almost never hear it unless the house is completely silent. The problem is compounded by the fact that I’m typically upstairs so I really can’t hear it.

So, every time UPS is scheduled to come, I almost always miss them since I don’t hear them. That means I have to wait another day for them to deliver stuff. Of course, that’s painful since it’s usually something neat that’s coming. So, today, I have my TR on surveillance duty as seen below…

I’m simply using MSN Messenger 6.1 on the TR and on my desktop (upstairs) to monitor the action outside. It’s the webcam feature that streams the video directly. The action is surprisingly smooth and I’ve seen cars drive by and people walking their dogs.

This time, the UPS guy won’t escape from me… ...unless I have to leave the house… :(

gr00vy0ne, Good idea!!   

i’ve tried the similar trick once when i’ve to babysit my nephew.
PS: i used tr as a cam and used remote desktop connection from my desktop with wireless network to watched what’s going on

it’s neat, isn’t it. 

That’s pretty cool, UPS is never escaping me again, either. Has anybody been able to stream images from the TR camera capture to a PocketPC/Palm? I just got a 2nd-hand 3950 iPaq and bought an 802.11g card for it, and was wondering if that’s even possible. 

  ~nox

Now THAT’s geeky.  :ph34r:

That’s Geeky? This is coming from a guy with over 300 posts on a Laptop forum? hehe   (jus playin Drachen :D )

Of course, the really sad thing is that despite all my attempts at geekiness, I MISSED THE FRICKIN’ UPS GUY!

I was told by the dispatch that the driver would arrive by 1pm but they didn’t show up until nearly 4pm. It just happens that I’m stuck being a “good citizen” and doing my civic duty on jury duty this entire week. I have to be at the courthouse from 1:30pm until 5pm. Argh….oh well, at least it will be there tomorrow when I get home.

Grooyone, how do u get such a big video screen for ur webcam feature in the MSN? I thought viewing window is usually quite small. Hrm… is there something you did which I did not…

Do you see the little down arrow on all of the video windows? Simply click on it and it will let you choose Small, Medium or Large for the video size. It’s pretty straightforward. You probably need to make sure you have MSN Messenger 6.0 or 6.1 installed. I can verify that both versions have this feature. I’m not sure about previous versions.