Vitamin D People Recognition Software

If you haven't seen this yet, you should check these guys out. Pretty cool stuff. The software monitors a webcam output and triggers when humans enter the picture. It works REALLY well. I've sent them a note trying to push them to offer applescripts as a trigger option, please do the same.

How cool would courtesy lighting be if it were slaved to people recognition and not just motion?

Heres the link: http://www.vitamindinc.com/

Cheers,

J

Wow, that looks pretty cool.

The next step is actual facial recognition. Imagine triggers based on WHO comes to the front door. I've got my remote flame throwers ready for that feature!

The price is certainly right -- ZERO for a single camera with a smaller sized (QVGA (320x240)) picture. But, one caveat, the software seems to consume a LOT of system resources. On my Mac Mini (2G core 2 duo) with one ethernet camera, Vitamin D: runs 6 processes and burns around 70% of the CPU time in the foreground and 45% when it is minimized to the dock (with 200% CPU being available).

I will stick with EvoCam. It's a CPU pig too, but I solved that problem by triggering on a motion detector and starting EvoCam to record and then shutting it off after the motion ends. True, I lose a couple of seconds of video right after the trigger, but I don't think that is too serious.

The documentation says it will consume resources, but I've got it running on two cameras (Axis 207MWs) on an older model intel iMac and it's not even noticeable. When they trigger there is a slight spike. I do think I'm capturing mjpeg vs mpeg-4. I guess performance varies. I would invite you to read the white paper on their detection technology. They can identify hands, feet, and heads and discriminate them from random (perhaps wind caused) movement (or even pets). This alone is a giant step for me. Motion detection I've used in the past would trigger as the setting sun changed the background enough to cause a trigger. That was very frustrating. Again, it's only marginally useful until it supports applescript triggers, I hope that will come along shortly.

Thanks, nice software! can anyone help me with an applescript so that I can launch and activate Vitamin D and also deactivate it?

Just an update. The frame rate of your cameras directly affects processor usage. I bumped my cameras to 30 and am now seeing 20% usage on each proc. Still totally usable, but much more noticeable.

Re applescript to launch. Use Automator, it's really simple and will do what you want.

IMHO 5 fps is adequate for home surveillance - good imagine quality is far more important than frame rate when it comes to identifying a suspect or license plate. I'd rather have more cameras at a lower frame rate.

I guess it depends on the situation. In Vegas you'd need full frame rate to see what people are doing. Personally I am only interested in reviewing archives after the fact, not the live view.