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Posted

Ok Dogomaniacs, I'm a little disappointed that my search did not turn up more threads discussing ways to watch your doggies while you are at work.

My 14 week old puppy now spends the entire day in his crate, but he does get 2 visitors a day who take him out and play with him for roughly 30 minutes at a time. When he gets better at housetraining we will leave the crate open and grant him access to the entire kitchen. He won't have unsupervised run of the house for a looong time, if ever. My wife and I both find ourselves sitting at work thinking about him and hoping that everything is okay. We would both be able to relax a lot if we could just see him. So that got me thinking......

Does anyone have, or know a way to set up a webcam or security camera so that you can watch live video from your computer at work? The kitchen is about 50 feet from our computer so the camera would need to be wireless. I guess the video would have to be fed onto a website (or something) so that we could log on from work and watch.

Has anyone thought of this? Does anyone do this? Does anyone know how to do this without spending too much $$$? Are we nuts for wanting to do this? I just searched around the web for a few minutes and found some systems that look like they should work, but they are many hundreds of dollars. Do I really need to spend $400?

I'm laughing right now as I picture myself screaming at my computer monitor as I watch little Miles start to squat to take a dump right in the middle of the kitchen. My co-workers will lock me up.

Obviously I don't intend to be able to speak to my dog, but I would love to watch him and make sure that everything is okay.

Thoughts?

Posted

:lol: :lol:

Boy I thought [b]I[/b] was an overprotective dog mommy.

What you want to do sounds possible but I really don't think it's necessary. I would only advise you do this if you have someone you would be able to call and say I need you to go help my puppy RIGHT now or else your co-workers WILL end up having you locked up.

:angel:

Posted

Well, my mom has a Web cam (it was about $100) and has it connected to her Yahoo profile. I can look at her Webcam while I'm logged on to the Yahoo Messenger; I would think you could do that, but you'd have to be logged on to Yahoo at home all day and this would probably entail keeping a computer near your puppy.

Posted

I have chatted with a rottie owner--four of 'em--who hooked up his regular webcam and called it the rottie cam. He has it running on his website 24/7 and has all his friends and online buddies view it daily and email him at work if things seem to be going not quite right.

Guest Anonymous
Posted

I agree. The cheapest way to do it would be to run a web-cam on the kennel through a free messenger like Yahoo.

You'd need a DSL line or cable modem. If you tried running it through a standard dial-up modem it would probably end up getting disconnected at some point. Don't they always?

Posted

I would be way yo distracted if I watched Colby from work.

What are you going to do when you catch him doing something wrong?
I saw let what he is doing when you are not looking should be his secret
:wink:

I would also be jealous of her lying around...

Posted

I would be way yo distracted if I watched Colby from work.

That was supposed to say "way too distracted...."

I had a kitten walking across my keyboard and didn't notice the typo :oops:

Posted

It's true I am house sitting in a zoo! There are 2 kittens that they thought were both girls - turns out 1 is a boy and they fight all day.
Colby likes to pull them around by their tails and chase them all over.
Then we go to the ultimate in Groughy Dogs.... Shes a 13 year old Doberman mixed with a Lab. Hates Colby and eats all the cats food.
The cats in return eat the dogs food.

Anyone want to come to the ZOO?????? :drinka: (thats me in about 5 mins as I watch another cat getting dragged across the room.) At least its not rocks or pebbles.....

Posted

[quote]If you have DSL, it would be VERY easy to do.[/quote]
Wouldn't cable be just as easy.
I know of a few people who do something similar.

Great I just read this post to my crazy freind and now she wants to setup a MyrtleCam - Myrtle already has her own email address - and actually gets mail from strangers - Myrtle is a FISH!

Posted

Yeah, cable would work too.

Actually, its easy as long as you have a static IP address, as long as your ISP hasn't blocked incoming traffic using stateful packet inspection on their routers.

You just need a wireless camera, an A/V capture card(some graphics cards have on-board support), and a webcam daemon.

Cost: under $200.

Possibly also a dynamic DNS service if you're on a DHCP host.

Posted

AYB - I wish I understood what you were talking about. I'm pretty tech savvy but this is beyond me.

Everyone else - I totally agree that work might suffer as I check on my pup every 30 seconds. But I would think that most of the time he'd be sleeping or playing with a toy and that can't be much fun to watch.

The wife and I are still considering some form of surveillence, but the more we get used to leaving Miles for the day, the less we feel like we need to watch him and know what he's doing every minute. We do have cable modem so bandwidth wouldn't be a problem, it seems as though the price of a wireless (we aren't running cable across our kitchen and living room) camera might just be too much to bear.

Interestingly, this is from today's Philadelphia Inquirer. Seems I'm not the only one who wants to know what is going on in my house while I'm at work. While they don't specifically mention pets, this is exactly what I was talking about.

[url]http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/business/6319280.htm[/url]

Posted

I'd buy a WintTV PCI card from CompUSA, and a wireless camera off E-Bay.

It should be about $100-$150 total.

Install the WinTV card in your computer and connect the wireless camera through it.

You can find free webcam software if you search for it on google.

If you are using DHCP, you'll need to use a dynamic DNS service like [url]http://www.dyndns.org[/url]. Its free to use(at least it was when I signed up).

Posted

I think that's invading pups privacy :lol: [b]Just kidding[/b] It's a good idea. I've thought about it but Elle runs around all day and doesn't hang out where the pc is so I'd be watching my empty bedroom. Good Luck :bday:

Posted

You know, I wonder how hard it would be to just build a dog-proofed mobile robot that you could use to watch after him online. You might even be able to give him treats and play with him over the internet!

You'd have to make the frame out of thick Lexan or something to stand up to chewing. The parts would have to be shock proof so they can be knocked around a bit without damage.

They'd probably be scared of it, though.

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