Ok, so for Christmas, my sister got me one of those cool gel-based Ant Farms you see on ThinkGeek. (Thanks, sis!) So what do I do? Webcam!
So, I've got this thing in a cardboard box, with a webcam leading in. This webcam is connected to my computer via a 50 ft USB extension cord, and I've already got a simple Python script that will use fswebcam (really cool program, btw...) to capture images every 5 seconds, and store them in an ordered directory structure, with 'cur.jpg' always pointing to the most recent pic. Then, every 10 seconds, it uploads that picture onto my server. I am crazy excited about this project. I've only got a few things left to do:
- I want my program to use lzma+tar to compress older folders in the directory structure. That way, my program will only use up 13GB/month, instead of 16GB/month.
- I want my program to have a nicer interface.
- I would like to replace my current webcam with something with a higher resolution. (Camcorder, maybe?)
- I need to get some ants.
Once I'm done with the program, I'll upload the code. Then, I'll get the ants, and I'll try to keep my computer up and running until all the ants are dead. (Should be 1-3 months.) Then, I can merge all of these images together to make a short movie following their hive's construction. It's kind of amazing just how much data this will be though... Given a 2 month run and an output framerate of 50fps, the movie will be nearly 6 hours long! I'm going to need to do some serious trimming...
But until then, I'll leave you with my most recent capture:
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