Tip: Photo Documenting your work: the easy way.

[Phil]

I really dread not having enough photos of me doing work. I wish I could get my wife to take more photos of me, but she's busy working on her PhD and I'm busy doing... Well I'm just busy!


So I got the idea of using a webcam to document my build. I found an application called Dorgem and now use it to snap photos of me working on the airplane every 5 minutes (when motion is detected in the garage). At the most, that's 12 photos per hour. But I'm going to get caught on camera doing some work.

It might make for a really neat high-speed youtube contruction video later too.

I have an old webcam but I might go out and purchase a new one with a wider angle of view. But for now, this one will be fine.

The directions and download links can be found here.

http://www.simplehelp.net/2006/09/2...tion-detecting-and-recording-security-camera/

But I'm really looking forward to snapping a few photos and being able to prove I actually did the work in all phases of the build.

You might want to take the idea and run with it too.

Phil


Heres a few photos from earlier tonight cleaning up the garage. Gotta make room for the new fuse that's headed this way in the couple of weeks.

Enjoy:

 

[John Courte]

Wow. That is one clean shop. I think you just set a new benchmark: It's not clean until it's 'barefoot clean.'

 

[llavalle]

I've had a similar setup running for a couple of months now. It snaps pictures at 2min30 interval and each 5min one is uploaded to my web site.

I use YawCam it's free.

Some examples

You can find the link in my signature.

 

[MNForrest]

Video from Picss

I really dread not having enough photos of me doing work. I wish I could get my wife to take more photos of me, but she's busy working on her PhD and I'm busy doing... Well I'm just busy!


So I got the idea of using a webcam to document my build. I found an application called Dorgem and now use it to snap photos of me working on the airplane every 5 minutes (when motion is detected in the garage). At the most, that's 12 photos per hour. But I'm going to get caught on camera doing some work.

It might make for a really neat high-speed youtube contruction video later too.

I have an old webcam but I might go out and purchase a new one with a wider angle of view. But for now, this one will be fine.

The directions and download links can be found here.

http://www.simplehelp.net/2006/09/2...tion-detecting-and-recording-security-camera/

But I'm really looking forward to snapping a few photos and being able to prove I actually did the work in all phases of the build.

You might want to take the idea and run with it too.

Phil


Heres a few photos from earlier tonight cleaning up the garage. Gotta make room for the new fuse that's headed this way in the couple of weeks.

Enjoy:

Phil - It's pretty easy job to turn a numeric series of JPEG's into a video. Let me know if I can help you out with that.

Forrest

 

[frankh]

I love

The TV and boombax on thier own little shelf up out of the way..

Nice touch!

Frank

 

[Phil]

Wow. That is one clean shop. I think you just set a new benchmark: It's not clean until it's 'barefoot clean.'

Yeah, I keep it pretty clean all the time. If I didn't try to stay on top of it, I know I'd let it go and then it would be a disaster to build in.

So every night (almost) the tools go back in to their approrpiate places, the benches are cleaned, and the floor is swept. Honestly it probably takes me 5 minutes every night, but I know it saves me that much time in searching for tools and trying to make space in a dirty/clutered environment. It's time well spent.

Believe it or not, there are some days I do my building barefooted. My feet are tough as nails. But if I'm doing something with a bunch of shavings on the ground, the shoes still go on.

 

[miyu1975]

my dad always said...Every tool has a place and every place has a tool....And you (I) had better put every tool back in its place when done with it.

I still go by that rule.

 

[Webb]

Just make sure you're out of the picture when you're scratchin' your fanny.

 

[SHIPCHIEF]

I try to take some pictures every day that I work on my -8.
I load them into "my pictures" files. The files all stay together, named in date order; starting (RV-8) and the date (2009-08-22).
Unfortunately, I'm not in many of the pictures. But it's pretty easy to see the whole thing is going together at my house.
My shop looks like the proverbial shipyard. You won't be seeing and 'show us your shop' pics from me!
Barefoot in the shop! Ha!

 

[Phil]

The TV and boombax on thier own little shelf up out of the way..

Nice touch!

Frank

Thanks Frank.

That give me a chance to keep building during football and baseball season.

We have DirecTv here at the house and instead of putting a satellite reciever (and paying the price for it) in the garage, I installed a video transmitter in the master bedroom and put the video reciever in the garage. If you look closely, you'll see it sitting on top of the TV. The reciever also has the IR fuctionality built into it, so I can shoot IR signals back to the bedroom from the remote control and ultimately drive the satellite reciever from the garage. Pretty nice... They're available at Best Buy for around a hunderd bucks.

Here's the latest model - mine is an earlier model.

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage...itter&lp=1&type=product&cp=1&id=1051806327058

There's one rule in the garage and it cost me SEVERAL replacement parts to figure it out.

RULE #1) Don't build when a team you really care about is playing. Unless the team is winning easily.

I've been so frustrated in some games that I quit listening to that inner voice I've learned to listed to when building and ultimately kept pushing my limits. Next thing you know, I've screwed something up. So I don't build unless things are going well.

Honestly!

 

[Phil]

Phil - It's pretty easy job to turn a numeric series of JPEG's into a video. Let me know if I can help you out with that.

Forrest

Forrest,

I'm interested in learning more. What application would you suggest and what naming convention should I be using early in the project to make the sequential alignment of the photographs simple and easy to import serially into the application?

 

[Phil]

Just make sure you're out of the picture when you're scratchin' your fanny.

Actually I have a couple of other concerns now too. I've been known to go to sleep trying to solve a problem and then I wake up with the answer. Next thing I know, I'm in the shop in the middle of the night doing the work.

Working in the shop typically involved getting dressed to work in the shop. But at 3AM and with no kids, who's really going to get dressed up?

So yeah, I need to change my mode of operation a bit.

 

[BoilermakerRV]

Great Idea

This is a great idea. I've downloaded both applications listed in the posts above. Yawcam doesn't work very well on my laptop (HP running Windows Vista), but the other option that uses Dorgem works very well.

Anyone know of any other applications that might be worth trying?

 

[Phil]

Now that I've had it running for a couple of days, the only issue I've discovered is that daylight & shadows trigger the motion sensor part of the application. (My garage has windows)

So I have sunrise and sunset photos of the tailcone, with nothing else changing.

So today I took a soft-side koozie (or coolie cup - if you're my wife) and I put it over the camera as a sleeve. This should stop any error photos caused by changes in daylight.

When I start building, I just pull the cover off and put it back on when I'm done.

Phil

 

[llavalle]

I had a similar problem with light changes. In my case, the webcam is part of my laptop's screen. I just turn YawCam off at the end of the work session and turn it back on when I get in.

Michael : what kind of problems you're having with Yawcam? My laptop is a cheap Acer also running Vista and everything is fine.

I don't know of any other programs. Both YawCam and Dorgem are deprecated : they are not maintained anymore.