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My wife asked me to film our hamster when he's active at night. I've got a webcam and a pretty bright infrared LED already, the only thing missing is some software.

There are plrenty of programs out there, but I am yet to find something that's free and runs on Windows. ZoneMinder looks great but I only have a Windows box.

Could you please recommend a free piece of software which can trigger on motion and start recording from a couple of seconds before the trigger until a couple of seconds after the motion stops? Ideally it would save each clip to a separate file.

RomanSt
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3 Answers3

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There is "Motion Detector" (at the bottom of this page), reviewed on LifeHacker.

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The LifeHacker article also points to another free motion detection tool: YawCam.

BTW how could a program "start recording from a couple of seconds before the trigger"? How could the program know that a movement will begin in a couple of seconds so it can start the recording (unless it has a psychic feature built in ;-) ) ? The recording will always start when a movement is detected.

Gareth
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Snark
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Went back to Yawcam, it has a strange interface but works as it is actually written in Java so you need to install Java first. Here is a quick tutorial on how to setup the motion detector in Yawcam

James Mertz
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Max
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have a look at AbelCam.

amongst many other features, it does this:

Motion detection / replay

Configure fixed or dynamic Motion detection level Store images on the local disk or with FTP Upload Optional email on motion detection replay detected motion

AbelCam is freeware.