Motion: Your Eye in the Sky for Computer Room Surveillance

One non-software tweak I have considered but not yet implemented is a motion sensor for the light in my server room. This neatly solves the problem of making sure there is enough light in the room when Motion records an event. Something moves in the room, the lights come on and Motion records. Motion-sensitive light switches can be found at hardware stores for around $15 and require only basic wiring skills.

For now, I simply let my storage area /var/log/vcr fill with movies and delete them manually on occasion. It probably makes sense to set up an automated mechanism to handle this. My current thinking is that movies should be deleted after 30 days. Obviously, this depends on your particular needs.

Several experimental mjpeg support patches have appeared on the mailing list recently. As I mentioned earlier, mjpeg means that Motion pulls a continuous stream of images off the camera instead of requesting them one by one. This should provide much smoother resulting videos, although current Motion videos from netcams do have an enjoyable Keystone Kops feel to them.

Active development continues on Motion. The mailing list (see Resources) is an excellent place to ask questions and find out about current development. Most of what I've learned about Motion has come from reading the mailing-list archives.

Motion provides a solution for one of the most vexing problems we face in the computer industry, too much data. What good is information such as video imagery if there's more of it than you ever could watch? With a little bit of image analysis, Motion quickly eliminates the boring, unchanging video you don't care about. The results are more effective server room monitoring and more time for you to work on other projects.

Resources for this article: www.linuxjournal.com/article/7966.