Overview / Usage

The project addresses the two aspects of home security and home reunions.

When we have multiple houses to manage but we cannot be at every place, we have this need to protect not only our homes but our families especially if there are seniors , disabled, differently abled and children at unreachable locations.

We also have this need for family get-togethers where we cannot be present.

I wanted to do this project as a hobby but also I felt there is a need for cheap and simple solution to protect my two houses separated by huge distance. I also see this project as an opportunity to reach out to our humans and also a potential business opportunity.

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Methodology / Approach

The way this project works is with the help of cameras and voice devices such as Alexa that are linked over the internet to some cloud backend such as Open Visual Cloud.

I initially started this project using Open CV + Raspberry Pi + Mounted Camera and it was able to capture video and upload it to local pen drive and over a drive folder and even post it to FB.

I wanted to add face recognition software as a back end to recognize strangers and send me their images. I wanted a way to approve the images , if I recognize the strangers.

The idea expanded later. I felt what if I wanted to connect to my mom who is not computer savvy. I wanted her to have the ability to connect me via a simple voice command. If she faces her camera and calls my name in America, I should be able to hear her voice in India as if she is present in my house. Since she is all the time worried about me being alone, I could let her watch me live for some time in the day. Watching your kids being safe is in itself a great relieve for parents. Watching your kids is also a healing especially to aging parents who wants to be with their children all the time.

In India, many adult children for some reason send their parents to aged homes. A precious social bond is lost and an unnecessary void created. My software and the modern technologies could fill up that void to some extent or maybe eliminate it all together. We can help sad and insecure families being happy and safe.

One could also integrate calling a police via a simple voice command.

For capturing the voice commands, I thought of integrating an Alexa skill that becomes integral part of my family in a seamless manner just as we make animals like dogs and cats part of our family.

I have never got time to continue this project further neither my students have picked up on this project of mine so far. I also face financial challenges at times though my sister has helped me get two versions of raspberry pi hardware from America. I initially used Adrian's code from PyImageSearch. He provided the tutorial code and it works beautifully.

I felt we can give a look at how we can integrate or redesign this concept using Open Visual Cloud as it seems to have all the ingredients such as OpenVino, Video encoders, decoders, inference, renderers and so forth

If any business or educational institute wants to take such a project forward, then maybe I can guide them further.

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Technologies Used

Currently Open CV, Raspberry Pi and a mounted camera is used.

But for this project, I may want to research and use Intel technology only as it has been reliable brand of all times and also I am submitting this project on intel site.

Intel OpenVino could be used for local image and video capture via Raspberry Pi or any appropriate Intel IoT hardware that has a mounted camera

Open Visual Cloud for backend video processing could be used. Earlier my options were to use AWS cloud managed services and Amazon Alexa skill. One will have to do a prototype implementation to see what works best versus what does not work.