Oculus offers great control over when images are captured from your webcam. This allows you to create capture schedules as simple as one photo every hour, as well as complex schedules with specific on/off times and motion detection.

The Trigger Dialog

The default setting for when to take a picture is once every minute, but you can change this with the Take Picture popup menu. Oculus even allows custom intervals by selecting Other.... You can then enter your time rate in plain text (such as ".5 seconds" or "1 hour and 18 seconds") and Oculus will use this time interval.

If you want to control the picture trigger so that photos are only taken by a manual process, select Manual from the popup menu. If you don't want pictures taken at any time interval (for example, because you are only going to take pictures based upon motion), turn off the Time check box.

If you want Oculus to listen for sounds, check the sound option. You can view the current sound level in the status area of the Document. When the sound level goes above the level you set -- in the red area, a picture will be taken. The current sound level and the threshold you set will appear in the extended status area of the main window.

Status Area of Document Window

You can select the sound input device from the Sound or Monitors and Sound control panel.

To have Oculus check for motion between the images that it captures, check the Motion Detection box. For motion detection, you will often want to have Oculus check for motion more frequently than the normal timed interval capture. You can set the motion check interval from the popup menu and can enter your own interval just as you do for the normal timed interval. Be aware that the process of detecting motion can be slow, especially on lower speed computers. You may not want to set the motion detection interval to be too small if you will be using your computer for other things as well.

As an example, you might want to take a picture every hour regardless of whether there is motion detected. You may also want to check for motion (and take a picture) every 30 seconds. This will result in a webcam that will take pictures every hour unless there is motion in the room, when it will take pictures as often as every 30 seconds.

Oculus detects motion by comparing two images and comparing them for differences. When the difference gets beyond a certain point, Oculus considers that motion has happened. You can set Oculus to compare each image from the last one it checked, or compare to the last image that was actually saved. If an object was moving slowly across the room, in the first case, each small motion might not trigger Oculus, whereas in the second case, as soon as the object moved away far enough from the original position, Oculus would consider motion to have happened and would take a picture.

Oculus performs the motion detection by dividing the image up into "zones" and checking for differences in each zone. If any zone is more different than the amount you specify in the Sensitivity slider, motion will have been detected.

When trying out motion detection, it can be useful to turn on the frame difference option from the Document dialog. This will allow you to see what Oculus notices as different, and will show you which zone the most change was noticed in.

If your view from your camera has a area that often has motion that you are not interested in (such as a window that looks out onto a busy street), Oculus allows you to ignore motion in any area through the Motion Mask dialog. You enable the motion mask dialog by selecting Use Mask in the Trigger dialog, and then set the mask area itself through the Motion Mask menu item.

The Motion Mask Dialog

Use the line tool to draw any number of polygons that represent the area of motion you wish to ignore. Click to define corners for the polygon. Double-click to complete the shape. Use the reshape tool to adjust these polygons. Use the invert tool if you wish to flip the meanings of the polygon (ie, areas once ignored will be considered while those considered will be ignored). Oculus will ignore any motion within the area that is obscured.

You can move a polygon by clicking on it. You can delete a selected polygon by pressing the delete key. You can move selected polygons by using the arrow keys. If you use shift-arrow, you can move the area by 5 pixels at a time.

You may wish to have your camera active only at certain times of the day or on certain days of the week. Use the Schedule dialog to adjust these settings. Dragging and selecting within the dialog controls which times are considered active and which are not. Areas shaded black are times when the camera is active.

The Schedule Dialog

Clicking in the time areas to the left or the right of the area, allows you to select or de-select that time for the entire week. Clicking on the days of the week will select/deselect the entire day.

If you have a camera which is pointed outside, you may want to have it be active based upon when the sun is out. Select Daytime from the popup menu, and Oculus will automatically calculate for each day when the camera can be on. If you find you are seeing more or less of the daytime than you would wish, you can adjust this up or down by entering a positive or negative number of minutes into the extended by field. You can also select Nighttime to create a camera that is only on at night.

Sunrise and sunset calculations are based upon the settings in the Map control panel. If you have not installed this control panel, you may need to install it from your original System Software CD ROM. If you don't set the location with the map control panel, the sunrise and sunset times will be incorrect.

or: What to do when the camera is Inactive

Oculus has the ability to provide a different experience for your users when your camera is offline or inactive. By default, users will just see the last image captured or uploaded, but this may not be informative enough for them. They may be watching the webcam for hours when it is off and become frustrated, never to return to your site. You can use the Active Times area of the Document dialog to control what will be displayed when your camera is offline or inactive.

The Document Dialog

The default behavior of Oculus is to upload a captured image with the inactive captions you have set up. You can create a custom picture (perhaps of artwork) and have that uploaded instead.

A good example of inactive captions might be a Filter effect that makes the entire image black and white, followed by some colored captions on top that tell your users that your camera is offline. You might also use a QuickCaption to allow you to quickly enter a comment for when you expect to return.

You can choose to have whichever offline behavior you have selected to be automatically uploaded when you Quit Oculus. This is useful if you run Oculus intermittently. If you mostly leave Oculus running, and wish to be able to quickly reboot without waiting for the final upload, you probably will want to leave this option off.

Some camcorders will go inactive after a period of time and result in a solid blue image being captured. If you are using one of these for your video source, you can select a size from the Inactive popup menu in this dialog. Images that are too small (because they are solid blue) will not upload as a result.

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