Barbie Cam

Looks like you can now get Barbie with a built in camera. The camera isn't connected to the net and it only stores about 30 minutes of web quality video. This means we don't support it on sensr.net.

There is a USB connector so maybe you can hack it to be a live webcam, which we do support. :-)

sensr.net now supporting kyivstar sms

At sensr.net we received a request from one of our Ukrainian users asking us to support SMS for his local phone carrier. Luckily we're using a package called sms-fu that makes adding carriers very easy.

Our sms_fu.yml file now has these additional lines, which means our users can select the appropriate Kyivstar email to SMS gateway.

kyivstar-contract:
 name: Kyivstar (contract)
 value: @sms.kyivstar.net
kyivstar-prepaid:
 name: Kyivstar (prepaid)
 value: @2sms.kyivstar.net

Of course nothing is as simple as you might expect. We were checking numbers on the user's settings page to make sure the number was legit. Unfortunately, the site was enforcing a US centric format, 212-555-1234. I tried to add a Ukrainian format number and our site rejected it. After changing the model verifier to be more liberal, we then ran our unit tests and found that a few of them failed. We then modified the tests to match the new more liberal phone number format and all is well.

Give sensr.net a try. You can use us to archive, alert, and share your network cameras. Now even from the Ukraine!

Spycam via Sensr.net to iPad

When you create a camera on sensr.net you can now use your laptop's built in webcam. (Note that you'll need to login with Facebook Connect to activate the Add Camera link.) This can come in handy when you want to keep an eye on something. For instance, I setup my MacBook pro in the corner of the master bedroom and left it monitoring the room. It took about a minute to setup.

In the shot above you can see me viewing the "Live Preview" of the MacBook's camera on my iPad. Later you can see the cleaning lady come in and tidy up.

While in this example, I'm using the iPad as a viewer and the MacBook as the camera source, anyone can view the camera since it's on the sensr.net site. I've set this camera to public so it's open to the world. Your cameras can be private or restricted to your Facebook friends.

Setting up cameras on sensr.net is free for now. Give it a try and let us know what you think. For more details on the Live Previews feature, see this article on our sensr.net Google Group.