Lately, I’ve been rather enthralled by the Raspberry Pi, as I’ve heard so much about them that I finally had to get one. My world has not been the same since. I have wanted to develop a deeper understanding of electronics for the longest time and this device has been the perfect context to open my eyes to the possibilities of connecting so many basic components. I started with just a basic kit with some sensors, a motor, an LCD screen, LED lights, and many other goodies. They gave me a really good idea of the common C and Pyton libraries available to program the GPIO interface. The projects at the main site were what really intrigued me and I have to tell you each one feels like a significant accomplishment. The more you get familiar with how to utilize this spectacular computer to your whim, the smarter you feel.

I could not help but to come here and share my success with a slight augmentation of the Parent Detector project. I created a Python script that expects a passive infrared motion sensor on a certain GPIO port as well as a connected Pi Camera. Using a certain Dropbox Uploader bash script, the Python script will upload the video it records to a directory path of the month and day inside the folder you setup as the Dropbox application folder for the Uploader when configuring it. Simply setup Dropbox Uploader to connect with an app in a specific folder from your Dropbox account, connect the devices, run the script and it will record video after detecting motion.

Here are some brief clips of some of the fruits of my labor. You can see just how excited I am. You can also download the full collection.