Turn your iSight into your Mac’s surveillance camera

Yesterday Lifehacker featured an open-source time-lapse application, Gawker, as their download of the day. Being involved in video production I downloaded it and checked it out. I realized that this tool can be used to monitor the activities in and around your Mac, and today I am going to show you how.

I talked briefly about keeping the college student’s Mac secure yesterday, but I will go into full detail about using Gawker to the best of your ability.

Most surveillance cameras run in time-lapse mode (meaning they only record every few seconds) because no one wants to review four hours of surveillance in four hours. That is why Gawker is perfect, because you can set how often you want the software to record.

Set up

When you have downloaded Gawker you will see your computer’s iSight and your desktop, double click on the iSight icon.

This will open a window showing the video on your iSight. If you would like to set up when Gawker records, rather than manually recording, then click the more button and the schedule tab to set the start and stop time.

Note: Gawker can also be used to record the desktop in the same way.

Then click record, this will open another box asking you where to save your file and how long you wish the time lapse to be, I changed mine to 10 seconds and saved to my documents. Do not ever save to the desktop.

While in progress

While your computer is recording I strongly recommend hiding Gawker (Apple + H), if not then it will leave the window of your iSight open.

Also, I like to lock my screen to make sure no one stops the surveillance so I downloaded iAlertU another open source application that turns your Mac into a car alarm, more detail here. By arming your Mac with iAlertU you are also locking the screen and hiding the dock so Gawker goes completely unnoticed.

Closing comments

Of course Gawker was designed for stop-motion films using the iSight but I really felt that it made the perfect surveillance camera for my Mac. When I come back I watch the minute (or less) of video and make sure my computer went untouched.