My idea for the "Double Your Memory Pi Challenge".
Rasperri Pi is a well designed board which can be used to learn and discover many things in the electronics and programming world. It is cheap enough to be a good starting point for everybody who want to learn and to do experience without investing big amount of money. Furthermore you are not alone during your experiments due to the huge worldwide community which support you with tips, suggestions and tutorials. You can find many usefull information also on Element14 in the dedicated section.
With the latest revision, which has been manufactured with the RAM memory doubled, it is possible to explore new and more complex applications: for example we can make a complete homemade IP-based video-surveillance system. In such application the Rasperry Pi can be used as a DVR (Digital Video Recorder) using ZoneMinder; the SD memory can be used to store the recorded video files which can be reached from everywhere by using a FTP server like Vsftpd (https://security.appspot.com/vsftpd.html). ZoneMinder (http://www.zoneminder.com/) is an integrated set of applications which provide a complete surveillance solution allowing capture, analysis, recording and monitoring of any CCTV or security cameras attached to a Linux based machine; it can be used in single or multi-camera video security applications however to avoid overstress of the Rasperry PI hardware and to have a reliable system, I suggest to use only one camera. Zoneminder can be downloaded from http://www.zoneminder.com/downloads or can be installed from the repositories for Raspian users using the console and the well known command “apt get-install” (“sudo apt-get install zoneminder”) and then follow the installation instructions for the used distribution. For example if you use the Raspbian, a Debian based distribution optimized for the Rasperry PI, you can follow the installation guide for Debian (http://www.zoneminder.com/wiki/index.php/Debian). The installation procedure requires few minutes during which the user has to insert some input like mysql password.
At the end you can get access to the web interface at http://localhost/zm where you can add cameras ( you can use also USB cameras) and set the kind of action required like settings to perform recording on motion detection:
There are tips and suggestions for many kind of cameras at http://www.zoneminder.com/wiki/index.php/Hardware_Compatibility_List
To set the FTP path use “Options” and “Upload” and configure the fields in order to match with the FTP server.
My idea can be developed further, anyway I hope it can be already useful.
Lupo