MotiNoti - turn your patched SE phone into a surveillance unit

[mr_lou]

Here is v0.1 of MotiNoti, a little midlet I'm developing mainly for myself. It turns my old Sony Ericsson K800 into a little surveillance unit that tries to detect motion in a room, and sends me an MMS with the picture when it detects something.

http://www.lublu.dk/MotiNoti/v0.1.jad
http://www.lublu.dk/MotiNoti/v0.1.jar

Requirements:
1) A PATCHED DEVICE TO AVOID JAVA-POPUPS
2) Working simcard in the device, and a working MMS configuration

How it works:
1) First the app waits 2 minutes before starting, so you have time to place the phone and leave the room.
2) Then it starts calibrating, by taking 50 pictures and measuring the difference in byte-values between them. This tells the phone how a room without motion "looks" like. It then assumes that a room with motion must result in a difference of 9*average.
3) Now MotiNoti starts detecting for motion.
4) If/when motion is detected, MMS is sent, and the app stops. It only sends 1 MMS.

A few pointers:
1) This is the very first dirty version of the app. Don't expect miracles.
2) Remember that "movement" is any bigger change in the picture. If you point the camera at a wall, and a strong sunlight suddenly hits the wall, then it qualifies as "movement". Therefor try to point the camera at something with a little change as possible.
3) It uses a lot of battery, so always have your charger connected, especially if you're going out of town for a few days.
4) I have been using a SE K800 for testing. Although the app should work on other devices, it might react differently. (The calibration part should adapt to different devices, but it might not).
5) Patching can be done with various apps, like e.g. DaVinci Client, or FAR Manager, or others. Note that it costs 10 euro to do with DaVinci Client. It may be free to do with other tools.

[Gryzor]

This is interesting and useful... It'd be pretty neat if it worked with Windows Mobile...

[mr_lou out of town]

When coding J2ME, you can do the things you can because of various API's on the device.
For accessing the camera, you need a certain API, and I suspect that API is missing on the built-in JVM/KVM.


But afaik there exists several JVM's or KVM's you can install on your Windows Mobile instead. One of these might have the required API, but I don't know.


Here's a link that might be useful, if you're interested. It's about 3D gaming on Windows Mobile with Java, but the list of JVM's/KVM's might also be useful for other purposes.
http://forum.xda-developers.com/archive/index.php/t-334134.html


Let me know what you find out, if you try some of those JVM's/KVM's.

[mr_lou out of town]

I've been Googling a bit now, to see if I could find some useful info.


The API I'm using for accessing the camera is JSR 135. So in short you "just" need to find a JVM/KVM that supports JSR 135.


According to http://groups.google.com/group/zxing/browse_thread/thread/ab01ce6612173c08?hide_quotes=no]this, Esmertec JVM should support it. I found Esmertec on 4shared.com, but since I don't have a Windows Mobile myself, I can't test it.


I also found http://mobilepit.com/06/install-j2me-javame-midlet-manager-in-pocket-pc-pda.html]this, seems to be another JVM/KVM that supports JSR 135.


And finally http://www.vikdavid.com/mobile/]here is some general info. They suggest the IBM J9 / WebSphere thingy, but to me it doesn't look like it supports JSR 135.


Again, let me know what you find out.

[mr_lou]

Version 0.2 is ready.

http://www.lublu.dk/MotiNoti/v0.2.jad
http://www.lublu.dk/MotiNoti/v0.2.jar

MotiNoti now autoboots when you turn on your phone, meaning you don't have to worry about the surveillance phone crashing. It just starts up again and continues surveillance.
Autostart probably doesn't work on Nokia's and Windows Mobile though. Only some platforms support it. I tested with SE K800 which works fine.

[mr_lou]

Gryzor, I've tried installing 2 other JVM's on my kidbrothers Windows Mobile phone now, and it doesn't help.

But you wouldn't want to run MotiNoti on your Windows Mobile anyway. You want to run it on some old Sony Ericsson JP-7 phone that you can pick up used cheap. Then patch it using FAR Manager or DaVinci Client or another tool.

You only use your Windows Mobile to receive the MMS sent by the SE JP-7 phone.

When I told another developer about MotiNoti, he loved the idea and wanted to make it for the iPhone. But the very groovy thing about MotiNoti is that you use an older device you probably have collecting dust in your drawer already. You don't use your modern iPhone or Android or WM device for that, and you don't spend a lot of money buying a second modern device either.

Instead you find yourself one of these devices, all from Sony Ericsson (oldest on top):
JP-7: K530, K550, K610, K770, K790, K800, K810, S500, T650, W380, W580, W610, W660, W710, W830, W850, W880, Z310, Z610, Z710
JP-8.0: G502, K630, K660, K850/K858, V640, W890/W898, W910/W908, Z750
JP-8.3: C702, C902, W760, W980, Z770, Z780, T700, W595
JP-8.4: C510, C901, C903, C905, G705, W508, W705, W715, W995, T715
JP-8.5: Yari, Aino, Hazel, Elm

- and then you patch it to remove the Java popup dialogs like "Allow this app to send MMS?", and install MotiNoti on it. It should be relative easy to find a cheap used K800 nowadays.

[Bryce]

Hi Mr Lou,
         I have both a K700 and a K800 lying around doing nothing here, which I thought about testing the software with. But then I saw that it sends MMS messages which are quite expensive, if it's sending lots of them (which I'd like it to do). Can the software be tweaked to push a stream of pictures to a PC using Bluetooth?

Bryce.

[mr_lou]

Current versions sends MMS yes, but only 1 pr. execution. So it can't empty your wallet.
When/if it detects movement, it sends an MMS and stops execution.

If you wish to use a PC for surveillance it would be better to use a webcam and other software.

In a future version of MotiNoti I'm thinking about adding the following options:
[_] Send SMS notification
[_] Send MMS with picture
[_] Send MMS with 20 second video

However, the SMS option doesn't help much in my opinion, since you won't be able to see if anything really is moving in the room, or if it's just a glitch.