I'm sure that is possible. The only point that I don't think ARC could cover is emailing on alerts (although it can tweet).

Also, if it has a high power spot light why would an IR video camera be required? The spot light should illuminate the movement for a normal camera to see clearly (and give a better image).

The turret would be simple enough, a simple pan/tilt should do the trick. Activating the spotlight would be possible however you may require relays and transistors to do so but it's still possible. Remote access is built in to ARC, just set up the router and PC correctly and you can access from any browser. Email alerts - as mentioned above. However, if you used an IP camera and tapped in to it's live stream for ARCs camera function you may be able to use the IP camera's built in functions which may include email. Foscam ones do, and they work with ARC. Different positions would be simple if using a simple pan/tilt bracket - just remember to disable motion detection when moving to avoid false positives.

As for the paintball idea, I'm no lawyer so don't take my word for it but surely if it's non-lethal and it's reasonable force (and this would be less than in my opinion) then it's legal provided it's not a booby trap. It may pay to look in to it as it may actually be legal (you may need signs up warning of it).

Long story short, I'm sure it's all possible :)

If you decide to go ahead with paint ball gun, check out this ammo.. http://www.nelsonpaint.com/pellet-mark.html

Permanent fluorescent paint, so once you have marked a thief, the police will have easy evidence at least for a day or two.

Alan

I say save your money and time and energize the copper. A few of these and the thefts will stop:

Well, maybe not. Ya cant stop stupid.

Hi All

Thanks for your replies.

Rich -The reason for activating the spot light would be to give them the element of surprise, like they are being watched.

I actually have a Foscam HD wireless security camera that i was wanting to use, to i am glad to hear that it is supported.

I intend to further investigate the paint ball idea in the future!

Thetechguru - Thanks, that will be a good one!

dschulpius - We were thinking about doing this, again the legal issue is a concern as in South Africa, they will lock me up for setting up a booby trap, but set a copper thief free the next day.

Thanks for all your feedback.

Being from South Africa originally I can completely understand the experience.

One thing that for some reason seemed fairly effective for a prior neighbor of mine was placing a few beware of the snake signs. (King Cobra sign works) Someone broke into houses next to mine and his more than once but for some reason not his.

Then again he did breed snakes and some where lose in the house so they may have tried to break in and had their minds changed for them once they ran into his pets. :D

Hi Darathian

We were actually thinking of hiring a snake catcher to walk around the area with a few snakes where the bergies (home less people) were camping up against our premises and telling him that he had been hired to come catch them.

My neighbour 8 houses down has a few snake signs up.

@Dave, you're right, you can't stop stupid.

This guy learnt his lesson though!

Yes, I'm the Lineman for a large power company here in the Midwest, USA. I work everyday maintaining and building our power grid. It is a epidemic here with people stealing copper right off the poles and we have had a couple people hurt. It's hard to feel sorry for them but I do understand times are hard and they see it as easy money. Sadly its more dangerous than most of them understand. Part of the blame goes to the salvage companies that turn a blind eye to where they get the copper from. Don't know what the answer is but I do know I spend a lot of time repairing what these guys steal. Sometimes they break into our yard here at work and try to roll out big reals of copper wire. Sometimes they make it and sometimes they get caught. We have security cameras all over our building with security companies watching monitors real time and sometimes they don't even see it happening. Must be in the bathroom or doing something more important at the time.

@Darathian Ha ha ha.. My Wife is from South Africa and when she lived there they always had beware of dog or snake signs. Apparently the snake ones always worked better!

Worth noting, any discussions of using the EZ-B and any sort of weaponry will be deleted immediately, so please keep the discussion on lights!

Thanks Mark for the note. To to be clear, my intentions are to use this as a security light.

@Mark Gordon, Just to clarify, is it OK to talk about paintball, airsoft, and nerf weapons (all fairly common in robotics) as long as we aren't talking about actually arming robots (a violation of Asimov's three laws) or is any discussion of weaponized robot combat now prohibited?

Thanks,

Alan

As long as the discussion doesnt involve arming Robots and using our products to do so you are good to go!

Thanks for the clarification.

Alan