After a while, here is why I got a TV tuner for my Linux laptop, took screen captures and wrote a script to add a timestamp on pictures … I wanted to know how my (then 5-month-old) son was sleeping (his mom can be reassured: I was not planning to put electrodes on his scalp 😉 ).

var s1 = new SWFObject(“../videos/player.swf”,”ply”,”360″,”240″,”9″,”#FFFFFF”);
s1.addParam(“allowfullscreen”,”false”);
s1.addParam(“allowscriptaccess”,”sameDomain”);
s1.addParam(“flashvars”,”file=../videos/081129-night.flv&image=../videos/081129-night.jpg”);
s1.write(“container”);

Following this, I had interesting discussions with my dad about sleep patterns in babies. It could also be interesting to hybridize what we did for Gemvid and this simple solution in order to be able to quantify human/baby movements during sleep. My little knowledge of OpenCV can then come in handy for the motion and pattern detection …