Capturing a video of a WD

[Ryan11]

I want to try and capture my WDs happening so I can get an idea of different sleeping positions / timings to see what affects their onset. But I’m clueless about the different types of night cams you can get.

Ideally I would want something that is capable of capturing a full 8 hours of sleep, so maybe I’d need a large capacity SD card or external drive too. Infrared / low light too as I can’t sleep with the lights on.

I’m not sure about getting one that is motion sense only, as it may not pick up on very small movements.

Does anyone have any recommendations?

[caveywavy]

A number of years ago I built my own night vision camera system using a Raspberry Pi 3 with the noIR camera (No IR means it doesn't have the IR filter and will capture with IR illumination). It works well and I still use it! If you want to build one, choose one of the older, non-Debian releases (they used to call it Rhaspian). I'm sure it could be made to work with the Debian-based versions, I just have never tried it. Below is the link where there is an installer, an instruction PDF, and a sample video recorded with it. It really does work well! Though the sample video does not show it, it does put a copyright and timestamp into the top of the video frame now.

The simplest configuration is just an ethernet cable between the Pi and a laptop--no worries about data leaks in that scenario! Jessieboy used to use an off-the-shelf IR security camera, but I don't recall the brand. I have had hopes of building one with a Pi W2, but just have never found the time to work on that project. Here is the link:

https://c.mail.com/@651814772995531783/ ... 05lvpNgVzg

[Mikey42]

I experimented with recording myself sleeping. Used a cheap camcorder that had night vision like this:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07ZQ2T3Q6
and an additional IR light on top to help with illumination:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B085HN1126

I was able to get a full night's sleep no problem with a 128GB SD card.

[DryGuy]

A number of years ago I built my own night vision camera system using a Raspberry Pi 3 with the noIR camera

Inspired by that post, I made one too a few years ago.
I made 2 really long posts about it back on the old forum, but I'm not sure if either of them made it into the archive.

To recap...

Having a USB webcam with OBS running on your PC is (IMO) the most manageable way to setup a long recording. You don't have to worry about storage space or battery power. You can tweak your encoder settings to get the file-size you want. For example, if you need to set up a 10 hour recording, you can pick your settings, record for 1 minute and see how big of a file that creates (then do the maths of x60 minutes x10 hours). I like to target maybe 70GB for a 10 hour recording, but you might not need even that, since it depends on how high quality your camera is to begin with. I think I was ending up with maybe 30GB for my Raspberry Pi recordings, since the resolution/quality isn't all that high no matter how high your encoder settings.

The Raspi hardware is actually pretty simple to setup if you use ShowMeWebcam. The GitHub page might look intimidating, but you basically need to burn an image to an SD card, and the whole thing just works. You plug it in via USB, and boom, you have a night-vision webcam. Be warned however, (at the time of writing) this project has NOT been updated for the more modern Raspberry Pi's, so if you're purchasing a Pi specifically for this, you need to be very sure about what you're buying. There are ready-made USB webcams that have IR illumination, but I haven't ventured to try any (since their quality doesn't seem much better than what I have now).

Really it all comes down to whether or not you can sleep with the lights on. I really struggle with that, so the night-vision is a must-have for me. But it might not be for you. In which case a normal webcam (with an accompanying USB ring-light) might work just fine.
Either way, I love OBS as the backbone of the recording operation. I also highly recommend a program called LosslessCut for chopping your 10 hour recording down to only the best parts (quickly and without needing to re-compress). Then loading it into Handbrake if you need to compress it further.

I've recorded probably over 100 nights at this point (across various ab-streaks), so I've been quite interested in finding an optimal solution to this.
I haven't managed to capture a wet-dream, because I still haven't had one, but the recordings of my random night boners are on-point.
The other major challenges are sleeping in weird new positions (so the camera can see your crotch), and sleeping with minimal blanket coverage, which is a total nightmare if you live in a colder climate. Many times I've woken up after a few hours sleep, and my pelvis is uncomfortably cold after hours of exposure, and I can't get back to sleep unless I cover up (and abandon the recording).

It can be pretty challenging, but I'd start with OBS and slowly build-up a recording process, find out what works or doesn't, and build-out from there.
Bare in mind that I haven't tried a lot of other solutions, so there may be other, better suggestions here. Some of which I'll be looking into myself.

[DryGuy]

I was able to get a full night's sleep no problem with a 128GB SD card.

That's a good point, SD cards have gotten so large and cheap now, that storage is likely not even going to be a problem. Even a 256GB micro-SD is trivially cheap.

I've been very wary of touching any of the no-name camcorders on Amazon, since I trust very little about their claimed specs. And it's a wash for me at that point. 4k, suuure... like my tablet from 2012 does "1080p"... I've seen how that looks. Still, the Raspberri Pi's night-vision camera isn't great either. So maybe this would still be a decent option.

Do you have any night-vision test footage you could share? (just for comparison)
Does the battery last all night?
Is there auto-focus?

[Mikey42]

Do you have any night-vision test footage you could share? (just for comparison)
Does the battery last all night?
Is there auto-focus?

All the footage I have was naked, so I'd only be possibly willing to share a short clip in the MPA.
The battery does not last all night, but the camera I was using was able to run while connected to a USB charger and that kept it going.
It has auto-focus, but it's about the same quality auto-focus as a cell phone.

[aze]

I remember in the old forum someone writing in detail about all the difficulties in making a video like that. But I guess the biggest one is motivation when you go 20 days without a wet dream and you don’t know if you should continue.

A few key points I vaguely remember are, the battery level of the device you’re using, the camera angle, lighting and hard drive space. One solution was to instead of making a video, just take a bunch of pictures once every while.

[DryGuy]

All the footage I have was naked, so I'd only be possibly willing to share a short clip in the MPA.

Oh I just thought you might have some random scrap footage of nothing in particular. Never mind, it's probably too much of a logistical headache to host a video for this anyway. I'm not completely thrilled with the quality of the RasPi camera, so I'm curious about other cameras. Even 1080p would be great, if it was actually 1080p and not some blurry upscaled excuse for 1080p.

I guess the biggest one is motivation when you go 20 days without a wet dream and you don’t know if you should continue.

Yeah it's rough, if recording has even a small negative impact on your sleep, it can get really grating after a while. Ideally I'd establish some predictable pattern of having WDs first, so I could narrow it down to a window of a few days where I could record. Even if it was predictable to within 2 weeks, it would be better than trying to record 60+ nights in a row. (Because of course, it would be bound to happen the one night you didn't record. )

Recording my sleep like this has made me envy back-sleepers who can sleep with the lights on. It would make things so much easier. I wonder if I could re-train myself to sleep like that. I've tried using a sleep-mask (so I can use lights), but having something on my face that I have to keep fussing with and re-adjusting was probably worse than the light to begin with.

[Ryan11]

Thanks all for your replies, I’m going to look into this now and see what equipment is available.

Apart from the WD aspect I’m genuinely curious to see how I move around through the night- sometimes I wake up with all of the bedsheets tangled and on the other side of the bed, so I guess I move around a lot

[DryGuy]

Thanks all for your replies, I’m going to look into this now and see what equipment is available.

Let us know if you find anything interesting. This thread can be a useful resource for people in future.