XRay Visions of Home

June 29, 2001 - The old Christmas carol goes... "I’ll be home for Christmas, if only in my dreams." When we’re away from home, sometimes we can close our eyes and it seems as if we’re right back there. But it’s just not the same. The old adage that "absence makes the heart grow fonder," just doesn’t seem true. Anyone who’s ever been away from his or her loved ones would disagree with that adage. Absence makes the heart feel lonely, and forlorn. And the longer the absence, the worse those feelings get to be.

Curtis Bray is one of those who knows first hand what loneliness can be like. Curtis is in the Navy, which means that he can be away from home up to six months at a time. And anyone who’s ever been away for that long knows that six months can be a long time. A lot can happen in six months. Family and friends can seem so far away when he’s gone from them for so long. But Curtis has found a way to be close to his family, and to take care of his home, even while he’s on one of those six-month trips away from home.

Curtis’ solution is his XCam2 setup with XRay Vision to tie it all together. Curtis has installed cameras throughout his house so that whenever he wants to he can look in and see how things are going around the house. So no matter where he is in the world, those cameras are taking pictures of the family and sending them up to a server, and any time he gets the chance, Curtis can log on and look. So even while he’s away, he’s still near the family.

Since he has his cameras hooked up to motion sensors, there’s no worrying that the pictures will take up valuable hard disk space, because the cameras only work when they sense motion. So while the family’s away during the day at work or at school, or while they’re asleep in bed, his cameras are quietly at rest, waiting for the family to get home, or wake up in the morning. And Curtis has the fresh pictures every day so that even if he’s sailing the seven seas, he’s able to keep up with his family and friends.

This certainly makes getting home a lot easier and a lot more real then just closing your eyes and dreaming about home. Because absence doesn’t make the heart grow fonder, XRay Vision does.

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