5 Computer Vision Projects to Use at Home (with Some Code)

Computer vision can be used to help make your tasks at home much easier - but even more important, implementing some simple computer vision projects for practical use at home is an amazing way to familiarize yourself with AI and computer vision.

Today, building a computer vision application doesn’t require having a large amount of resources and an entire ML team. Curious about tinkering with AI while optimizing your life at home? Check out these 5 computer vision projects that are perfect for beginners - if you’re ready to start building right away, be sure to check out our Guide on Building a Computer Vision Application using Groundlight’s Python SDK.

Here’s what this post will cover:

• A List of 5 Useful Computer Vision Projects for Beginners
• How Groundlight Helps You Put These Computer Vision Projects in Your Home

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Computer Vision Projects for Beginners

One of the great things about computer vision is that it is very practical. It can be used to automate real-world tasks that you might not have thought possible to automate.
To start things off, here are some projects leveraging computer vision to help you out around the house.

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1. Get notified when your trash bins are overflowing
2. Stay motivated to do those dishes
3. Know the moment a delivery arrives at your door
4. Be notified when someone steals your parking spot
5. Detect when your dog is on the couch

Now, let's dive a little deeper on how these computer vision projects work!

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1 - Detect when your garbage or recycling bins are overflowing

You might ask why it would be necessary to build a computer vision application to notify you when your trash is full - after all, can't you just go look with your own eyes? If you have a busy household (with lots of roommates) or a hectic office, having that extra reminder really doesn't hurt. While this blog post is focused on home projects, having this type of computer vision application can also be very useful if you're a facility manager who is managing many different facilities/buildings.

This is a computer vision project by Groundlight Robotics Engineer Tim Huff that uses image classification, and it can work on trash bins with or without a lid as well as recycling bins. Tim goes through the various python command, such as using Frame grab, which is an open-source Python library designed to make it easy to grab frames (images) from cameras or streams.

Once you get this application working, you can set up notifications to your phone and get alerts on when the trash bins in your home are ready to be emptied!

Example: This Youtube video with Tim Huff, a Robotics Engineer at Groundlight, outlines step-by-step of what is needed to get this handy computer vision project in place at home or at work.

2 - Get motivated to (finally!) do those dirty dishes

Anyone who has shared a kitchen knows the frustration of encountering a sink full of dirty dishes. What if there was a better way to keep everyone accountable for keeping shared spaces clean?

This project by Groundlight Machine Learning Engineer Sunil Kumar employs computer vision algorithms and a camera to detect dirty dishes, notifying users when they accumulate and offering programmable motivational prompts to encourage cleaning.

In this example, you need two connected cameras for this computer vision project. The cameras will capture the state of your sink to detect anyone coming in to get those dirty dishes cleaned!

Example: Sunil Kunar, Machine Learning Engineer at Groundlight, used Groundlight's SDK (software development kit) to create this computer vision project application called the "Grime Guardian."

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3 - Know the moment a delivery is at your door

Theft of packages is becoming a bigger problem these days, so it's often crucial to know right away when a delivery arrives. Using a computer vision based object detection algorithm, you can create an application that notifies you when a box and/or delivery package is at your doorstep.

With only a connected camera and a computer, Groundlight makes object detection and tracking easy to set up and apply around your home. For this project, the system first trains on images of successfully delivered packages at your home. Once trained, it can identify when a package arrives at a specified location, such as your front door, and send an instant notification.

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4 - Get notified when someone steals your parking spot

What’s more annoying than when someone steals your parking spot? Tim from Groundlight AI created a computer vision project called the “Parking Spot Detector” to notify you when someone snags your parking spot, and he does it by running Groundlight on a Raspberry Pi connected to a USB camera.

A Raspberry Pi is a powerful, cheap, and compact computer with a built-in WiFi adapter. Because computer vision algorithms need computers to run on, using Raspberry Pis make it much easier to build fun and interesting projects around the home. If you want to learn more about running Groundlight’s computer vision on a Raspberry Pi, check out Groundlight’s Guide on Raspberry Pi.

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5 - Detect when your dog is on your couch

Are you trying to train your dog to stay off the couch? A computer vision model can be trained to identify whether your dog is in a particular part of your home. Object detection is used to find where your dog is in an image, and then you'll get notified if your dog is in a place where you really don't want them to be.

Example: Groundlight developed this pet detection project, a computer vision project where you can create an application that identifies if and when your dog is on the couch. The app even has a built-in command to get your dog off the couch using a voice recording. Beyond keeping track of little Fido at home, there’s a computer vision project out there to help you detect a deer and other garden pests in your yard. 

And this is just the beginning! Using algorithms like object detection, image processing and analysis and more, not to mention the right machine learning methods, the sky's the limit when it comes to what CV can do and what computer vision projects you can create at home and at work.

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Groundlight: a computer vision company

Groundlight, a Seattle-based company specializing in computer vision, boasts a team of dedicated innovators. Our work is to help you streamline the training and machine learning process so you can quickly and efficiently implement any important computer vision project, whether it's with your business, discovering a new hobby, or with tasks at home.

Are you a developer, and want to make the most of your Smart Home? Visit groundlight.ai to try Groundlight’s computer vision for free, whether you want to dive into a new hobby at home or find a new way to automate an (annoying) task anywhere in the house.