War Driving Version 2.0

asv108 writes: "There is an interesting article in the New York Times about the popularity of wireless cameras from X10 and how easy it is to easedrop on the feeds with relatively inexpensive equipment from up to a 1/4 mile away." I wonder if they're doing the things the X10 ads imply they might be doing.

Comments

It Happened To Me

[Keev]

I bought an X-cam about a year ago to catch neighbors dumping garbage on our property. The camera was mounted upstairs, pointing out toward the street. Imagine my surprise when I turned on the receiver for the first time, and the image I saw was..a view of my own house from across the street! Apparently another neighbor had bought an X-cam, and was operating it pointed in our direction. (This was not entirely coincidence since I'd mentioned the garbage cam to them a few weeks back, but still.. ) This was a distance of about maybe 100 feet. (Also, for some reason, our camera signal did not interfere with theirs.)

Re:For a good time...

[Pete (big-pete)]

Damn!

I just tried it, and the standard reply kept breaking up on me - I cannot beleive we've just slashdotted the auto-response for this telephone number! :)

-- Pete.

Ooooh, scary

[Caradoc]

So, someone might go driving by and spot the transmitted image of my mailman? Unless, of course, the ham operator neighbor's keying up again, and obliterating the signal. Or the other neighbor's using his 2.4GHz cordless phone. Or the neighbor on the other side is trying his 802.11 gateway again.

I have only one question for anyone who's actually trying this - why bother? The picture generated by an XCam is *crap,* and useless for anything but really grainy and poorly-saturated "surveillance" (and half the time it's useless for that, too!)

The CMOS module that the XCam uses is crap. The optics are plastic (or really crappy glass), and generate some really funky chromatic distortion, so I replaced the module with a Panasonic CCD module. Much better picture, but you still have to deal with the really nasty interference.

Re:Ooooh, scary

[dsoltesz]

Well, we picked up a set of X10's that were coming with the rotating base. Our purpose was to transmit goofy "web cam" and home monitoring stuff -- video of the bird feeders, the dogs in the backyard (we're curious what they do all day to entertain themselves you see), spy on the cats (how in the hell did they get up there?), and as a cheap image capture for the telescope. It hadn't occurred to us the phone was also running at 2.4 GHz, which interfered with the picture. We unplugged the phone, played for a while, then packed everything up and sent it all back -- we weren't about to give up this particular phone in order to keep the cameras :-D

I thought the system was worth the $250 bucks or so -- four cameras, robotic base, and other accessories. The images were acceptably clear, there's an interesting selection of cameras available, and the robotic base runs very smoothly and quietly. A decent web cam ususally runs around $50 or $60, so I thought it was worth the money.

Actually, the robotic base is what pushed us over the edge to finally buy a package. We were looking for a cheaper alternative to the $2500 and up price tags we were finding for such things. Even though the set up didn't work for our house, we think using them at work to "monitor" things like the computer rooms, printers, etc. would be handy. Printers and plotters in particular -- some folks in other buildings waste a lot of time walking across campus checking up on their prints.

Re:For a good time...

[dr_labrat]

Soooo, for those of us not in the states, or too lazy to pick up a fone... WTF is it?