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Internet Accessible Home Security Systems?

Posted by Cliff on from the monitoring-your-home-while-away-from-home dept.

PenguinRadio asks: "I'm about to embark on trip and while the thousands of dollars of computers are protected by a PIX firewall and whatnot from viruses, I'm now kind of wondering about the physical security of my 'server room' that I've built in my house. Basically, an Internet accessible burglar/fire alarm. Has anyone found a good residential security system that can be remotely checked or monitored from the other side of the world? I'd especially like the capability of look in on any security cameras (rather than setting up a simple webcam) and monitor any alarm logs. ADT and Brinks didn't seem to have anything readily visible on their website, and I'm not quite up for an X-10 version of a security system."

3 of 54 comments (clear)

  1. Whippee! by BortQ · · Score: 3, Interesting
    While it might be cool to have, I don't really see how it would be helpful. What could you do if you logged in and saw something amiss?

    A burglar alarm that alerts the police or a security company would seem to offer better protection. And it would be hack-proof (unless you can get the ability to patch your internet-accessible system remotely).

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  2. Re:PING! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    If someone steals it, it'll stop pinging right quick...

    It's funny you say that. There was once a theft of many computers from my univeristy department. The time of the theft was determined by when the stolen computers' NFS shares stopped responding.

  3. Re:oxymorons by zcat_NZ · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I used to have 6 'webcams' around my house, a little hardware circuit that would switch between them, and a script that constantly scanned them all and sent the images via my dialup connection back to a webserver. It managed to scan and upload all 6 cameras every 10 seconds, which was fast enough that it didn't miss much. Nobody ever broke in and stole my computer, but quite a few times I did phone home and tell the kids to stop bouncing on the couch, etc.

    That was all done with a P200 from a dumpster, a BT848 card and some cheap cameras I got off an auction site.. If you actually wanted to spend money you could probably do a lot better.

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