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Internet Accessible Home Security Systems?
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."
Webcams are usually better quality and cheaper than "security" cameras. They both just take pictures; what's wrong with using them?
At least if nothing's happening while you're gone, you can scope the scantily clad chicks with the hidden "security" cameras :).
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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Have one configured to ping a webserver you operate every 30 minutes?
If someone steals it, it'll stop pinging right quick...
"Champagne for my real friends - and real pain for my sham friends!" http://ericblade.postalboard.com/
as for the firewall bit, I just turn my computer off and unplug it from the wall while i'm gone for more than a day. no point in paying for electricity wasted.
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this looks sweet
Just give me your home address, and I'll be happy to swing by and check out^H^H^H ^H^H^H^H^H check on those thousands of dollars of servers and PIXes you have lying around. ;>
The first thing that comes to mind is the "motion" project. It's a nice motion detection program for webcams. Saves drive space by only saving frames where something seems to be moving. You can also have it make movies of the motion frames, which makes it really easy to "check the logs".
-Uberhund
Have the security system know everything is ok by sending regular update messages. This way you can send out an error when it detects an intrudor. However, if the intruder cuts off your internet somehow before they enter then you will still know something is wrong because you no longer receive regular update messages.
;)
Provides a small problem in blackouts though
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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go to home depot, lowes, what ever, get a bunch of peices of wood, and a shitload of nails. put the nails through the wood and make spike boards and put them under your ground level accessable windows, so that if they break in though a window, you'll fuck them up and slow them down abit if they try to make off with anything.
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Did your kids not call you dad, but instead called you "Brother"? Perhaps "Big Brother"? :-)
My plan is to hook the 4 lines (2 in/2 out) into the serial port of my server and then hack up some sort of program to send the required pulses back to the alarm system.
It might not be a particularly pretty solution, but I think that it could be rather useful.
Another possibility is using the control for the autodialler to get the network to warn me by email/SMS that it has been activated.