Ultimate Wireless Webcam?

Chris asks: "I am in need of a webcam for home security. I want it to be able to connect to my home wireless network (802.11g) and have access to its images from a secure website. I also want to be able to access images from it on my cellphone. Is there a webcam that does this?"

Comments

IT?

[Atrax]

Surely this is an 'ask slashdot'?

or am I just making that up?

Re:IT?

[file cabinet]

It is:
[ Security ]
[ Graphics ]
[ Technology ]
[ Ask Slashdot ]

I'm looking for the same, plus more

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd also like to find one that can be used outdoors in any weather and offers pan and zoom from the web interface.

Re:I'm looking for the same, plus more

[Anonymous Coward]

and it has to beable to cook my dinner on the way home and draw me a bath

Re:I'm looking for the same, plus more

[denis-The-menace]

Maybe you can build the enclosure yourself. You need a fan mostly for the condensation issues and maybe a small heater.
Check out the first post about the Veo.

Re:I'm looking for the same, plus more

[kzanol]

We're running two like that: Webcam Graz - Schlossberg or
Webcam Graz - Telecom Building
Both are Axis Webcams in an outdoor housing with a standard (netgear) access point squeezed into the same housing. At the installation site there's just a power feed, network connectivity is provided using directional wifi antennas from about 1.5km distance.
More detail on request :-)

Re:I'm looking for the same, plus more

[macdaddy]

I'd like to know how much power they pull. I'd like to do something similar at my folks' new house. They'd like 1) a record of people that go to and from their house (it's out in the country on a barely maintained road with a surprising amount of traffic that should or should not be there) and 2) give them a chance to see who is coming down the drive before they get to the front door. It's a half-mile driveway with a river and a couple hedgerows blocking the view of the main dirt road. Getting AC to it isn't possible since it's too damned far away. I'd like to power it off of deep-cycle battery and charge the battery with a solar panel. Ideally the camera would go into a power-saving mode when it doesn't detect motion or someone isn't accessing the builtin web server. Ideally. Same goes for the wireless access point. I'd like to find one that reduces it's power consumption when not in use. Ideally again. I figure if the power consumption was minimized I could power it all with a deep cycle battery and a solar panel or two. I'm familiar with Axis webcams. I'd like to use them if possible. Nice cameras. Pricey though.

Veo Observer

[AtariAmarok]

The Veo Observer is worth checking out. Looks like a one-eyed snakehead, but it does have its own built-in web server, is pretty easy to use, and they offer a wireless one. It has tilt, pan, zoom too.

Not only this, unlike X10, they have never spammed me or put annoying popups on web pages.

Re:Veo Observer

[AirFrame]

Not the solution, unfortunately... He did specify he wanted 802.11g.

More cameras

[$exyNerdie]

DLink makes some wireless cameras. Page is here: http://www.dlink.com/products/category.asp?cid=60& sec=0

Here is one from Linksys: http://www.linksys.com/products/product.asp?grid=3 3&scid=38&prid=650

Re:More cameras

[ccarr.com]

Forget the Lynksys one. Viewable in IE for Windows only only.

Re:More cameras

[TheHawke]

I checked the specs on the DLink unit and i'm pleased that it's power requirements only need 12 volts. This means you can hook it up to a large lead-acid or gelcell battery, and it can run outdoors for about 3 to 10 days, depending on how big of a battery you use. Now if only they had infared LEDs wired in with the cam.. That means that you'll have to bash together a setup where you can slew the camera to it's stop, hitting a switch to turn on the lights, then slew it the other way to the opposing stop to cut them off.. A great way to check for deer or other critters in the backyard.

Re:More cameras

[user32.ExitWindowsEx]

but it has an open-source firmware.

look at the bottom of http://www.linksys.com/support/gpl.asp

Re:More cameras

[NateTech]

Yeah, it's always better when CRAP is open-source, right? LOL...

Re:More cameras

[wayoutwest]

Open Source CRAP is always better than proprietary CRAP - share the CRAP, that's what I always say

Paranoid?

[djsmiley]

Anyone else think this is ott, and gonna cause paranoid problems?

I mean, accessing it from you Cellphone? How much you actually going to be able to see? You going to run home everytime theres some kind of movement outside? Could be some one breaking in.... or could just be next doors cat.

How about just get one that will take a pic every time there is movement, then if someone DID break in, you would have pictures of who it was, plus insurance company can't say you didn't take enough steps.

Having this kind of over the top access is what causes people to become paranoid and do stupid things. "I can't drive more than 10 miles from my house incase someone breaks in and i have to rush back"...

Relax, get a cam to take the pics, but dont be so worried about monitoring them...

Re:Paranoid?

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh and sorry i didn't actually answer the question. I would recommend some but then i would say go for a proper security cam instead of using a webcam.

Re:Paranoid?

[gregmac]

How about just get one that will take a pic every time there is movement, then if someone DID break in, you would have pictures of who it was, plus insurance company can't say you didn't take enough steps.

It would be nice if there was some kind of open-source project that wrote software for this kind of thing, too...

Re:Paranoid?

[Anonymous Coward]

For 'security' read 'girl next door'.

Dirty pervert.

Re:Paranoid?

[bhima]

I actually took the paranoid monitoring thing to mean "I think my Wife / GF is cheating on me and I want to be able to confront them in the act"

Re:Paranoid?

[Gudlyf]

I had a simple webcam setup for security that would snap video and pics whenever there was movement. I could even email the snapped photos if I wanted, which could (I guess) be easily sent to a cellphone.

Re:Paranoid?

[angst_ridden_hipster]

Yeah. Or even alternative options.

Re:Paranoid?

[bhima]

Funny?? How the hell is this funny? I just finished watching "Das Geheime Fenster" which really creped me out. Why is it that so many of Steven King's creepiest stories involve writers?

Re:Paranoid?

[drinkypoo]

My motorola V300 has a 16 bit color, 176x220 transflective TFT display. If I could get enough bandwidth for a video stream, it would look just dandy. It even has java 2 so it could run some kind of streaming client... It cost me about $150. I'd love to have a camera set up here so I could keep an eye on things, for example a sick pet or my front porch for a dropped-off delivery. (I work about 3 minutes from home.)

Re:Paranoid?

[Martin Blank]

We tried implementing motion and ZoneMinder where I work, and while they have promise (especially ZoneMinder), they required a LOT of work to get things running properly, and even then we had some issues with the cameras. Once it was working, it was fine, but the headaches involved with the initial setup frightened off management. Most of the proprietary solutions weren't much better. Those that were relatively easy to set up had poor interfaces, and those that had decent interfaces were short on features and/or compatibility.

This is one area where there's still a lot of work to be done all around.

Re:Paranoid?

[angst_ridden_hipster]

I'm a Motion user, myself.

I'll admit, it's more oriented towards the hackerish experimenter, since it required that I rebuild my kernel with the Video 4 Linux modules. It took me a weekend to get the software part up and running and calibrated for the environment (noise masking, sensitivity, etc).

The hardware took longer since I had to learn how to run cables. Obviously, this *could* be done with wireless cameras, but my paranoia level was such that I don't want jamming or simple signal intercept... But I have a system monitoring my house and the perimeter with *cough* cameras (more than two, less than ten) going to a concealed machine with plenty of backup power. The cameras have IR boost for night-time security. I get about 10 fps/camera, and record both stills and video. I keep about two weeks worth of event data in a secure, web-accessible hierarchy by date and time. The capture data itself is timestamped and labeled as to its location.

My system has yielded images that are helping the police with an ongoing investigation. During the events leading up to this, I had one camera send me an SMS message any time there was motion detected, which enabled me to observe events in near realtime. If you need true realtime observation, there are ways to make it work with Motion, but I have no experience with them and can't speak to their quality.

Also, the Motion user community (the mailing list) is probably the most helpful, collaborative Open Source community I've ever dealt with.

Re:Paranoid?

[Martin Blank]

IIRC, the V4L part was what caused the highest consumption of pain killers, because time was spent trying to get the wrong version to work (I think it was newer than motion was designed to work with, and something fundamental had changed), and even with the right version, it was still a major hassle.

But again, the proprietary stuff we could find in general wasn't much better. The best solution I could see for ease of implementation was a pure Axis system, with Axis cameras and software (which I've used before), but that would mean replacing a lot of expensive hardware.

Re:Paranoid?

[MicklePickle]

This is what I found out when I setup a panorama webcam and motion sensing webcam for my building site, (treecam). I had it setup to SMS me everytime motion was detected, but had to turn it off after a couple of hours. I would mostly get some nice pictures of nothing but shadows moving across the ground.
The only time that I did video something significant was when someone pinched some stuff, but it was all retrospective as we only looked at the video once we discovered things were missing.

Re:Paranoid?

[Anonymous Coward]

I set up motion last year on a crappy creative labs cheap webcam. very easy to setup (once you realise that /etc and ~/. isn't the only place for configuration files. Read the documentation and its very nice. It even draws around where the motion was detected and saves it in folders named by year/month/day/hour/minute or something like that.

Set it up to see if my gf's theiving sister had a spare key to her bedroom, and it worked perfectly (she didn't break in either). The only problem was, if somebody turned the power off at the fuse box or the power went down for some reason, it would have turned off.

crappy creative cheap webcam doesn't meat the requirements, unless you want to buy a computer to plug it into, but you put the pictures onto an ftp server on the computer (a crappy old 486 would do the job, with a usb pci card). Just share the images folder over ftp or setup apache to do the same and it'l be accessible with a http or ftp browser.

Posting anonymously because i refered to my gf's sister as "my gf's theiving sister" and although my gf knows it, she doesn't like it being said too often.

Re:Paranoid?

[macdaddy]

More like "I think my Linux desktop is cheating on me while I'm at work with my neighbor's Windows desktop. I want to catch them in the act before I have little bastard Windows PDAs running around here."

X10

[thewhitenoise]

I'm sure we've all seen the ads for the "amazing X10 webcams" online at one point or another. They're designed to provide home security for less than 80 USD (currently running a special). I think they have a web interface which will allow tilt/zoom. The only problem is that they're easily "hackable". Anyone with a receiver in the range of the camera is able to view the feed, so they're not very secure themselves. Of course, it's essentially the same as running an unencrypted wireless router in a densely populated area.

Re:X10

[antifoidulus]

From what I have read(which includes the book hardware hacking for geeks) the quality on the X10 really blows. You can get better quality cameras for about the same amount of money, avoid the X10 if at all possible.

Re:X10

[Slashdot Junky]

I wouldn't consider John Public being able to view the unsecured video signal as being "hackable". However, monitoring the RF signal in order to determine the type of security in use and then circumventing it would make it "hackable" in my book.

-Slashdot Junky

Re:X10

[Anonymous Coward]

I, for one, would NEVER welcome this pop-up ad overlord. Seriously, I refuse to buy anything from X10 BECAUSE of their aggressive intrusive advertising.

Re:X10

[JoeCommodore]

"I have heard something is lousy and we should avoid it..." You work for SCO or Microsoft?

Here's an actual example of a standard X-10 cam image (it's a test page, no updates.) These are the standard color cams, there is also a wide angle B&W camera too and ones with the pan/tilt thingies. The wireless reciver outputs a standard composite video feed (you could split to a VCR). The supplied X-10 uses a USB decoder wich is pretty lo-res, the cameras output higher res then the digitizer. The software does support other video input cards using microsoft's video drivers so the image can be better resolution - based on the input card. (also the hardware is pretty standard so it could be done in Linux)

The hookup is interesting, you need the cameras in the same AC circuit so the X-10 controller can power on and off the cameras, but the cameras themselves use a wireless broadcasting to a reciver unit.

The web software will automatically upload images to your specified FTP as soon as every second, also with the X-10 settings can support multiple cameras. On the other hand the standard live remote control software communicates through X10.com, but if you want more exclusive control you could probably make the box a VNC server and bypass x10s site.

For a tight budget (under $250) you can get four cameras (2 color 2 B&W) and all the goodies and use an old Pentium to hook it all in. For many TCP/IP cameras that would be the cost of one camera.

Re:X10

[macdaddy]

You sir are.... Correct! (unusual for /., eh? ;-) ) X-10 camera quality sucks the big one. I should know because I own no less than 5 of their crappy cameras. I bought them shortly after a peeping tom started bugging my neighbors. I set them up on my wall facing the spacing between our houses. I walked by and let it take my picture and I couldn't even tell it was me. Yeah, they suck. Still with a company that makes decent quality cameras.

Webcams

[ThomaMelas]

Webcams suck for CCTV work. Now there are IP cameras that are ment for monitoring but you're looking at a much higher price range. If you want a controlable (PTZ) camera prepare to shell out alot more. And if you want more then one, then get a number of analogue cameras and find a company that makes a capture card and software. There are a number of them that have software that support web access, e-mail on motion, ect....

Check this one out:

[Anonymous Coward]

I stumbled on this when I was looking for solutions to settle the "he did this to me"/"no I didn't" arguments between my kids. http://software.newsforge.com/software/04/10/11/17 58211.shtml?tid=152&tid=78&tid=137&tid=126

Wireless camera theft

[fstat(pipe)]

A guy at work was showing the cool live webcam stream of his front yard when the neighbor kid walked up and stole the webcam.
Funny as hell.

Re:Wireless camera theft

[Anonymous Coward]

whats so funny... atleast he has evidence against a kid who probably steals a lot more than webcams :)

Re:Wireless camera theft

[Anonymous Coward]

he has evidence against a kid

If the stream was being recorded, he does.

OMG ... whatever is happening to /.

[Anonymous Coward]

like, dood, it's become Google Answers for lazy well-connected geeks.

I know it's hard to ask this whithout sounding like a malcontent or troll, but honestly, can anyone explain why so many lame submissions are are being posted?

Oh, you mean like this one

[Pfhor]

http://www.dlink.com/products/?pid=342

802.11g, motion detection and will email you also (which you can bounce to your cellphone).

Re:Oh, you mean like this one

[Pfhor]

hahaa, my bad, confused my tabs and thought you were replying to the dlink link below.

First back up a bit...

[Dr. Spork]

What exactly are you trying to make secure? Do you really think that this can prevent house intrusion? I hope not. Checking the internet or your cell phone and seeing a blurry picture of some guy with a mask going through your drawers is going to accomplish... what? If you wanted to use the footage as evidence, you'd better use tape; any decent defense lawyer will get x10-type footage thrown out of court because it's so easy to manipulate. And if you're trying to use this to watch your unsupervised children, you're an irresponsible sicko and you'd be much better off spending your money on a babysitter instead.

In general, it looks to me like you haven't really thought this through. I suspect you don't need any such camera at all.

In general, your post makes you sound like a paranoid pussy with too much stuff in your house and too much money to blow, who for some reason feel the need to brag about this on Slashdot. Well, I'm not impressed.

Re:First back up a bit...

[fataugie]

Oh come on....That's an easy one.

That's when you hit the web-enabled "wireless Shotgun" and activate the "street sweeper" mode.

Next question.

Re:First back up a bit...

[Martin Blank]

Recording from multiple angles makes such legal arguments a lot trickier, particularly if the recording is periodic except for motion captures.

And maybe his kids are supervised, but he wants to watch the watcher. It's handy to know when the kids are being ignored and/or terrorized by the babysitter.

Digital recordings are often used now in criminal investigations, because the systems are becoming more reliable and higher quality than tape can do. Tape is usually limited to TV resolution at best, which is approximately equivalent to 544x372, and then that signal is interlaced, which makes it hard to get details. Digital, however, can go much higher -- 640x480 true resolution for less expensive cameras on up to 1600x1200 for the high-end units. Bandwidth constraints will normally limit things to 1024x768 or 1280x1024, but this is still a minimum of nearly four times the detail, not counting the clarity from the non-interlaced image.

Finally, you have to remember to change tapes, and storage for tapes gets expensive and inconvenient if you plan on keeping them long-term. However, a relatively small server with a couple of mirrored drives for redundancy costs under a thousand dollars and can store images months' or even years' worth of data, depending on how frequent motion captures are and how many cameras are used. It's very possible to set up a fairly complete home monitoring system for under $5000 (especially with wireless cameras), complete with recording and remote access, and with a WAP-capable phone, some of the available software allows you to check on the current status.

I could use the same thing..

[zcat_NZ]

But I don't have any money :( So I'm using a webcam and TV card I bought for $30 6 years ago... it does the job although I think I'll move the camera out to that archway you can see, so I get better pictures next time.

Recently I got given a crappy old laptop, no battery or drives and the HDD was stuffed. I had a spare drive, it runs off 12v just fine. I've added a 802.11b card and USB webcam and it lives in my van now. I just need to add config to 'motion' so that it'll watch and store the output of the van camera as well as the mailbox one. Total cost of my security system is still almost-nothing.

Re:I could use the same thing..

[macdaddy]

I hate to tell you this but I think someone just stole your car. Sorry buddy.

Home Insecurity

[sakusha]

You want a wireless webcam that anyone driving down the street can tap into? You do realize that a popular new wardriving activity is to hunt for homes with wireless webcams and watch people in the evenings when they're home, right? Or they can see when you're NOT home, and then find out where your cameras are, and disable them before they get caught on camera burglarizing your stuff?

Do yourself a favor and get a hardwired webcam, there are plenty of FireWire cams that you can put up to 1000 feet from your computer (the limit of FireWire cable). Hardwired cams don't broadcast everything in your home to the outside world.

Re:Home Insecurity

[macdaddy]

I thought all the new D-Link and LinkSys cams utilized all the security options alloted to them via 802.11B/G. That was my understanding at least. Can anyone with one of these cameras speak up and let us know? I'd be interested in finding out. And I agree on the el cheapo POS camera (read: X-10). Those are extrememly easy to eavesdrop on.

Dude, that naked guy looks like you!

[phorm]

One thing to remember is if you have an in-house always-on camera is to try and keep it secure. Make sure the webpage (if it has one) isn't too easily web-accessible to unwanted visitors. Make sure that if it's connected to a PC then you don't have one of those amusing viruses that captures your camera pictures...

Why? Because if you forget that the camera is one, and happen to walk past after recently emerging from the shower, then you might just end up on somebody's webpage. Personally, I keep my cam unplugged when not in use... I'd rather not have my ass uploaded to ugly.com or something similar by somebody who doesn't like me.

Re:Dude, that naked guy looks like you!

[silas_pc]

Finally, A geek willing to admit he's ugly!

Re:Dude, that naked guy looks like you!

[mattyrobinson69]

My gf's paranoid and seeing as the webcam computer is in the bedroom she likes the webcam to be facing down into the monitor.

This is a usb camera and the above still applies even with the computer turned off (she's not stupid, just paranoid)

Re:Dude, that naked guy looks like you!

[macdaddy]

LOL. That's funny! She is paranoid. Has she found the one in the closet yet? How about the headboard. Don't tell me she believes that's a smoke detector on your ceiling. Just so long as she doesn't find the booty cam in the shower, you'll be fine.

I love my veo observer

[way2trivial]

but it ONLY WORKS with users running IE and with active X.. it will not work on a mobile

I can give you all but the G

[way2trivial]

panasonic network cameras. 802.11b only -buy the wired model and put in a ethernet-g adapter.

I own and love my veo observer, but it limits reception to IE users..

I've since become EXTREMELY enamored of panasonic netcams, they only thing they suck on is sound, they have no audio... take a look at them try a websearch for urls that include "viewnetcam.com/" to find a camera on the internet-- I found one listed with someones posted hijack this log (I won't post the url) but it's an amazing device- push and pull motion jpegs, works on my palm phone (kyo 7135) at reasonable speed... If I didn't NEED sound, I'd replace my veo with this.. (there is a model that includes sound on panasonics JP site, that specifies it's a USA only model, but I don't find it in the USA anywhere, and converted from yen, it runs 700$ or more)

Veo reverse engineered, wireless version available

[Anonymous Coward]

The Veo Observer protocol has recently been reverse engineered. The web link includes perl scripts for taking pictures at different resolutions, panning and tilting. I am running this code under Linux right now and can confirm that it works. You can also do things like make the camera operate without turning on the big blue light in the front, and control the motors to do things like make the camera shake its head "yes" and "no." Other features provided by the perl module which I have not yet tried include adjusting brightness and contrast, and recording the sound stream, although I do not know what the audio format is (the video format is JPEG for each separate frame).

That web site also provides a CGI script for your web server on that web page for operation as a web cam (since the built-in web server in the camera requires ActiveX, making it less useful). Note that this script could easily be modified to allow your to do the same with any Veo observer camera that is accessible on the internet if you know it's IP, user name and password.

Regarding the original submitter's question about wireless, there is a WiFi version of the camera for us$350 (probably 802.11b; I can't figure out from the web page).

It has been about a year since I checked, but at the time it seemed that there we no other cameras with a built-in pan and tilt for even twice the price of the Veo Observer (the ethernet version is us$200; I got mine for us$180 a year ago). The built-in microphone is also a big plus for potential uses (e.g., baby monitoring). Other minor features an external microphone jack (if you don't want to use the internal mic) and an external motion detector jack (I think the idea is to use an infrared detector or one with a wider field than the camera, otherwise why can't they just program the camera to do this?), ethernet/IP interface, making it easier to use away from a computer, and built-in flakey crippled web server (still, occasionally useful).

The Veo Observer at its price point would have been a killer product a year ago were it not for its protocol being undocumented, but it is a killer product today now that the protocol has been reverse engineered. The camera can finally be used for wide-scale deployments like security systems and customized web sites.