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Is Cheap Video Surveillance Possible?
timholman writes "After a series of burglaries and auto break-ins in my neighborhood, I'm thinking about adding some video security cameras to my home. To me, the object isn't just deterrence — if someone tries to break into my house or my car (parked on the street in front of my house), I'd like to provide a high-quality image of the perpetrator to the police. Inexpensive video surveillance systems, with their atrocious image quality, are nearly useless. The problem is being able to get good image quality at an affordable price. After some research, I've decided that using network cameras to FTP images to a central server over a HomePlug network is the best solution. However, good megapixel network cameras (e.g. Stardot or Axis cameras) can easily cost more than $1,000 each. Has any of you dealt with a similar situation? Is there any way to get reasonable quality (preferably open source) daytime and nighttime video surveillance equipment for home use without paying an arm and a leg? Is it better to go with a couple of expensive cameras, or a multitude of inexpensive cameras? Is paying two to three thousand dollars simply unavoidable if I want to monitor my front and back yards?"
I've been working with IQinvision's IQEye 511 camera (www.iqeye.com) for the past couple of months. It is a 1.3MP camera capable of 15 fps. It communicates over and is powered by 100mbit PoE. I think the street price is somewhere around 600-700 dollars, depending on what you get with it (PoE injector, lens, etc). The camera seems to take pretty good pictures and can deal with pretty varied lighting conditions. It has various ways to retrieve images, like emailing or ftping them to you on a set schedule. Hope this helps.
Well, you've got to do a cost-benefit analysis similar to a business. In low light it is going to be difficult to get a high-quality images without extra light (obvious you are monitoring them) or a really, really expensive camera which is vulnerable to spray-painting or vandalism itself.
I was going to do something similar at a previous residence, but found that I would have to worry about people stealing the camera, or simply wearing a mask and gloves when they break in, which will really render the best camera useless. In the end, I used a hidden cheap Linksys webcam that was discreetly hidden inside my house, enough to alert me and catch a careless criminal.
I have also had good success with the D-Link products, which are very cheap.
http://www.dlink.com/products/category.asp?cid=60&sec=0
Also, keep in mind that making your house / area "different" may actually attract more attention. Numerous cameras outside a particular residence screams "important stuff here" if you can't hide them effectively.
Slashdotter, ID #101. UIDs are in binary, right?
http://www.wilife.com/Default.aspx
"To me, the object isn't just deterrence â" if someone tries to break into my house or my car (parked on the street in front of my house), I'd like to provide a high-quality image of the perpetrator to the police."
Uh what? In a situation such as you have described, the primary objective of such cameras is to provide a deterrent - unless of course if what you are really after is clandestine high quality imagery of another nature. Your stated situation does not match your stated goal.
-- "It was as if the paint factories had decided to deal direct with the art galleries." - Thursday Next
Unless you live in a small town a picture of the perpetrator is all but useless. The police really don't care about break and entry anyway.
How we know is more important than what we know.
I was thinking of putting good megapixel network cameras for surveillance but then I needed to buy another set of good cameras to monitor the surveillance cameras and then another set of cameras ...
The vast majority of CCTV, even professional installed stuff simply isn't of high enough quality to secure identity, let alone a conviction.
If you want the quality then pay the money for good cameras. Megapixel is the way to go, especially if you want to cover a whole front or back yard.
Also don't forget good lenses for them as well. Lenses that did a good job for standard definition often don't cut it with megapixel cameras.
Check out http://www.arecontvision.com/ and http://www.iqeye.com/
I don't work for either of these companies although I have installed the Arecont cameras as part of my job.
The results from the 2M Arecont camera was described by the police officer as the best CCTV he had ever seen. Shame they never actually found the guy....
Get a dog. The TCO may be higher than the camera, but the deterrence factor is way higher (and it's better to not be broken into at all, than have footage of your breakins afterwards).
I sat on a grand jury a couple years ago. (Not an investigatory one; we issued general felony indictments. The county I live in does things a little oddly -- they have a pair of standing grand juries, each of which meets once a month to hear potential indictments. You're on the jury for a year, and hear a couple dozen cases each day, so I saw a bunch. All felony indictments go through one of the two.)
The most common case for small time burglary was that there would be a set of crimes that the police were convinced were related, and then finally the thief would hit some place that had video cameras that were placed well enough to produce a usable image -- at which point, odds were they had already had dealings with that person, and the case got fairly easy. So usually they would present it to us as an indictment for just the one crime, but explain that the investigation was being treated as part of a group.
So if you want the guy caught, there's really no substitute for good video surveillance. Sure, plenty of cases were based on things like the thief pawning stolen goods, but video was the most prevalent and easiest to work with.
ZoneMinder It has some really nice features.
I work in the security field, to get a good image, you will need to pay a large chunk of money. Standard ($400) cameras aren't going to give you a face that can do much for you. If the person gets close enough to the camera, you can see a face, but then the camera will be mounted way to low, or you can zoom it in far but won't get a large area.
Get a pit bull and a gun.
Hey! Look a Distraction!
A couple of iSights for $300 an Apple Cube, $350 24 hr of 12 frame a sec video for $650.
Tell the local FBI office you're thinking of opening a Taliban mosque and they'll keep 24/7 high-res real-time video with CD quality audio of your entire property with an emphasis on identifying anyone coming or going. Then if anything happens they'll already have the suspect's name, address and phone number on record. Just ask the police to get the info from the FBI.
Vivotek makes some nice and affordable network cameras, starting at around $180 ea, and they come with recording software for Windoze, but a Linux SDK is available under NDA. http://www.vivotek.com/products/network_cameras.php
Most digital still cameras have a remote shoot facility. Buy a $100 5Mpixel camera, connect it to a PC and use it to snap high res pictures with flash. Trigger it off a sensor or run the camera in video mode with motion detection. Once the picture has been snapped email if off site to a gmail account. By the time the thief figures out what the flash was the picture will be safe on the other side of the world.
...get a big dog and some special insurance from Mr. Smith and Mr. Wesson.
You need to get yourself a dog. It doesn't have to be big or scary looking- a small, yappy-type dog will do just fine. Unless you advertise the presence of valuable goods inside your house, a burglar will not break into your house if it is occupied. I think you'll find that most burglars will go for the lowest-hanging fruit, which will be your neighbor's house (unless they also have a dog, in which case the next house over is the low fruit). They want to get in, grab the stuff that is easiest to make off with and pawn, and then get out. I doubt you have any state secrets or anything like that in your house; this is a simple cost/benefit analysis for you and the burglars.
Another thing to look into is a neighborhood watch program. Of course, if you live in a neighborhood like mine that might not be a viable option. In that case, you need to get yourself a dog and a steel-core door. Skip the expensive cameras. Are they really going to save you money? Or is this a vindictive side of you, the side that might put a "Trespassers will be shot. Survivors will be shot twice" sign on your fence?
-b
No offense, but I've stopped responding to AC's.
"Is paying two to three thousand dollars simply unavoidable if I want to monitor my front and back yards?"
Yes.
What do you really want to capture? A video feed of something that looks like it came from an Atari video game, or an actual image of a face that police can use to track the perpetrator? And would you really trust a couple-hundred dollar camera to stand up to outdoor conditions? Security cameras are expensive because the companies that offer them know that clients want SECURITY. And security costs money.
I wouldn't pay for cameras that expensive, because the value of the property that I have in my apartment doesn't justify the cost. But if you have property that you want to protect, you'll have to determine for yourself whether the cost of the cameras is worth the cost of protecting your property.
I've used an old camcorder as a web cam before. Excellent image quality!, auto focus, works ok in low light. Used "Dazzle" to hook up my PC to the old RCA plugs on the camcorder. You can find "Dazzle" products most anywhere. If you have an old camcorder laying around, or a pawn shop nearby, you might give it a try. Building a weatherproof box to put it in might be the hardest part.
Actually, quality isn't the issue. Angle is.
What you need to do is ensure that you capture a face shot as close to eye-level as possible, without having the camera obstructed by people walking by.
The police and FBI don't like to talk about it, but there is a program where if they input a digital photo of someone, even a poor quality one, the computer will compare it against the database of digital photos taken by the Department of Motor Vehicles and spit out the six closest matches.
These system rely on facial characteristics like eye-nose-mouth ratio, hairlines, etc so as long as the computer can accurately calculate the centers of these areas, it works.
But when cameras are mounted up on the roof or in a corner as is typical, they are worthless unless the suspect looks right at them.
Also, you want to think about having a camera just for vehicle traffic on your street or culdesac. A license plate is going to be your best method for apprehension. Sure, the car may be stolen, but if it is recovered then it can lead to your property. And if it happens to be a crime of impulse, you will have a suspect.
If you were really clever, you could find some way to rig a standard digital camera with a flash similar to a red-light camera. This would be your most inexpensive option but also a dead give-away and not recommended for busy roads. Instead, find the least expensive camera that offers changeable lenses, and then focus them on a spot on the street that you know vehicles must drive through. Add some inexpensive infrared lighting and you should be able to playback a log of all vehicles (suspects and potential witnesses) when there is an incident.
I think having more inexpensive cameras with decent quality will have a greater chance of success than a couple high-quality ones. Also, don't overlook physical security sensors. Infrared beams and even motion sensors are the best way to deter the crime, instead of relying on catching the criminal.
I have been on the victim side of countless incidents in my profession and, frankly, you won't get the time of day from law enforcement. If a light turns on, or a camera flashes as someone approaches your vehicle...they will move on. And don't forget if you are worried about your vehicle and not just what's in it...pick up a used Sprint/Nextel phone on eBay and split off power from your car's 12V plug. Hide the phone inside the dash somewhere on continuously. Get the least expensive plan, or just write down the IMEI so that you can later activate the phone by calling Sprint. If the car does get stolen, activate service and add-on the GPS tracking features.
Cheapest Lojack you will find.
Good luck.
-JoeShmoe
.
-- I wonder which will go down in history as the bigger failure: the War on Drugs or the War on Filesharing
I know you stated you goal is good quality footage to catch a thief but is that really your ultimate goal? I believe preventing theft or to limit the loss from theft would be a better goal.
Take the standard precautions everyone else takes and get home owners/renters insurance from a reputable company.
A camera shot of the perp MIGHT help catch him eventually but what are the chances that your stolen stuff is going to be found and in returnable condition after that?
The odds do not seem to justify the cost and complexity of above average high quality video surveillance to me.
Bad boys rape our young girls but Violet gives willingly.
I have a pair of AirLink101 AIC-250 wired network cameras monitoring my driveway/garage area and my barn area (I live in the sticks). I've been pleased enough that I intend to acquire two more of them. Normal price is in the $80 range, but Fry's runs them as cheap as $49 at times.
Their performance in almost darkness sucks, but that's going to be true of almost any camera unless you spend big dollars. Their performance from pre-dawn to post-dusk, however, has been phenomenal for such a cheap camera. However, on the opposite side of the coin, if the perps are very far from the camera, you are not going to get facial-recognition quality from them.
Mine sit in a second-story window, so by the time someone would break in and mess with them or put a ladder up to the side of the house to spray paint the window, their photo would already be recorded (and saved off-site):-)
I'd post a link for you to see them in action, but I don't want to see my cameras or home network burst in to flames from being slashdotted.
I've been using AirLink's own software, which is somewhat limited. But after seeing the link in another reply here, I'm going to go check out ZoneMinder for myself.
I want a new quote. One that won't spill. One that don't cost too much. Or come in a pill.
Unless we're talking murder or some serious crime, you're probably going to have a hard time getting the police interested in investing the resources to try to identify the perp and hunt them down and arrest them.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
You should check out what you can do with an NSLU2. It's an extremely fun platform to geek out with.
1) Get yourself a NSLU2
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16833124036
2) Install Unslung on it.
http://www.nslu2-linux.org/wiki/Unslung/HomePage
3) Get gPhoto.
http://www.gphoto.org/
4) Here's a walkthrough of how to make it all work.
http://webuser.fh-furtwangen.de/~dersch/gphoto/remote.html
My wife's bicycle was stolen at her work (directly across the street from the police station, with regular police officer foot-traffic in the building). We had fancy cameras and a close-up of the guy's face within an hour of the theft.
Did it help anything? No...
The cameras were also in plain sight, and he was especially brazen in how he went about it all.
Technology won't solve the problem.
Steps: 1)Go through the list of cameras on the above site, and select one that has the specs you want (good resolution, zoom, etc.)
2)Check eBay or find a used one.
3)setup software and install camera where you want it.
4)Enjoy cheap but hi-res image security.
Many of the cameras on the list above go for less than $100 in good used condition, and offer many megapixels and good optical resolution. Many of them also have other features like low light mode, or other things that can be controlled by computer software. Good luck!
You can do it cheaply, but don't expect to get any amazing images. I have 4 cameras outside my house recording full motion video 24x7. I spent only about $800 on the hardware ($125 per camera, $50 per video capture board, and $25 for coax cable). I record at 640x480x30fps and I can store about 3.5 days worth of video on an old 120 GB hard drive. I caught a kid breaking into my car at night, but there was no way to identify him, and police didn't want to pursue the case because he only took a few dollars out of my change tray. Even if his face had been clearer on the video I still doubt they would have done anything unless I also gave them a name and address. I believe the police view petty theft under a few thousand dollars as an issue for your insurance. Your best bet is to install motion sensing lights outside your house. They're a lot cheaper than cameras and they have better deterrent value. If you still want cameras, get the lights too because they're much more effective than infrared-LED-based night vision, which have very limitted range. After having these cameras running for more than a year the thing I use them most for is checking whether the UPS man left a package on my front steps.
There is a simple four step solution.
.50 cal or the 20mm is a nice choice.
1) Purchase a Smith and Wesson 500. The big one, not the 4" or the 6". Join the 1852 Club while
you are at it. Ask for stickers.
2) If you have the cash, purchase another (you have one already right?) large cal rifle. The AnzioIronworks
3) Place stickers announcing the fact that you own such artillery on your windows. You will need a Class 3 for the 20mm so the ATF will give you a sticker when you get that.
4) Whenever you have time, clean all of your firearms on your front porch/steps/whatever in plain sight of anyone walking/driving/running down the sidewalk/road. Do this naked, wearing only a shower cap, one slipper (pink bunny is nice) and a leather belt around your neck. Have an axe handy and in plain sight.
No one, and I mean no one will ever mess with your stuff.
You do realize the cops are going to do the absolute minimum possible even with video evidence? They will come out, maybe watch your tape and file some papers and thats about it. Don't expect CSI to come out and swab for saliva or prints.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
Or better yet, don't live in the city at all! Don't park on the street, use your driveway or garage. People that park on the street simply take up space on the street and often essentially turn it into one lane for those of us who are driving. Also, buy a nice big handgun and wear it strapped under your shoulder while out cutting the grass and such. Make it known, because no one is going to assess the risk factor in that and still proceed with robbing you.
"He who can destroy a thing, controls a thing." --Paul Atreides, Dune
Part of the issue you will face is that yes, a good security camera will cost several hundred dollars each.... that said, professional systems are not particularly difficult to install yourself.
Couple tips:
1) Avoid network cameras, the Cat-5 medium is not as noise free as other methods, and the circuitry involved to convert it to a digital/network capable camera adds cost... I recommend using RG-59 grade coaxial cable and any 18guage-2conductor wire for power. Get a moderate DVR, or better yet use one of the PCI-card kits and an old PC to save more. 4 Camera cards can be had for around $160.
2) Consider the benefits of good nightvision. Examine cameras with IR LED's, they will provide some of the better night-vision capabilities, however viewing range is limited outside the IR's angle. That said, Speco sells a line of cameras called the "Intensifier" that has some of the best night vision I've seen. We use many of these in some very high-profile homes (let's just say as far as world's wealthiest goes, we're in the top 10). The Chameleon indoor/outdoor model can be had for under $400 each.
3)It's not about quantity vs quality, it's about paths and coverage. Our general camera strategy is to have a couple cameras for general coverage, and a couple cameras in major pathways, close-up, for good ID. So you know who it was, and what they did.
Multiple cheap cameras are better than fewer fancy cameras. What you want is enough cameras to cover the area well enough to get that picture. Two cheap cameras will cover twice the area one expensive camera does all the time. Pan and tilt is useless unless you want to hire people to sit on it all day and even then you don't get as much coverage as three or four cameras would give you. You want to have one camera with a close up for each door to get face shots and a few wide angle cameras to record all the dirty deeds done. Five or six cameras should be more than enough for the average small business or home.
With Zone Minder you can scrape together a good system for a few hundred bucks. Good quality analog cameras are tiny and can be bought for about $40 each. Both BTTV and V4Linux are stable interfaces with lots of good hardware support. BTTV capture cards are cheap and accept analog inputs that give good enough resolution. All of this can be piped back to an old PC that has five or six PCI slots free. You can add more PCs as the size of your house or business increases. This is equivalent to the professional systems you see in grocery stores but less hackable because you can run it on a good OS like GNU/Linux.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
What about a decoy - a cheap camera or a realistic mockup?
I've been working on a couple of video projects and have gotten input from the local police as well. Here's what I can tell you:
.Net 2.0 based server software and viewer. Expensive Upside: Good documentation and works.
There are two types of surveillance: Monitored and unmonitored. You can get away with lower quality if you have someone monitoring the cameras live (because you can go out and deal with the problem). You need higher quality if you're unmonitored.
In your case, you need to record with motion detection (less HD space, and it's easier to watch later). And you need high enough quality to have a clear face shot if you want to be able to follow up with law enforcement/neighbors to try and identify a suspect.
There's really no way around spending $500-1000 per camera if you want real quality. Otherwise, you'll end up grainy video that neither you nor the police will have any use for. For petty theft/vandalism, the police will take your video 'as-is'. Many larger departments have methods of enhancing the video, but that's only done in more serious murder/felony type cases.
Here's what we're using and what we've tried:
Cameras: Axis Power over Ethernet cameras. You NEED PoE (unless you're doing something goofy with cheap USB cameras). You'll save time, money, and hassles with PoE because the ethernet cabling is easy and familiar. I've liked the nicer Panasonic cameras.
Switches: We're using Netgear PoE switches, and often they have decent rebates. I have maybe 12 PoE devices attached to the 24-port PoE switch now.
Software: Axis comes with FREE software for their camera, but the downfall is the free license only covers ONE camera. Just because you buy two cameras doesn't mean you can record two devices on one computer. I supposed you could do some kind of VM thing to get around it. Or you could have your system just use FTP to get the images off the camera...
We're using ONSSI's software now. Downside:
Why do you need a megapixel security camera?
I've never seen a store front that had much more than vga resolution cameras, and police track down people who rob a store all the time. You can pick up a wireless vga resolution color camera with night visionfor a couple hundred bucks from radio shack. Get a couple of those and a multi-input video capture card. Slap a couple large hard drives in to any halfway modern PC, and there you go.
Now just make sure you hide the PC so your evidence doesn't get stolen when your house is broken in to.
Even if you do manage to get a picture of someone in the act, I doubt that the police are going to put out an APB with the snapshot that your system took. At best, if you know who is doing this in your neighborhood, you can help build a case against them. If it isn't, they're not going to play CSI with the pics from your security system and will focus on violent crimes and/or revenue-producing law enforcement opportunities.
On the plus side, the presence of such a system could scare off the less motivated crooks. YMMV.
Where does the school board find them and why do they keep sending them to ME?
First off I'm not a lawyer, but I was wondering the same thing a month or so ago. I asked around to a few cops and a friend who had been researching forensics. My big question was that it seemed to make more sense to keep any recording off site in case the thief though of stealing my PC, so should I? It seems that there was the question of the Cain of Custody. In the end it boiled down to the further away, the more work law enforcement has to do to get the evidence and the less likely they will ever bother looking into it. The general consensus was either to hide the machine that you are saving information on or just bolt the thing to the ground.
You can pick up cheap "HD" camcorders off of ebay, they are usually 720p, but still work well. Then just run the video-out to a multichannel video capture card.
:)
I am sure there is software out there, open source even, that will let you have a multichannel video security system, with recording, and motion detection etc...
This would be the cheapest way I can think of, unless you use a bunch of webcam's.
I used to use Motion. I had it setup for surveillance of my home office. It used just a plain USB webcam, and would only record when it detected movement. I managed to configure it to turn on when my screensaver turned on, and turn off when I logged back into the computer. If it detected movement, it would email the resulting video to a gmail account. Worked really well, except that it burnt out two Logitech Quickcam Pro 4000's (I don't think they like being left on for long periods of time). Haven't really found a good webcam for linux since so I never set it back up again (not that I looked that hard). If anybody has a recommendation for a good linux webcam that has a reasonably wide angle lens and decent low light response then please share.
Forget the cameras. Put in an alarm system with lots of PIR's (I have them in every room that has valuables), and make the internal siren(s) loud enough to make your ears bleed. Same with the car - put a 120dB siren (or two) on the inside.
Unfortunately sirens and strobes on the outside get ignored by the general public, and the cops dont care about the petty crime as much as you would like. When the internal sirens are so loud you nearly vomit, the crooks will leave prematurely and unsuccessful.
I went through the same dilemma a year ago.
First of all, I should point out something. I've been told by numerous people that the police are not interested in your video footage unless somebody was killed or kidnapped. That is, unless you have a license plate, or you personally recognize the person. That is because there is no way to identify the people short of putting it on CNN.
Eventually I settled on analog security cameras. I discovered that if you are dealing with standard-def cameras, a good analog camera can produce the same or better image than an Axis only at a quarter of the cost. Now, if you want those license plate numbers, you'll need megapixel resolution and a hefty server. Currently, I have a small 1.0 Ghz computer in the closet with an analog capture board recording 3 cameras at 640x480. My total cost was about $250. it has worked flawlessly for a year now.
The problem with domestic spying is that it will only be used against you. The FBI does not involve itself in cases involving a large amount of loss (either $50,000 or $500,000 I can't remember right now). The other problem is that they won't tell you they are taking the pictures in the first place until they get a search warrant and turn your life upside down. You don't want to be on a watch list and you should be outraged that your government is once again infiltrating and monitoring religious groups.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
An Axis 207MW (megapixel camera) can be had on eBay for less than $350. I picked a used one up from there for about $290 back in February.
SNACKS ARE AWESOME
Sure it's not great quality but you can by more and place them closer (and at eye level). Decent enough image to gain a conviction if thats what you're after. My setup ran me a couple hundred three or four years ago. Even have a of couple of night vision type solutions. As they are most often a wireless solution a tech savvy thief can jam them - but if they are that motivated you've got more serious issues... available on Ebay or direct from the distributor X10.com
My current solution is definitely a great value, however it is only if/once the sorority finds out that i will find out what 'cheap' really is.
If you think
I meant to give this URL for the "open source firmware" link. I must have messed it up somehow:
http://chdk.wikia.com/wiki/CHDK_in_Brief
I was listening to a radio interview with a professional house theif. When the said thief was asked what was the best deterant the reply was "a small dog as they are next to impossible to catch or bribe". After hearing this news the mental gears started whirring and I created a fake YAPPING dog security system. Its very simple with a IR motion sensor on the back and front entrance hooked into a MP3 player and a small PC speaker system. The hard part was finding a good yapping dog recording until I asked someone at the park if I could record her dog barking and she was happy to oblige once I explained why. Another trick is to have multiple varying MP3 files and make sure the MP3 player is set to shuffle so it sounds more realistic.
The software is free, "motion" for one, but the resolution costs. If you want license numbers you have to pony up the $s, unless you put a cheap cam right where the car will stop, about 8 feet away. Otherwise you need good cameras. I have never found the need but I live in the country where we kind of know everyone.
I spend $150/year to insure $30k worth of electronics from theft. Are you really going to find a better cost/benefit solution?
If I wanted a sig I would have filled in that stupid box.
I know what you mean. I would rather have a 3 or 4 MP image, 1 frame per second, than 30 FPS of crap. I am not sure why nobody has made a network enabled "still" camera yet with built in motion detection. I would think there would be a good market for it.
My dream device would be a 4 MP camera with very good low-light, built in motion detection, web control, weather resistant, POE (injector included), and the ability to scp the pictures (push) to any machine, 1 FPS, for under $300 or so. It should be possible now.
Oh well, I will keep dreaming!
Ever since playing through Half-Life 2, I've wanted to implement the automatic security cameras they have in the game.
The idea is to set up a pan & tilt camara mount, with a high-quality flash camera co-axial with a low-light/IR webcam. The webcam is plugged into motion/feature recognition software, and controls the pan/tilt, keeping the largest moving object in the middle of the frame. Once a certain threshold for size/movement is reached, a buzzer and red light activate, and the camera takes 3 or 4 flash pictures in rapid succession.
Anyone who's played HL2 can attest to the strong sense of Big Brother that these cameras evoke. Not to mention the fact that it would produce superior images, as it would wait until the target is sufficiently large in the frame, and the light/buzzer should cause the target to reflexively look towards the camera to investigate.
Thoughts? It's not so much a practical solution to the original stated problem, but maybe a fun project for someone with more mechanical skill and free time than I have...
Maybe you should move to somewhere there is less crime. Given that you've chosen to live in a high crime area, it's likely that you did so because it was cheaper and probably don't have anything of value to protect.
Here's what works great for me - total cost, about $500. I live in a fairly-grotty neighborhood in Oakland, not far from Nina Reiser's former home.
... I manually aim 'em. Rarely have I wished them to be changed.
... I chased him away. He left his wrench behind)
One cheap color video camera, aimed out the window on my front door. The camera cost $40 on eBay and is wired directly to my DVR. It sees my front stairs, the sidewalk, and street in front of my house.
One modestly cheap color video camera with IR Leds (about $60 on eBay). Hardwired to the DVR. This is on the driveway of my house, pointing towards the street. Its far coverge is similar to the front door.
Neither video camera has Pan/Tilt/Zoom
A 4 Channel Security Video Recorder - records mpeg4. About $250 on eBay. I only use 2 of the 4 channels. A 100Gbyte IDE disk drive adds another $60 to the total.
Cheap car-headrest style 5 inch LCD/TFT monitor, which is set next to my computer monitor.
Wire & connectors to connect everything (to my surprise, cheap CAT-3 cable works fine, even though it isn't shielded!)
An infrared doorbell which chimes whenever someone walks up the drive. When it sounds, I glance at the monitor to see who's there.
The recorder saves a week's worth of imagery. It's a bit of a pain to scan to what I want to see (the DVR software is horrible).
Over the past three years, this setup has:
- Caught one postal thief! The guy came up on my porch and tried to steal two boxes. I caught him in the act, and he ran away, dropping my two boxes along the way. Thanks to the video, the US Postal Inspectors successfully prosecuted him for mail theft. The guy lived in the suburbs and trolled the city looking for mail to steal.
- Caught a purse-snatcher! The SOB chased after a woman on a cell phone; she fought back and held onto her purse. The guy ran away, but I gave the video to the police, who eventually tracked the guy down.
- Stopped a guy from stealing my neighbor's tire (I glanced at the monitor and saw someone removing a tire
- Saved me innumerable trips to the front door, to deal with Jehovah's Witnesses, salespeople, and other such annoyances.
check out logitech wilife
Elphel cameras aren't much less expensive that $1000... but they are 5 mpix color network attached cameras with fully open source/free software hardware and software.. They are really very good.
The cheaper this equipment gets, the more places the goverment will be watching. I think there's a big enough problem with CCTV as is, especially in Britain. I suppose the cost decline will eventualy result in ubiquity anyway, but I'm hoping it takes a while.
Not to sound like a ass, but....
You could do this with a camcorders, and any of dozens of webcam apps. As long as they archive the footage, you're ok. Some of the programs will record video if there's movement.
I had a nice Windows app, but I can't seem to find it right now. Just search for "webcam", and try some out.
For the camcorders themselves, hit eBay or your local pawn shop. Get a resolution that's satisfactory to you.
For the capture device, get a BT8x8 chipset card. I'm not even going to attempt to suggest which one, since they're all pretty much the same, except for the price tag. You should be able to get one pretty cheap.
That'd give you a base. Now it's up to you to expand from there. Maybe a better capture card would do better for you.
I know most people are going to frown upon me posting a Windows solution. Usually I would too. There are far more Windows webcam apps that work, than for the *nix crowd. I don't like Windows, but when I was looking in the past, this is what I found, and I had been determined to use my Linux machine. There's no one to fault but the developers who aren't writing for Linux.
We (my ex-employer) had a site set up that "streamed" video with Webcam32. Ya, it was FTP, frame by frame, but the javascript gave the illusion of motion. This was a long time ago, and basically that's all we did. Commodity cameras (cheapest Sony handycam from Walmart). Commodity cards (any BT8x8 chipset card), and a crappy Windows PC, so they could use it as a workstation also.
Someone shot out the windows of a friend's store. The police took a report and abandon it. He asked me to have a look at the "video". It was basically a PC with 4 cameras attached. The resolution was too rough to read the license plate of the shooter's vehicle, or even give a definite make and model. It took me hours to go through and find the right place on the "video". When I did, we were able to make out that it was a white pickup truck, with blue neon lights underneath, and something written in white on the back window.
The store employees recognized that as possibly being one guy, except they weren't sure about the lights. We went to his house that night, and shot video under the truck showing the lights. I compiled the "video" from the security system, and made a data disk of the whole thing.
The police made an arrest the next day. With what we provided, they got a search warrant, and found the same caliber handgun under his driver seat as the bullets in the wall. He immediately confessed, and admitted to doing it to 3 other businesses that night too. Apparently ours was the only "evidence". Although I volunteered to testify in court about how I compiled the data, because of his confession there was no trial.
I'd recommend the system you're looking to build, versus the "professional" system. At least you can tune it up as needed. Their system was a fixed configuration, so we were really stuck. The interface was painful at best. It would lock up, get confused to where I was looking, drop to other cameras, etc, etc, etc. I didn't have access to just look at the filesystem, and since we were looking at evidence, I didn't want to rip it apart and try to mount it's drives in another machine.
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
It supports both WiFi (WPA2-PSK, if you want it) and 100BT. There's no IR illuminator, but they claim 2 LUX sensitivity. You can find them on the 'Net for about $400.00.
You were moderated down for telling the truth about the racial disparity of crime statistics of which blacks are overrepresented, by a factor of 8 or more for some crimes, including robbery and theft.
Hi,
Every so often on the auction sites, you'll find good quality late-ish model DV cameras pop up which have a damaged tape transport (or otherwise need servicing exceeding the sale value), but where the CCDs work fine, and they can pipe a perfectly good DV feed out the IEEE1394 port. For example, I scored a Panasonic NV-GS35 for $35.
This, plus an older CPU box stacked with 1 or 2 multi-port firewire PCI cards (also very cheap now), and a bit of scripting, and you've got your solution for probably less than $150 total.
The only limitation is the maximum length of IEEE1394 cables. If you need several cameras placed more than a few metres apart, you'll need extra CPUs to capture the DV feeds and stick them out onto ethernet. But even so, it's way better than paying four figures per camera.
The slimline CPU boxen are getting so cheap, often companies are tossing 2GHz slimlines out into their dumpsters.
-- In the beginning was the WORD, and the WORD was UNSIGNED, and the main(){} was without form and void...
I moved into a mixed neighborhood, and made sure to be seen filming miscreants playing midnight b-ball - and got myself a wolf-husky mix.
The midnight b-ball is over and done with, and my outside sun deck remains theft free despite easily accessible yard work items.
Be active in calling the police (neighborhood watch) make sure they know you are watching (film with cam) and get a dog that won't put up with nonsense.
A Remington 870 works great if someone is dumb enough to mess with the pup, the "click clack" of it being wracked just somehow grabs you by the balls when it comes to the fear response...
_ _ _ Go for the eyes Boo! GO FOR THE EYES!
Take the suggestions that others gave here: Steel core door, dog(s), cheap cameras, heck I didn't see this one but putting bars on the windows is very helpful. And then you should do two additional things: One, get a large, heavy safe that can be bolted to the floor with concrete being poured into the base per the safe's instructions to make it an unmovable object, and keep your most valuable things locked inside; Two, get yourself a gun and know how to use it. I'm not kidding on this one. Many gun control activists believe that the police should be the ones wielding weapons, but having a gun yourself and knowing how to use it will give you the ability to defend yourself during the two hours between the time you call the police and the time they arrive.
McCain/Palin '08. Now THAT's hope and change!
Cheap DV Cams run for about 500CAD now a days.
On Mac OS X you can easily program a device that would record using the following Objective C class.
http://developer.apple.com/documentation/QuickTime/Reference/QTCaptureLayer/Introduction/Introduction.html
Of course if you were using a different operating system it would be different, but it is the same idea.
I tried to do this (using a Nikon Coolpix 4500 and gphoto). One thing I noticed is that there would be a long pause, and occasionally "usb bus resetting" messages, before the camera took a picture. This pause can be longer that 30 seconds and made it useless in my opinion, given how I wanted to trigger it.
However, I noticed that the same camera would also pause as long as 10 seconds when triggered manually from the button. I will have to go through the menus and see if there is something I can do to fix that.
Specifically, for USB controlled consumer type cameras, is there one that works well and reliably from gphoto ?
It Takes a Thief
You really need to watch that show.
Common mistakes:
1) My dog will deter intruders, guard the house.
No. You likely have a doggy door that the thief will use, and the (most times, happy) dog will not bother the burglar.
2) Not locking all the doors and windows.
Duh.
3) Not having an alarm system (or one that isn't monitored).
Your neighbor isn't your security system. Burglars pass up houses with security signs. And if a burglar breaks a window and tries to get in, the alarm will go off and the burglar will scurry away.
4) Not having a safe. Or it's unlocked. Or the key is in the dresser drawer. Or it's not bolted down.
5) Leaving keys all over the place for a burglar to quickly grab.
Use a key holder box that locks with a combination.
Of all these things, a modern, monitored alarm system is the most important. The show infrequently installs camera systems. And from my own personal experience, cameras are easily defeated. Also, take this into account: if there isn't an alarm, and the burglar cleans your house, why wouldn't he just take your recording equipment too?
For autos, boats, and motorcycles, I've seen the show install GPS trackers with kill switches that alarm (and send a signal) if the vehicle is moved more than 30 feet.
Start with the basics, then worry about security cameras.
Finally, if you live someplace where you're not allowed to install an alarm system, move.
I think rental insurance is definitely a good idea, however it's never going to reimburse you 100%. There's deductibles, unique items, data on your HDs and such. That antique picture. Family photographs*. The jewelry from your grandmother.
If it's worth $2 at a pawn shop, some thieves will steal it.
So, first priority would be to prevent the incident
Second would be catching the thief in the act
Third would be detection, catching and recovery after the fact.
Last would be calling the insurance company.
*While a thief might not steal them, he may damage them during the robbery.
I don't read AC A human right
count - if your imaging leads to an arrest, the cops and the DA are happy. Give them a good, sharp image of the perps, and they'll maybe put more effort into it than for a blurry mess.
Unless your target area is close, like 10 to 15 feet, you want zoom. Only optical zoom matters. The field of view narrows a lot is the downside, but if you want to see a face and not a dozen or so pixels, that's what you'll have to do. Megapixel (1280x720, say) doesn't do much since those usually just give a wider field of view, so a face is still only a dozen or so pixels across.
I can read a license plate at 300 yards with a good zoom (and good optics overall), and you can get caneras with those under $1000. Stay away from analog cameras. Cheap up front but you won't get what you want from them.
Night and very low light present a HUGE problem. I leave that for you and google to sort.
My grandmother has a digital camera with a motion sensor for taking pictures of birds and such in her yard. It uses an SD card, and you can get SD cards with WiFi (eye-fi or something like that) that I think will upload the picts automatically. Maybe this type setup is what you're looking for. The camera she has is in a green weather proof case and has a flash. It's not something that the bad guys can't steal, though.
There are quite a few mobile phones and PDAs that are cheap, programmable, wireless networked and have reasonable quality cameras capable of taking input with a relatively high quality.
Probably the best phones for the job run Windows Mobile, mainly because of the development tools and APIs. Linux phones could probably do the job, but you're running a lottery there because there isn't a standardized documented API to do that sort of camera work on a Linux Smartphone (most vendors roll their own).
Symbian could also do the job, but then you would have to work with Symbian.
More like Hong Kong but anyway, we already have it. You just gotto come here to get it. If you plan a trip to Hong Kong, search up Ap Liu Street and you'll be in heaven.
deterrence is the first line of home security (thus big signs saying protected by xyz alarm company etc.)
But not phony ones.
Last year, I saw water running down a driveway into the street, and walked up to the house to check it out. Water was leaking out of the garage. Nobody was home, but they had signs for an alarm company. So I called the alarm company, and after much checking at their end, they insisted that they'd never had a system at that address. Looking around, I found a window sticker for a different alarm company. They didn't know of the house either. There was even one of those cheezy "Protected by Electronic Alarm System" stickers you can buy at Radio Shack.
Finally I called the "Police non-emergency" number and left a message.
Back your shit up, hide a safe, be inconspicuous and have good insurance. It's cheaper than going nuts with the security.
..don't panic
I'm not sure how actively you need these pictures to be updated.
I've done some administration on a system that produces just two 640x480 colour png's for a continually updating web page, and we found that SCP was the only thing that moved files quickly and easily enough to avoid large hits to refresh times/capture of new images on the viewing page.
This was all on-LAN too, 100mbit lines. In my experience, FTP tends to be a slow-mover.
http://www.northwestern1.com/rex-watchdog.htm These things have been available for quite some time
It is often the same perp:
The 19 burglaries occurred between May 2007 and January and were being investigated as a group because they followed a similar pattern. They occurred primarily in the Todt Hill and Grymes Hill neighborhoods between 6 p.m. and 2 a.m., and the thief or thieves stole mostly jewelry. Suspects, but No Arrests, in S.I. 'Ninja Burglaries'
Two Franklin men are jailed in Butler County on charges that they broke into 13 homes and stole guns, tools, electronics and jewelry over the past three months. Bradley Alcorn, 28, and Johnny Sorrell, 27, face charges of burglary and receiving stolen property involving daytime break-ins in Wayne and Madison townships when residents were away. Butler County Sheriff Rick Jones said detectives have received inquiries from police agencies in Warren, Preble and Montgomery counties, where similar burglaries were reported. Arrests made in burglaries
The cop wants to bring him down quickly.
Stories like this do not always have a happy ending:
It's wasn't jewelry, cash, or a car that took down some Central Fresno burglars, but rather a blanket. According to Deputies a caller reported three men in her Floradora Ave. home around 11 p.m. Monday night. The caller, a 16-year-old girl, said the men woke her, her brother, sister and niece up when they entered the home. She told police that she and her relatives had locked themselves into a back bedroom while the men were inside the home. 24-year-old Charles Williams, 23-year-old Jayson Sanderson, and 21-year-old Princeton Williams, were located near McKinley and Marks a short while later. One of them was found to be in possession of a blue blanket which had belonged to the victims, thus connecting the men to the crime. All three men were arrested and booked into the Fresno County Jail. Williams was also booked on parole violations. Blanket Leads To Burglary Arrests
Burglaries fall into patterns.
Thieves work in teams, buddies the same age. They will have criminal records. They will break into an occupied home. They may be running a quart low, but that won't make them any less dangerous.
I had 7 breakins within 6 weeks in my small apartment, by an intelligent burglar. I installed an expensive surveillance system, but he stole the cameras. My recorder recorded his image, but it was not clear enough to be definitive - a silhouette of a guy dressed in dark clothing is not very helpful.
As someone who's done a lot of research and thought, I'd suggest the following:
1. Resolution is not as important as contrast/clarity, and how close the guy gets to the camera.
2. Get a good low light camera. Not the infrared led variety, which are noticeable. A couple of hundred dollars should suffice.
3. Hide it carefully, directly behind something irresistible to a criminal. For example, behind a $100 note on your bed side table.
4. For your car, use a wireless transfer to your recorder, and face the camera out the driver's window, or directly behind the steering wheel. Beware that florescent lights cause interference with some wireless cameras, preventing movement triggered recording or alarms from working.
5. If the guy wears a mask, a camera is not going to help you identify him.
Your big question should be... do you want to catch the guy (you'll only get one chance), or do you want to prevent the theft? In my case, I found that prevention was more effective than cure, and installed alarms and better locks. I would have like to have caught the mongrel though...
Forget about it. the cops dont care. I have 3 perfectly good videos of perps stealing and they ask me if i know their names. WTF
5) Wonder if your camera was stolen and sold on eBay. Perhaps you'll have better odds than the previous owner.
I have an IQeye 603 (3 Mpix) on my roof for > 3 years after a vandalism on a car in my driveway and similar events on the same block.
In short - the camera has sensitive image areas where movement causes a trigger. With a trigger, camera sends the trigger image and 4 images before and after the trigger via ftp to a in-house server.
A motion sensing light (cheapo over garage door type) at night triggers the camera when movement happens.
Experiences:
- the motion sensor is temperature sensitive and in summer (air temp - body temp is lower), people in heavy clothing/hats did siphon gas out of a car in the driveway without triggering the light. Ergo, a microwave sensor (radar principle) has been acquired.
- a car breakin at night (guy actually getting in the car but failed to get it started) was recorded, but the images of the person's face were very grainy. Research into better image quality at night is on my mind.
- data volume can be heavy, depending on motions (street, cars, tree branches) - images are jpeg, about 150-200 k each 1600 x 784 pixels, typically - driveway only is 100-200 triggers; including street (low traffic, residential neighborhood), it's 1200 - 2000 triggers daily. Falling snow with camera on can be 15/20,000 triggers.
Software available turned out to be above $ 1000 under M$oft Windows only so I wrote a couple of shell scripts to handle the image handling on a Linux server.
Data evaluation works with large Konqueror thumbnails and is manageable with upto 2000 trigger images/day on a 1200 x 1600 computer screen (8 thumbnails across and scrolling down). When I want to see detail, I can do mouseover or xv.
Price is only one criteria - how one integrates such a data volume into one's life (and computer drives) is another consideration.
Ideally, an AI system with image recognition which only delivers relevant data would be great - who has it?
Sumvision make 4MP webcams; I use four of these and a package called Zoneminder which comes wrapped in a Mandriva Linux DVD. It runs under Apache, and has the ability, on a multicore system, to capture 16 signals at full frame rate. Live images can be viewed at screen native resolution, video set to anything from 320x200 to... well, as high as your camera can go and as fast as your HDD can capture streams. Back to the webcams: they do have excellent focus and enough resolution to read a car number plate at 80 metres (I've done this during testing to the other end of my road which is approximately 80m long). Best thing about Zoneminder? It can capture from industrial composite cards and/or usb/firewire sources.
Operation Guillotine is in effect.
Allow me to DYAA (tm) ( Draw Yet Another Analogy ) for you. In my youth I sold stereo equipment, not crap but good stuff ( for the time ) and I always advised people to spend money on two things:
Amplifiers and Pre-Amps were all pretty damn good, class A or Class A-B with a THD of 0.005 at rated power when the input circuit was not over-driven and the final was not over-driven.
People would say, "But I need 300 watts RMS per side dont I??" and I would say, no, you need really god speakers and a really cartridge for your turntable, and might I suggest this Ortofane ?
The point is no matter how many gigapixels you have, if you lenses are shit it makes no difference. Your typical consumer level camera has a plastic lens that is about as opticaly accurate as my butt.
So spend your money on quality glass lenses
if you want truly good images of the butthead stealing your car.To wrap up the stereo analogy, I had a 50 watt per channel McIntosh pushing a pair of Altec Lansing Voice of the Theater cabinet's and we regularly provided enough sound for a block party. Remember, it's not the watts it's speakers./p>
Hey KID! Yeah you, get the fuck off my lawn!
Analog cameras are well known to degrade in quality the longer the run, or from interferance.
Network cable (it's ethernet which everyone here uses just fine) is 100% immune from that.
You may be an installer, but you install analog cameras. A dead tech. Analog v Digital.
Deterrence is the key to low cost. Infrared interior alarms for when you are not at home to scare them away and attract neighbors (loud). Infrared perimeter alarms for when you are home (quiet but enough to wake you up). My favorite is the totally obvious camera with a red LED and a cable feed that is all fake. It doesn't matter if it is fake, it is a fantastic deterrent. Make sure the red LED is visible.
An elderly couple were getting ready for bed one evening, when the wife looked out the window and murmured "You know you left the shed light on again, don't you?"
"Nonsense," said the husband, "I haven't set foot outside today."
Looking out the window as well, he saw the light, sure enough, was on. Two men were inside the shed, going through boxes and bags and plant pots looking for valuables. He ran to the phone, and with trembling hands, dialled for the police.
"Hello? Yes, I'd like an officer to my house at 10 Villa please, my shed's being broken into. Yes, they're there now. No, they're not in the house. Lock the door? Alright, I'll do that."
"What did they say?" asked the wife.
"Oh, there's nobody available," said the husband, counting off in his head. He mouthed the word "Thirty" then dialled the police again.
"Hello, this is 10 Villa again, I called a minute ago about the burglars in my shed? Yes, well you don't have to worry about it, I've gone out and I've shot them. Goodbye."
Three minutes later, the street was alive with police cars and a van, SOCO units, dogs, ambulances, armed response... the two men were caught easily and bundled into the van.
One of the police officers walked up to the old man and said to him "I thought you said you'd shot them?
The old man looked at the police officer in disgust and spat "I thought you said there was nobody available?"
True story.
Operation Guillotine is in effect.
A buddy of mine has purchased some security cameras from these folks, good quality stuff. http://www.supercircuits.com/ Some good lower cost cameras would be the PC177IR-4, 5 or 6 model that are weatherproof IR color day/night cameras. The most expensive piece of gear you'll want will be a DVR capable of internet / network access. They support X number of cameras, depending on the model also. (normally 4, 8,9, and 16) Hope this helps some. (not affiliated with super circuits btw)
Life was hell, then I discovered Linux...
"Buy a shotgun"
Anger problem.
I have used this Software in both Mac OS9 and OSX http://www.bensoftware.com/ss/overview/index.html
I use it with sony bullets but these will work just as well. http://www.spytown.com/bwbucaun1.html
A cheap Canon Powershot digital camera, plus the CHDK firmware replacement* to get motion activation, plus a SD wifi card to capture the pics directly to your securely hidden PC. You'll want to take it apart and remove the IR filter, there are guides on how to do that for various models. Best cheap solution I can think of.
* - technically it's a binary that runs on top of the existing firmware. so sue me.
A sign saying, "Smile, you are being videotaped" would do nicely.
Be sure to have an obvious camera, one of those $7 camera dummies. Then do the real recording from two other hidden cameras.
I recall more than one episode where the thief not only stole the owner's car, he took their dog too. In all the other situations where dogs were present, the dogs were either scared of him or he petted them, then grabbed 'em some food out of the fridge.
Most people want/buy dogs that are sweethearts.
And over the long run a dog will cost most people more than a professionally installed security system.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
Get a medium sized bottle of some well known brand of vodka. Carefully remove the cap, pour out a fourth of so of the contents and replace with good old poisonous rubbing alcohol. Reattach the cap so that the bottle looks like it had never been opened. Place the adulterated vodka so that a burglar will certainly include it in his haul. Ensure that no one in your household will accidentally imbibe.
A similar scheme could use attractive snacks and different poisons; but again, make sure that no innocent person becomes a victim.
It won't stop the burglar immediately, but it will stop him before he can victimize yet again.
I'm surprised no-one has posted this yet: don't invest in an expensive camera setup because guess what: the thieves will steal it.
They will look right into the camera before they tear it off the wall , and the police won't do a damn thing to try and find them.
If you're looking for cameras as a deterrent, a fake box is as good as an HD camera and much much cheaper.
Excellent comment!
... for video images you can have
increased recording time and length (1 hour or 2 GB), and a greatly increased
range of compression options."
From Hacking My PowerShot: "I picked up a [Canon Powershot] A560 late last year -- it's a wonderfully handy point-and-shoot camera that even shoots full NTSC video..."
From the link about open source firmware you recommended: Quick answers to 7 key questions about CHDK: "5. What extra capabilities does CHDK provide? Enhanced ways of recording images
The problem will be that there needs to be enough light. There could be motion detection lights in several places. If a thief is moving around at night, and suddenly there is a bright light, that changes the psychology of the situation. Very likely the thief will leave. If he or she doesn't you will have a video recording.
It seems to me that lights that turn on when motion is detected are the first best defense. That and signs that say, "Smile, your visit is being recorded."
Remember that the obvious camera can be a dummy. The real cameras can be hidden.
If you live in the UK, leave the keys in the ignition, with a note apologizing for not having the car warmed up for them, along with $100 on the seat so they can by 1/2 tank of gas.
I've setup three retail stores with security cameras for a small retail chain. At the first store we tried a camera at, almost as an experiment, we used a TCP/IP one from D-Link. About $200. It was OK as a deterrent, but not really all that useful if we actually had to use the footage for identifying people.
The next stores used a kit which bundled 4 analog cameras with a PCI DVR card. Think TV tuner with 4 inputs. The whole kit was about $500. It's great but "only" 640x480. The newer ones have modest IR support for night-time recording. The DVR software provides remote TCP/IP access, though, via a proprietary client.
From my admittedly limited experience, you get better value from analog cameras -- the market is much bigger for them, so they're higher volume, and therefore cheaper. Plus, the camera's are interchangeable (it's just analog, afterall). You can mix and match easily and get standardized lenses and filters, etc.
http://bwired.nl/
I've actually found TrendNet's line of IP cameras to work significantly well. They retailed for around $100 US and can perform uploading, or you can use their IPView software (Windows) to record them all to hard disk directly. I setup 9 of them in a datacenter that I previously worked in.
I only need the Preview button when I haven't used the Preview button.
A way to get the intruders attention is to build the camera into a clock and place it in the window.
They always look at what time it is and you get a full face closeup too.
I used to build these camera in clock things years ago, but now you can get them really cheap from china. The camera doesn't need to be such a high resolution as 'chummy' always comes up real close to see what time it is.
threadeds blog
Buy some insurance - it is cheaper, and doesn't require monitoring or feeding.
It's not going to be cheap when the video cams keep getting shot out.
- If the item that you have is nice, then it WILL be stolen. The simple fact is, that if you have a decent car parked on the street, it is GOING to be stolen.
- Spend money on trying to locate it.
A simple lojack will probably do more for you. If it is a nice car, try to get 2 lojacks. This way, you can retrieve it later.If you still want a pic, modify the car with a camara in the dash, the transmit the pic via wi-fi or a cell. This way, you will get the person grabbing the car. At the same time, you can use some of the money saved from loads of camera to build up a nice mp3 server radio for the car.
BTW, about a decade ago, a small start-up was going to do train car locator's using a simple cell phone approach (multi-million cars were always being misplaced for months on end and train company was not held responsible). You could create your own lojack using a cell phone and wifi. Turned on, if receiving wifi from home, then do nothing. But upon leaving area, and not turned off, then call and transmit the location. if unable to obtain the gps location, then simply call the phone company and you can obtain the last set of towers, which will help triangulate it.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
The trick is to get cameras close to the subjects, and pointing in the right direction. That way people are still clearly identifiable even on poor quality shots. A good example would be a very small camera placed like a spy-hole in your front door. You may need quite a few cameras for decent coverage, but the only alternative is even more carefully placed multi-megapixel cameras with good quality optics, so that you can zoom in on areas of the picture.
I don't know what the laws are like where you are, but in the UK, if you have CCTV you are legally obliged to have warning signs, and have to comply with the data protection act.
You might find the ZoneMinder project useful. It is a Linux open-source project that handles video surveillance. They also have a discussion forum that should provide even more information, such as camera selection.
I use a CCTV-computer system running Linux, it's based on "motion", which I'm sure you can Google yourself. It does just want you want - I personally email the files (video/photo) to a Gmail account so that I can retrieve it with just a simple web browser (i.e. at the most basic of police stations). I use PCI WinTV cards and cheap cameras (I could use very expensive cameras without any problems, but listen to why in a second) - it costs me about £30 ($50) for each camera setup and a basic computer can handle four or more cameras easily (up to 16 if you have a fast machine and a Linux-compatible 4-input CCTV card.
The bit I like about it is that someone can nick the cameras, the machine itself, etc. and STILL the images will be sitting in the Gmail account, ready for pickup. This is how one (incredibly dumb) British burglar got caught, and with the exact same software (motion). There was a story on BBC News about it.
You have several problems, though.
"To me, the object isn't just deterrence if someone tries to break into my house or my car (parked on the street in front of my house), I'd like to provide a high-quality image of the perpetrator to the police."
I wear a hoodie, probably in a dark colour, like most of the "kids" who do stuff like this. I just beat your high-quality image. You'll stand more chance with more rubbishy cameras getting such people from all angles, or a burglar alarm. Or have your system text you / ring your phone when it detects motion somewhere it shouldn't.
Deterence - A burglar alarm box that doesn't look fake. A camera box that doesn't look fake. That's deterence. It does an awful lot, and it's very cheap to "deter". It's a lot harder to "catch". Large cameras get stones aimed at them, even if the kids aren't trying to break in (I know, the little gits have broken my security floodlight several times "for a laugh"). Much better to have very cheap, replaceable and (except for one or two) concealable cameras if you want to record evidence of criminal activity. If you want to CATCH the person responsible, that is much harder than just having a high-resolution image.
"Inexpensive video surveillance systems, with their atrocious image quality, are nearly useless."
As are expensive ones when they are defeated by extremely simple measures such as putting on a hood. Seriously. Get a bunch of friends, get them to pick a random member of their party (unknown to you), get that person to put on a hoodie and walk past every camera you own. You'll be hard-pressed to identify them.
Our experience has been that the range of cameras and prices are much better for analog cameras than IP ones, which is not surprising considering the relative product maturities. From $200-500 you should be able to get a very decent day/night camera with IR illumination (if appropriate). A resolution of 550 TV lines may not sound great if you are used to looking at still cameras and mega-pixels, but in practice the quality of the image depends on a lot more than the resolution.
Hook the cameras back to a PC for recording (wireless solutions here are also less expensive if you don't want to run cables) and pop a 4-port PCI frame grabber card in there for less than $200 and run Zoneminder
"I thought you said there was nobody available?" True story.
Yeah, right. BTW, Bill Gates is paying you to send email.
Luke, help me take this mask off
I use the following setup at home to keep tabs on whether the landlord is *dropping in* ...
The camera I use is a Logitech QuickCam Pro 9000. Good resolution (up to HD when configured correctly), auto light adjustment, easily available and resonably priced. I then use the Logitech "Motion Detection" gadget (free download from Logitech's site) to take care of the video capture. The gadget is configured to save the videos to a password protected directory within my Apache web server. To finish it all off I use a dynamic DNS service to ensure that I can always access my web server, regardless of my current IP address (my ISP uses DHCP so this is a good solution without needing a static IP).
Disclaimer: I do NOT work for Logitech.
Please quote your sources. Sounds like raging BS to me.
The fact that alarm.com systems use a radio link (not a cellphone) and can't easily be cut off was a big plus when I selected the system for an office. I think we laid out about $1800 for the high-end panel but could have saved a lot with the pre-configured smaller panel as we never even installed most of the sensors. We put wireless door sensors on all the doors and wireless motion sensors in all the rooms. If anyone comes in a window they get nabbed by the motion sensor. The system calls us by phone and sends us emails if there is an actual alarm. Non-alarm conditions are logged and we can get notifications of menu-selected events like arming and disarming, so we know who is coming and going. The system can be armed or disarmed through the web interface. Yeah, I'd say it's pretty awesome. We're trying to find the time to try the new integrated video cameras.
Look at the bright side: there's always seppuku.
Quote your sources, sounds like BS.
Not me, but here's proof that you can catch crims on even the cheapest cameras. This is my girlfriend's sisters' boyfriend.
Beer Thief!
Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
Zoneminder is excellent. I installed it on ubuntu with a cheapo bt878 video card and a regular outside camera. total cost ~50 euro not counting the pc which is an old athlon 1000.. processor use sits at 40% alltime
you can define a zone inside the image area, and record only if motion is detected. it has a nice interface to view the camera remotely and the history of motion events.
definitely not hi-res (NTSC), but with a good lens and e correct angle it just records what I need..
IpodLinux never got USB Host working.
Rockbox is just now getting PP50xx UMS working, and Rockbox's driver work is light-years ahead of IPL anymore.
Host role is not a simple matter of coercing the hardware. It is mostly a software difference, and a bugger of one at that.
No offense, just saying IPL doesn't do USB Host.
In other words, we should just let anyone come into our house and do whatever they want. That kid is a less likely to break into your house and steal your TV if he sees a gun. And even if comes anyway, the worst he will probably do is make off with your TV.
Uh, no. In other words, it is preferable to catch the kid when he attempts to sell the TV, or after he has fled the scene, or at some other point, or, just let him have the freaking TV and get him the next time. That's the thing with criminals. They don't steal just once; and even if you miss them 9 times out of 10, you'll get the bastard on the 10th attempt.
And society is better off if we don't kill kids for stealing TVs.
That kid is more likely to break into your home and do worse than stealing your TV if he knows you don't have a gun.
Actually, depending on the kid, if he knows you have a gun in your home, he's MORE LIKELY to break into your home IF YOU HAVE A GUN, to steal your gun. He'll just wait until you're not home.
Hope you don't mind watching your wife and daughters be raped.
What kind of pansy are you? You, your wife, and your daughters are home, and ONE KID with a gun, in the close quarters of your home, is going to keep you at bay with a gun AND rape your wife and daughters at the same time?
Look, if a guy with a gun can screw your wife AND fight you at the same time, having a gun in your house is not going to do you any good, because you apparently have no arms.
Even if your ridiculous rhetorical question had any truth to it, wouldn't it also considerably increase the criminal's chances of getting killed?
Sure. But it's still not worth it. You know what your real problem here is?
The situation you're trying to use a gun to protect yourself from almost NEVER HAPPENS. Criminals don't buy guns and then invade homes and attempt to use guns against the home owners. Hell, they don't NOT buy guns and invade homes and attempt to do anything with homeowners.
When criminals invade homes, they try REALLY REALLY HARD to invade homes that are either EMPTY, or so freaking large that they can move around the home and never encounter the home owner.
A criminal breaking into your home has one of two purposes: to do you harm or to make off with your stuff. Any criminal wanting to make off with your stuff probably values his life a lot more than your stuff. If you both have guns, he's probably going to run before starting a firefight - and if he doesn't at least you have equal odds.
Ah, stupidity continued. A criminal who is going to make off with your stuff is GOING TO WAIT UNTIL YOU ARE NOT HOME, rendering your firearm useless - at least to you. If you do have a gun in your house, you've just let the criminal make more money by stealing that too.
A criminal breaking into your home to do you harm won't care if you have a gun or not. The gun helps you even the odds assuming he has a gun and if he doesn't, he's completely screwed.
How is fantasy land treating you?
Did guns become magic when I wasn't looking? A criminal is screwed if you have a gun and he doesn't if and only if:
- You're awake when the criminal gets to you.
- You're awake and aware enough to understand that the criminal is, indeed, a criminal, and understand this in enough time to get your gun, point it at the criminal, and shoot the criminal, all before he gets within arms reach of you, in which case you're engaged in a 50-50 struggle over the gun. (Actually, since the criminal is probably fully awake, less than 50-50 odds for you.)
Guns are a range weapon, and your house is NOT A RANGE ENVIRONMENT! You'd be better off with a knife in many cases.
Of course. Who would say differently? Why would you imperil those around you - even the mugger - over a few bucks?
Ok, so, few bucks no, television yes?
In real life people prey on
paintball
Do you have a digital camera? Perhaps a high-end one? Turn off all the lights in your house and try to take a recognizable photograph of a person, without a flash. It's totally impossible, unless you use a tripod and the person is posing for the photograph. There's no way a USB video-camera could stream video that does any better.
Slashdot: providing anti-social weirdos a soapbox, since 1997.
You're comparing accidental deaths to crimes prevented.
That's like comparing fatal car accidents to broken tail lights.
Let's say I have a household with myself, my wife, and my two kids. Now, I have the option of purchasing a handgun to 'protect my home'. In the next year, let's say there's a one in 10,000 chance that I will successfully use my handgun to prevent a criminal from stealing my stuff. But there's a one in 50,000 chance that my gun will accidentally kill someone.
Is the life of someone in my family worth 5 televisions?
Also, consider this:
You can protect your home just as well with no gun. Your 1.5 million crimes prevented count every instance where a person with a gun feels they prevented a crime. But lets be realistic. Was it the gun that prevented the crime? Or just the mere presence of a witness?
If a criminal is breaking into your home, and you wake up, that criminal is going to leave. Criminals don't want head-to-head confrontation any more than you do. They want to steal from unoccupied homes. Just being awake will chase most criminals from your home.
I want to be clear that I'm not anti-gun. This is America, and people should be able to own the things they want to own. But we also have to be realistic about the dangers of certain things. We don't let just any schmuck drive a car, and we need to have some reasonable regulation with regards to firearms. The rights of the American citizen to own a firearm need to be balanced with the right of the American citizen to not be shot by one.
paintball
I use various combinations of cameras, Wired, wireless and network. I use motion to monitor all of them. It works well. The wired low lux cameras give the best result in low light.
Just a note: looking on AIPTEK.COM, their clearance items include:
http://www.aiptek.com/
Pocket DV4500 + Free Camera Bag $29.99
Pocket DV4100M $19.99
Mini PenCam 1.3 Blue + Free Webcam Accessories $9.99
I don't see where you can get much cheaper than that.
Correct Horse Battery Staple: 72 bits of entropy. Enter "Correct H" into google. When it generates the phrase, that's
I need a wireless remote sensing solution that will allow me to monitor my marijuana crop from the safety of my home. The wireless must have enough range to extend over 10 miles, and security must be in place so that law enforcement can't find out my IP address if the system is discovered.
no need to spend much $ for stupid nigga
Repeating this story is worth being modded down for:
Where We're Headed
Robert A. Waters
You're sound asleep when you hear a thump outside your bedroom door.
Half-awake, and nearly paralyzed with fear, you hear muffled whispers. At least two people have broken into your house and are moving your way.
With your heart pumping, you reach down beside your bed and pick up your shotgun. You rack a shell into the chamber, then inch toward the door and open it.
In the darkness, you make out two shadows. One holds a weapon--it looks like a crowbar.
When the intruder brandishes it as if to strike, you raise the shotgun and fire. The blast knocks both thugs to the floor. One writhes and screams while the second man crawls to the front door and lurches outside.
As you pick up the telephone to call police, you know you're in trouble. In your country, most guns were outlawed years before, and the few that are privately owned are so stringently regulated as to make them useless. Yours was never registered.
Police arrive and inform you that the second burglar has died. They arrest you for First Degree Murder and Illegal Possession of a Firearm.
When you talk to your attorney, he tells you not to worry: authorities will probably plea the case down to manslaughter. "What kind of sentence will I get?" you ask. "Only ten-to-twelve years," he replies, as if that's nothing. "Behave yourself, and you'll be out in seven."
The next day, the shooting is the lead story in the local newspaper. Somehow, you're portrayed as an eccentric vigilante while the two men you shot are represented as choir boys. Their friends and relatives can't find an unkind word to say about them. Buried deep down in the article, authorities acknowledge that both "victims" have been arrested numerous times. But the next day's headline says it all: "Lovable Rogue Son Didn't Deserve to Die." The thieves have been transformed from career criminals into Robin Hood-type pranksters.
As the days wear on, the story takes wings. The national media picks it up, then the international media.
The surviving burglar has become a folk hero. Your attorney says the thief is preparing to sue you, and he'll probably win.
The media publishes reports that your home has been burglarized several times in the past and that you've been critical of local police for their lack of effort in apprehending the suspects. After the last break-in, you told your neighbor that you would be prepared next time. The District Attorney uses this to allege that you were lying in wait for the burglars.
A few months later, you go to trial. The charges haven't been reduced, as your lawyer had so confidently predicted. When you take the stand, your anger at the injustice of it all works against you. Prosecutors paint a picture of you as a mean, vengeful man.
It doesn't take long for the jury to convict you of all charges.
The judge sentences you to life in prison.
This case really happened.
On August 22, 1999, Tony Martin of Emneth, Norfolk, England, killed one burglar and wounded a second. In April, 2000, he was convicted and is now serving a life term.
How did it become a crime to defend one's own life in the once-great British Empire?
It started with the Pistols Act of 1903. This seemingly reasonable law forbade selling pistols to minors or felons and established that handgun sales were to be made only to those who had a license. The Firearms Act of 1920 expanded licensing to include not only handguns but all firearms except shotguns. Later laws passed in 1953 and 1967 outlawed the carrying of any weapon by private citizens and mandated the registration of all shotguns.
Momentum for total handgun confiscation began in earnest after the Hungerford mass shooting in 1987. Michael Ryan, a mentally disturbed man with a Kalashnikov rifle, walked down the streets shooting everyone he saw. When the smoke cleared, 17 people were dead.
The British public, already desensitize
I don't know about their quality of price but I saw them in Sam's Club in NJ, their internet camera is "coming soon"
http://www.secureviewvideo.com/
Informative column
http://www.networkworld.com/newsletters/soho/2006/0306networker2.html
It seems to me that a big issue for external cameras is keeping the window clean (i.e. the glass/plastic through which the camera sees).
Anyone got any tips to help with this?
It occurred to me to just have an "open mike" in the office. This open mike is linked to an icecast or shoutcast broadcast and monitored conveniently from a web interface. I can refine the real time audio capture as I can refine my live monitoring methods - but in either case it is a free solution and 24/7 live.
Thoughts?
isn't necessarily ok 4 the common gander: a neighbor was having problems with mailbox batting practice & set up a video camera in an upstairs bedroom, trained on his driveway & mailbox at the curb. he was told to take it down by his across-the-street neighbor, who works for the CIA...
Get a dog.
this is a recurring fantasy of the brady bunch, that the police can protect you, indeed are responsible for your personal protection, and that the only solution is banning guns.
but in a case involving several women in d.c. shot by an intruder while waiting for a police response (that never came)-: the courts decided that the police were not liable for not responding because they are not responsible for protecting citizens.
i expect this will lead to the overturning of d.c.'s gun prohibition (which works_so_well)-: by the supremes.
While I love the control and ease of use of IP and network cameras, analog cameras are still real workhorses compared to them. You can get a great image quality, and anywhere from 15-90 fps. As someone that has to deal with breakins on a regular basis (both night and day) I can't stress framerate enough. 15 is enough to see what goes on, but when someone is attacking your change machine (or car) you can inch forward frame by frame and get the perfect shot. (Especially if they have a hood on.) Just remember that on PC based DVR systems (not where every camera is an independent server) Your DVR card has a set framerate and every camera added to the system decreases each camera's framerate proportionately. Depending on the network cameras, though, you can get a high framerate as well, and also many network cameras have PTZ (pan tilt zoom) which can be controlled by motion or manually over the internet or from a server. Yet another option would be dummy cameras. For under $50 you can get a dummy camera that will follow motion, have a light start blinking and/or make a beep noise.
In many states of the US there is this concept called "Castle Doctrine." The concept is if you are in your home (or car in some states) you enjoy the legal right to use deadly force.
If someone is breaking into your house, you don't know what their intent is. Do yourself and society a favor - kill them and remove their genetic and behavioral traits from the breeding stock.
I believe, what few social agreements someone enjoys that discourages violence is lost the moment they step into my house and force me to decide if they intend, and are capable of, causing harm to my family, my friends, and myself. Fortunately, I live in a state that believes the same and has codified that believe into law.
Find out what the average police response time to critical calls is in your area - you may be surprised. The police, and state, are not our bodyguards. The protection of yourself and your family is _your_ responsibility.
Violent, non-violent - there is no difference. Shoot the intruder and be done with it.
>>We don't let just any schmuck drive a car, and we need to have some reasonable regulation with regards to firearms.
I disagree with your premise. The theft, and defense of life, liberty and property happen at the point of a gun. It is a tool, not a cause. Driving is not a fundamental right of man. Defending ones life is.
Still think some regulation is acceptable? Okay. then how do you feel about some "reasonable regulation" regarding voting? (perhaps only land owners can vote? Maybe pass a test first or pay a voting tax?) Or "reasonable regulation" for freedom of speech (such as jail time if you offend someone or laws against speaking ill of the government?) Finally, how would you feel about "reasonable regulation" of ones ability to practice a religion (say we just ban Islam completely or require everyone pray to the Official State Government) Doesn't sound very appealing, does it?
All of those things I've mentioned are considered God-given, fundamental rights which the US Constitution and Bill of Rights prohibits the government from tampering with or infringing upon.
Besides, who gets to define "reasonable?" This is the definition of a slippery slope. Fundamental rights are immutable, and having politicians determine your rights is precisely the opposite of what our Constitutional Republic was designed for.
Reasonable Regulation often isn't.
>>Also, given the 1.5 million crimes prevented, that's a one in 133 chance that you will prevent a criminal from committing a crime.
More than that, I believe, because that's based only the statistics that are reported to the government.
It's impossible to know how many crimes are stopped/prevented by responsible firearm use, which are never reported to the government.
If you want usable images taken of at night of distant, moving targets--you'll need to spend 1000+ on a camera.
I live in a resort area. Vacant homes are often robbed during winter. During the summers, people will monkey with boat docks as well. My property has two sets of cameras.
The expensive camera is hidden near the road and has been configured to capture the license plates of all cars coming and going. Being able to read the license plate, at night, of a car moving 30 to 50 miles per hour required a camera that cost $1200.
My dock also has cameras, but much lower end. (Three $200ish cameras) The dock lighting is rigged to motion sensors. At night when a boat gets close, the dock lights up and the cameras work fine. Turn off the lights and cameras are in the dark.
So far the cameras have not caught any thieves--just drunk buddies coming over in the middle of the night...
Lots of folks have talked about dogs and guns. Dogs are great as night watchmen/an early warning system--i.e. if I'm sleeping and hear my dogs go nuts, I know someone is about. If you aren't home--dogs don't do much good.
As for weapons--a law enforcement friend had a great philosophy. Buy a pump shotgun for home defense. The pump makes a very distinctive noise in a quite house at night. The noise of a shell being chambered should be enough to make most thieves run... I personally don't like using guns for defense--I'm scared I would hesitate to shoot and end up having the weapon used against me or escalating the situation.
I mean, just think of the mess! I hope you at least had the foresight to install a couple of floor drains.
Redundancy is good And also good.
http://www.riccibitti.com/witnesscam/entry/witnesscam.htm> Low low cost, but hard to assemble. Maybe you could get some of these geeks to build you one for a reasonable fee?
According to CSI MIAMI... it shouldn't matter since they can always enhance the quality of the video on the fly.
My vocabulary is so huge it's enormous. if only I could think of a word bigger than enormous, like huge.
I've used PCI multiport (up to 16 cameras) video cards like those made by Geovision and Elyssa. (there are cheap knock-offs...) The remote access works well enough. Reasonable analog security cameras from Supercircuits or the like - whatever camera suits your need. Toss the card into an old Pentium3 PC and you're good to go.
Suggestion: Don't get distracted by advice with an agenda - if you have determined that video is your need, then go with your knowledge of your specific situation. For my house/situation, this was the perfect solution. For different situations, different solutions are appropriate. Use your head first.
Full disclosure - I also have little yappy dogs. The cameras are for the times when nobody is home.
Of course, the trick is to not live near human garbage. Apparently that eliminates every city on earth.
Even if someone now cleaned out my whole house to the bare walls, I figure they'd get about 15-20k of replaceable crap, and in exchange, I bought 20+ years of never caring once about any key. I think $1000 a year (and falling) for that kind of worry-free existence is a bargain.
I'm not really replying to the above post, just a couple of gun stories.
In the hood, when shit goes down, guns come out, and it is not for show, people use their guns.
A quick story: Next door neighbor, Busy house, big family. One of the 20 somethings is fighting with his girlfriend, who lives there, and in the process picks up a cinderblock and hurls it onto the front patio of the house. It was just a violent act of frustration, but not directed towards anyone. The patriarch of the house sees this shit, and comes out of the house yelling, brandishing a chrome 45. This dude is pissed because his little kids are around and this fool is throwing bricks on the property. Dumbass boyfriend is running down the street and my man the patriarch ends his explanation of why he is pissed and lets 3 fly, bang bang bang, right down the street at this fool. Luckily, He missed and straight ahead there is nothing but industrial buildings, but a little to the left or a little to the right are more houses, with residents and old ladies and children inside. The bullet has to land somewhere, doesn't it?
Same city, different neighborhood, this time up in the hills, affluent neigborhood. The houses here have property, trees, space between them. My dude is messing with this girl that lives there, and discovers daddy's handgun! A glock!
Well, temptation got the best of him, he had to fire both his guns that day, so he lets a few go into the "woods". The problem is he is still in city limits. So, fun was had, shots were fired, but someone heard those shots, and also noticed
a hole in their house, and a bullet lodged in their wall.
Both of them did some time even though their shots hit noone.
I like shooting targets myself, and I'm glad that there isn't one around my house.
music lover since 1969
Cheap megapixel cameras that are decent quality and stable...
http://www.vivotek.com.tw/
Look at the IP7138 or IP7139. Their other cameras are good too, but these two I have had extensive experience with and can vouch for them.
Oh, and a possible bonus: they run embedded linux, and yes they distribute the source code so they comply with the GPL.
Either get a dog or an alarm system. Criminals don't like either and it's quite a deterrent for them, they'll rather skip to another neighborhood than messing with it. Alarm systems need to be armed though so you'll have to keep it up, but once it goes off, the criminal will run. It only costs $10-50/month and takes a big chunk out of your homeowners (depending on your neighborhood) and can possibly be brought into your taxes if you have a home office. If you're a DIY: http://www.smarthome.com/alarm.html, if not, go to the big boys like ADT or Brinks.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
get a Digital Night Game Camera with IR flash http://www.cabelas.com/prod-1/0046571417902a.shtml
Use relatively cheap cameras with good narrow-field lenses and aim them at points of entry and expensive objects (like your car). It makes no sense to use a wide-angle camera to cover your whole property in lo-res when a thief has to gain entry to your property through a door or window, and has to open your car door to steal your car or its CD player. Focus tight and you'll get better identification when a crime does happen.
Serving your airship needs since 1995.
You can get a full solution from Wilife (http://www.wilife.com) for under $300. Reasonly they got acquired by Logitech and you can expect good quality products from them.
From their website
* Record only motion at scheduled times, days and durations. Or you can record everything, all the time.
* Easily view your live or recorded video on your PC.
* Get e-mail or cell phone alerts when your cameras detects motion.
* Remotely Monitor your home from anywhere in the world for FREE!
I know it may not be an optimal solution, but you could rig a PC with some software, have a few webcams connected via USB extentions and a USB hub mounted in directions that are out of the elements enough to maybe watch the drive way and your front door (either inside, outside, or both). Or use one of those USB to WiFi adaptors so you don't have the long run of cable, and get one of those motion activated lights for at night, so when the light senses someone not only will the light possibly scare them off, it would provide maybe enough for the webcam to get a good enough picture?
Dog's are great deterrents, but I have a solution almost as good as a dog and it only costs about $100.
Get a bunch of signs, a dormat, and other items that make it look like you have a dog. Stuff like, "We love our German Shepherd", dormat with a picture of a big dog, a large water bowl by the front door, etc. When a potential burgler sees that stuff he'll most likely move on the the next house.
Ninjas don't carry tic tacs
If your looking to protect your property while your home, get a gun. Before all the gun-toters start screaming YAY! and all the hippies start clubbing me to death, understand this. A gun is both a weapon and a tool, and one you must have the maturity and responsibility to handle. They say the sound of a shotgun racking is one of the most frightening sounds in the world to a robber. If its a handgun, get a TacLight put on it (like surefire), this will blind the crook, and allow you to positively ID that it's not your son sneaking out of the house or something. If it was me staring down the barrel and hardly able to see, it'd scare the shit out of me. I've had several friends, including a female that was home alone, use guns to simply scare away robbers. A cheap VCR might not be worth pulling a gun out for, but what else are they there for? Will they rape you, your wife, your daughter? Are they willing to kill to keep from leaving witnesses? There's all sorts of messed up humans out there today. Owning a gun and doesn't mean you have to pull the trigger, but be prepared to if you must. I realize this wasn't in the original topic (I'm getting to that) but feel it should be addressed after all the other comments. Personally I think everyone should own a gun, and I also believe EVERYONE (especially said owners) should learn how to properly use one and should learn the maturity involved in having one.
If your looking to protect your stuff while your not home... A dog is a good deterrent, sure, the guy on that show might not be afraid of one, but he's a professional crook, not a petty low life. Personally, I'm a dog lover, so I'll have one anyway. If you hate dogs though, the extra protection probably isn't worth your misery, don't bother...
Cameras probably aren't going to help unless you actually spend some money on them, which is the whole point of what your trying to do. If you setup some cheap cameras directly in front of the windows and doors, the crook might get close enough for you to catch a face, but in the dark, or if hes stealing your car 40 feet away from the camera, probably not. Personally, I'd use them more for insurance claims, so you can clearly prove what was stolen. If you catch the crook in the act, hey, bonus, but I wouldn't rely on them being a case breaker unless you spend some money on them.
I think the best thing to do is setup motion lights around your house, and perhaps get a good alarm system. I know if I was scouting a house and my movement made the place light up like noon on a cloudless summer day, I'd move on to another house in a hurry, and if I kept going and broke a window/busted a door and suddenly an alarm started blaring, I'd be out of there. I know they say audio alarms are worthless, but that's mainly on cars because people are so used to hearing them go off when someone bumps into a car too hard in a mall parking lot, but I think there's a big difference when it's going off in the middle of the night in a neighborhood.
Defiantly motion lights though, if you do go the route of cheap cameras, at least they'll light up the crooks face. If that leads to catching him, bonus.
You could always go the home alone route and setup a net to catch the crook and a swinging cinder block to knock him out until you get home to call the cops...
I bet you all have great quality photos of people wearing hoods and masks...
stupid nigga can't ID the real one from the fake one.
You might want to look at www.coppertheft.info concerning video security. Videofied has a totally wireless security system that uses no AC power and goes for over two years on a set of batteries. Videofied sends the alarms and the videos over the cell network so it can be installed anywhere. It is being used to stop copper theft in commercial applications. I am sure that it costs over $1,000 but it is a cool alternative to wired cameras.
I just bought a WiLife system. The starter set with all the software was about $250 and each additional camera was about $200. (Purchased from ProAdvantage, you can also find this link on WiLife.com Online Retailers section). This camera gives very good video as long as there is some light in the area. The outdoor cameras can use an IR illuminator and makes seeing outdoors even better. I personally purchased 6 cameras total for about $1200. As far as setting up, it uses HomePlug technology and there is no need to run additional wires, it uses the electrical wiring already in your home. You can also monitor it while you are away by accessing your cameras on the WiLife website. WiLife was just purchased by Logitech and has gotten even better since. You can also get the Platinum option for about $80 a year that lets you playback recorded video while you are away. It only records motion as well, so you're not going to be watching recorded videos that don't have any motion.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/from_our_own_correspondent/7359513.stm
Here's what I recently put together:
;)
http://www.amazon.com/Swann-SW-C-BDOGC-Bulldog-Security-Camera/dp/B0007YUKZY/ref=pd_sim_p_img_4
http://www.amazon.com/Swann-PC-DVR-4-Net/dp/B0007OKRIY/ref=pd_bxgy_p_img_b
http://www.berettausa.com/product/spotlight/spotlight_pistol_px4.cfm
Been very pleased with this so far! The dvr for the xp is seamless and easy to install. The camera has pretty good night vision and great motion detection for the money. And fingers crossed I never need to use the third other than at the range!
I would go one further, and say that when the police show up to collect the statements, if it was a good shoot, they would give you a toaster. A nice little reward for doing the community a favor.
Plus, as a deterrent, I can simply just go to Wal-Mart and buy seven or eight toasters and put them on my front porch.
I've been using a IR hunting cam (3MP still camera with a movement sensor) for my cottage. It only saves the pictures on an SD card placed in the camera, but since it's well hidden it takes great pictures of trespassers without them knowing. I like the SpyPoint IR-A since the IR flash only lights up a fraction of a second so its harder to notice. Also I can hook it up to a 12V adapter (most other hunting cam only work with batteries). It a very good surveillance system for about 300$.
RF monitoring is nice, but it's worth noting that if a criminal is intelligent enough to cut lines before entering a business/residence, they may well be equipped to jam (or spoof, etc) your RF measures as well.
It's also worth noting that RF based systems could be prone to not-easily-traceable/not-easily-preventable false positives.
Axis, Vivotek and ACTi are the top three network camera manufacturers in terms of market share. Vivotek makes some of the D-link cameras that some of the others have been talking about.
I work for a software company that integrates these cameras (in a NVR) so I can vouch for all of them.
Here are some of the various megapixel cameras that I've used (lowest price first):
Vivotek 7000 series,
ACTi 4000 series,
Arecont Vision,
IQeye,
Axis
I've worked with all of these, and they all work quite well. Each of these have their own area that they excel at.
Get back on track here. .1 or better light sensativity and mount them as two at close door/window range to home then the others at further back range so you can see the aproaching person(s) then when they do the deed, they can be made out clearly. Upgrade to two four channel cards and go to eight cameras in a faster computer (1.6ghz or better with 1gb ram and at least 80gb hdd). Wire cameras and power as necessary. Once again, half cameras out for wide angle view, then other half for up-close view of incident.
Yes owning a gun is a great thing. So is having a hammer or a ice-pick nearby.
Cameras, get a four channel DVR card for your PCI slot in a PC computer. Purchase 4 cameras and wire them with power. Get camerras qwith
Most BnE perps use masks or face paint so the cameras dont do a damn bit of good. I have 9 cameras at my home in Orlando, FL and I can get a good view and pic of whats going on but NO WAY do I expect to catch a criminal breaking in to my home. It allows you to see what happened and what they were thinking while they do the act. Another note, make certain the recorder is in a safe place and mounted strong so the theif doesnt take with him/her.
Camera recorder cards that are inexpensive seem to use Pico2000 software or many other freeware out there. Just look on Ebay for Pico2000 cards ($US20.00 or so).
Cameas in B&W work fine. Night vision, dont see anything by B&W anyway. Stay away from the X10 cameras as well.
Using a firewall in your network is a good idea. But if the person is good enough they can find a hole and get in and steal information anyway.
The point of security systems is not 100% prevention it is to make you a less easy and much more risky target. Any form of security fits this description. Hell even locking your door can prevent robberies. You might be surprised how many criminals just look for unlocked cars/houses to walk into... Criminals are lazy and that is generally why they want to make the quick easy buck and not work 60 hours a week like the rest of us.
I've used security netcams for years ( commercial, not residential ) I'd go with one or two expensive cameras. You don't really need to cover everything, for, in most cases, with just a little thought you can predict the likely path of a burglar on your property. But when you do get the photo, it has to be a good one for the cops to take you seriously.
The most important question is will you - or someone else - be able to monitor them when needed? ( This is actually a non-trivial question as there probably is such a thing as a virtual "neighborhood" watch in which you watch your neighbor's property in, say, Belgium while he sleeps, and then somebody in Japan watches your property while you sleep, and then the guy in Belgium watches the property in Japan. Monitoring does not require constant attention: it is rather easy to do other work with a netcam output in your peripheral vision on a separate monitor or in the corner of your screen.
Or, there is probably some company in India or China that will watch your proprety for a small monthly fee. )
Anyway, if you have someone monitoring, I recommend one expensive Pan/tilt/zoom camera like the Panasonic KX-HCM280 ( or the Cannon VB-C50i if you need infrared )
If you don't have someone monitoring, I recommend a couple of Axis 2110s or 2120s ( or 2140s if you need infrared ). They come with software motion sensing.
PS: It is possible to buy separate pan/tilt modules with built-in web servers that can mount a netcam and/or other objects such as tasers, shotguns, etc.
PPS: Model numbers change as upgrades are made. The Axis 2110 is now called a 210, I think. The Panasonic may have a new number also.
PPPS: You can pick up 2110s on eBay for a couple hundred. Used 280s go for around six hundred.
If you have any questions, please feel free to email me. -HB
Ive used a old Focus sys for yrs, recording to a VCR. Recently I upgraded to a Lorex sys. A PCI card and their software and 4 BW cams with IR for $300. I went with wired instead of wireless. They are not Hi quality but good enough for sensing movement and providing evidence for Insurance purposes. Also inexpensive buzzers for your gates, Motion Lights for corners of the house, and a dog! I contacted a few dog protection services in my area, found a owner with a dog nearing retirement. He's a nice 130 lb Rott that is good with kids. And his bark rattles the windows.
Doug Woodall
http://tech.slashdot.org/tech/08/04/12/1712258.shtml
So if the police can't do much with your video, post it to YouTube?
For the prices you are looking at you could easily go to the local alarm supply store (Alarmax or similar) and buy a dvr based linux system that can support 4/8/16 cameras.
Cameras come in varrying qualities but a decent camera can be had for 150. The install is blindingly simple, give it power, run coax (skip the cheap wite, nothing but frustration), config the dvr/server, and you are not only recording, but live on the net.
I like Nuvico gear, but there are many good brands.
ART
Create like a god, command like a king, work like a slave. -Guy Kawasaki
I have this setup at home now:
Four of these cameras looking down on all sides of house and yards in my property. You need to know the angles and illumination of your area so you can get correct camera:
http://www.scdlink.com/Details.cfm?ProdID=2317&category=0
They are linked to 4 channel DVR:
http://www.scdlink.com/Details.cfm?ProdID=2961&category=16
There are some package deals that are cheaper that may work for you but I chose customize set up that worked for my needs.
I tested some webcams and wireless cameras from work (which I use normally for teleconferences) but they are not up to resolution and illumination I needed.
I contacted these security camera companies to try to find out what is best for the price I'm looking for and this what I got for me. I will be different for you for your environment.
Yes, break-in and other thieves are up in our neighborhood so installed this last year to prevent such problems. I did caught my neighborhood kids scoping one of my cars (gee, a ugly 1981 Honda Accord, go figure) which I did copy to the police which they identified one kid on the video and they are working on the rest.
How come nobody has mentioned this yet? Hook up your surveillance camera(s) to a SlingBox or LocationFree base station and you can watch your home/baby/puppies/package delivery... anywhere you go on a cellphone or SONY PSP at a hotspot or on an office computer.
SecuritySpy is one of the best software solutions I have found for affordable video surveillance. The software provides support for a variety of network cameras and similar solutions. MacOS appears to be the only supported operating system.
"I dare you to claim that they did deserve to die, for burglary.
Seriously.
The court system doesn't impose lethal injections on burglars, so why should YOU have the right to use lethal force on one?
Next question"
O.K. lets assume that you are in a similar situation, two guys enter the home, you and wife are sleeping, you wake up, have a gun, lets assume a shotgun. You are aware that firing your gun in the house could cause a lot of damage. You tiptoe to the bedroom door, trying to get the drop on them.
Now rational thought, any that you may have ever had, is gone, because your mind percieves you to be threatened. Let's assume also that you yell giving them a chance "stop or i'll shoot." They bolt, and with their first motion, a twist of their torso, you keep your promise.
From your perspective:
First, once they move, you might as well assume they are reaching for a gun.
Second, you don't know their motive. It could have been someone out to kill you for firing them, it could have been someone pissed off that day. They could be high on PCP/Meth/etc... (but not weed, as they would be far too paranoid to rob someone... 8')
Lastly, thats your wife is in there, and she will expect you to do whatever you can to protect her, and will love you no matter what happens, but returning the favor, you want to find out who just entered your house and broke that secure feeling she had. If you don't, you the burglers may be alive, but your relationship with your wife will be strained.
From the burgler:
Your breaking the law, entering someones presumably locked home for whatever motive you have.
Second, it's a known that you might die if you enter an environment where you don't know the risks. This is ingrained in us, and that's why most people when they explore, go out a little, then a little more, than a little more, etc. Columbus, Lewis and Clark, etc... were freaks who bravely traveled to new destinations w/o a care, risking their lives in the process against the unknown.
Third, x in y houses have a gun, you know the risk entering that there is at least a possibliity of retaliation with a firearm.
Your right, in a moral, ethical sort of way, the guy didn't "deserve" to die.
You have to ask yourself that before you buy a gun (or more importantly, the ammo you load it with)to defend your home. "Can I live with killing an intruder?"
I couldn't. But I don't think that I can impose that philosphy on someone else, nor would I. That's why I use knives. If they get close enough that I can use one, Your damn well sure I'll do my best to defend me and my wife. Hoping that they stay alive in the end, but will think twice about their career path.
The intruders willingly took those risks on themselves. What he did deserve was the roll of the dice. The GM doesn't make the decision, you and the die do. This guy rolled for initiative and lost, bummer. The guy in the house, was doing what anyone might do in that situation.
How much is your data worth? Back it up now.
protection if the perp is wearing a Ghillie suit
http://www.sniperghillies.com/
http://www.ghilliesuits.com/
Or otherwise looking like Sasquatch on the way in and a girl on the way out...
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
Your 1.5 million # is based on an extrapolation from 19 reports out of 45 !
A sample of FORTY FIVE! Furthermore, they are self reported incidents with no means of verification.
The report actually states on page 10:
"Regardless of which estimates one believes, only a small fraction of adults have used guns defensively in 1994. The only question is whether that fraction is 1 in 1,800 (as one would conclude from the NCVS) or 1 in 100 (as indicated by the NSPOF estimate based on Kleck and Gertz's criteria)."
If one takes the the NCVS #, one should extrapolate ~83,000 incidents.
So the original poster would not be as far off the mark as you make it out to be.
paintball gun.
Makes hash from the best of plans.
"If...you can't be a good example, then you'll just have to be a horrible warning" - Catherine Aird
I've been using the Linksys PVC2300 of late. It has a built-in web server, will auto upload stills to an FTP server or email them to you and runs on POE if you can't get regular power to it. And the image quality is very nice. I had to buy an different lens in order to get the wide-angle image I was looking for, but it was only an additional $55, so no biggie there. Oh, and it has full-duplex sound capability.
I stole this sig from a more creative user.
surveilling the surveillors is a no-no...
I would like to ask a slightly modified question and that is I have area on my property which I would like to continuosly monitor. So what I would like is a cheap/durable/sensitive camera, that I can let say hook to my TV/tuner and see what is going on in that area or my property day or night. Is there anything like this?
if all you want is a good still shot of a perps face, look in cabellas hunting catalog for a motion activated, tree mount cameras. relatively cheap, good quality, with or without flash.probably the best image quality for the money, obviously you get no video though. but as you stated, grainy, crappy video is useless anyway.
For decent cameras on the cheap, go to supercircuits.com and browse their collection of recorders and cameras. They have a pretty large array of IR-boosted cameras as well.
Outside of that though, one of the best things you can do to increase both the effectiveness of your cameras and the security of your porperty is to install lighting over as much of your property as possible. Night/Motion-sensing lights can be had very cheaply and will do more to deter nighttime theft and/or break-ins than anything else you can do.
You may think that the video quality of a non-megapixel camera is bad, but the reality is that the majority of commercial systems in use today simply don't use them. The general idea commercially is to put as many cameras out there as economically possible, give them adequate lighting (ALL cameras need good lighting, unless you start talking about very pricey ones), and choose a recording system that provides an adequate storage duration (usually 30 days) with a decent framerate and image quality.
A decent quality 4-8 camera networkable and motion-sensing video system can be had easily these days for well under $2000. Now, if someone else is doing the installation, that price can go way up. It's far cheaper to do it yourself.
Recently, an MIT team won a defense award for developing a remote surveillance system for the US military. Each sensor has multiple cameras in it that can watch over an area, and the whole package is concealed to blend in with the local environment. During their presentation they mentioned that their next-gen system will have at least 3 multi-megapixel cameras and will transmit all of the data wirelessly over an encrypted link.
Good news: price point is ~300 USD.
Bad news: looks like its only open to the military for now.
get some of these, they are the best bang for the buck. I have even wrapped elec tape around them and put them outside -lol they have 5 triggers, one can be motion detection, other a timer. set them to ftp pics to a linux server (bare bones box $200 at newegg) so 5 cams + linux box = $600 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16881180006 I have all the scripts to rotate pics, create mpegs of each days pics, even time stamping using imagemagik. drop me a line if intersted...
Northwestern's product appears exactly the same as the one I bought from x10 20 years ago. Of course it costs far more now.
Cripes this is easy.
Linux box, zoneminder, a cheap compatible video capture card and a couple of decent IR flood cameras from supercircuits and you are done. Less than $400.00 and that's buying a old PC. I got the capture card off ebay for $66.99, and my Decent IR cameras were under $100.00 each.
Did you even try searching the internet? There are even digital PVR's out there on ebay for under $350.00 that will make the whole thing plug and play. Will you get HD quality? no. will you be able to do CSI style zooming? no it dont exist. if you want PTZ cameras you gotta spend a crapload and then you'll leave it pointed away from where the problem happened.. So get 4 cameras and call it good, with the right lens choices you can cover what you want.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
My wilife system works out really well. I had the same concerns, after someone smashed my shadow in my parking lot. The next time it happened this system recorded the incident in wmv format, and I emailed the clip to the police after I saw the damage. Took me about 5 min. I love it! $300 saved me over $1000. here is their site http://www.wilife.com/Default.aspx
I develop camera systems for home, commercial, and corporate use and for an entire package Computer, setup, and cameras it is about $999... I am located on the west coast and ship all over the United states. The system is used to remote access the camera system from anywhere that there is internet and you are able to manage it from the access point or from afar.
Jam or spoof the RF link? Yeah, right. False positives? Are you referring to the wireless sensors or the wireless link to alarm.com? In several years of operation we have seen zero problems of any kind with the sensors. As to false positives with the main link, I don't think you have a clue what you're talking about. It's a telemetry link with protocol and data, it's not just some presence/absence of an RF signal. Billybob might cut the phone line. If that doesn't set off an audible alarm he'll think the coast is clear. Next we're gonna put in cameras... just for giggles.
Look at the bright side: there's always seppuku.
a county deputy also lives across the street...
Just a note aside: Before you are going to put a camera up to record your car parked on a public street, check your local laws if you can legally do that. At least here in germany people have a right to not be filmed on public premises without proper notfication, even by the authorities, let alone by ordinary people. So if your country has any such laws and someone notices the camera you might be charged with or sued for something, or it could be inherently inadmissable evidence in court.
I personally haven't had any problems nor experience with this but I came across a neat system that looks easy to setup. Although I don't know how much it costs, it might be worth a look - it's called QNAP NVR-1012 (http://www.qnap.com/pro_detail_feature.asp?p_id=95) and there's a step-by-step on how to set it up (http://www.qnap.com/pro_detail_application.asp?p_id=95). Hope this helps...