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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?"
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.
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'm surprised it has to be 600-700 dollars when 8mp consumer digicams are $180 and have an intricate zoom lens you don't even want for surveillance. What we need is a 6mp monchrome sensor with no IR filter, a fixed-length lens, and wifi, for about $100. OK, $130 with a motion sensor. Come on China, you can do it!
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.
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
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-- I wonder which will go down in history as the bigger failure: the War on Drugs or the War on Filesharing
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.
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.
There's pretty good motion detecting software out there already.. a bit of time with google should solve that problem.
I've solved the security camera problem with a $50 webcam, but I was only monitoring a desk in a cubicle that had a bad habit of things going missing. Worked pretty well, though lighting wasn't an issue in that case. Neither was cable length, because the camera only had to be a couple feet from the host PC.
Maybe one could rig up something like that, get a couple Fit-PC's (they run around $300 each) and a couple webcams and go from there.
Not sure how to solve low light situations.. but it's a long shot cheaper than $1000 if you can live without it.
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.
Camcorders, and other digital optics used to not have the IR blocked. It was not until it became popular to post IR pictures of people in normal clothing became popular. The problem was/is that IR tends to let us imagine we are seeing through the clothing. As one could understand, not something most people want being done. So, congress rattled its saber and the camera manufacturers removed or filtered the IR. This is also related to why digital cameras make clicking sounds that in many cases you can not disable. It was to warn victims of someone taking illicit photographs.
Which just goes to show, anything can be used in ways that were never intended by the inventor/manufacturer.
InnerWeb
Freud might say that Intelligent Design is religion's ID.
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.
No, really. Citation needed.
Here is a blog where someone's mentioned a lot of the statistics. The number of gun accidents, as he discovered, is somewhere around 1150/year. The number of crimes prevented is apparently somewhere around 1.5 MILLION per year.
So, yes. Citation needed. Your gut feeling that guns are evil is not, in any way, proof.
Breaking Into the Industry - A development log about starting a game studio.
But long story short, your great grandfather still got shot. Having a gun didn't protect him at all.
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
You have proven that guns kill people. Congratulations.
Duh.
Of course guns kill people. That's all they're capable of doing. That is what they are designed to do, period. So of course you can find statistics that relatively a large number of people are killed by guns in what is, by far, the largest country with any significant gun ownership. This should be obvious to you.
Your statistics say nothing about how many crimes they stop. Your statistics say nothing about how many people are killed by other things when guns are not available.
Does the good outweigh the bad? I think so. I can't prove it, of course, but I think so.
But even assuming I'm wrong, the fact that 11,344 people are killed by guns in the US every year is not a proof of such. It's barely a data point.
48 thousand people were killed in car accidents in 2004 (page 33). Let's ban cars!
If you want to prove that guns are a problem, you'll have to sit down and figure out exactly what good it is that they provide, quantize that, and compare it to the harm. Also, remember to not include deaths that would have been caused by other means if guns weren't available, appropriately pro-rated by likelihood. Good luck, because you'll need it.
Breaking Into the Industry - A development log about starting a game studio.
Sierra Tango Foxtrot Uniform
That said, there are places in this country with crime rates high enough that gun ownership for protection is an obvious and reasonable choice. What I really don't understand is the response of those to whom using the best tool for the job is somehow unthinkable. Would these same people oppose table saws for woodworking because they can accidentally take off fingers?
By the way, I have had formal gun safety training. I make sure my children also get it at an appropriate age. I reinforce that training during recreational shooting. Life is full of risks, but owning a gun need not be any more dangerous than owning an automobile, a table saw, a swimming pool, or any other useful but potentially dangerous objects.
"Rub her feet." -- L.L.