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Wal-Mart Sells Home Spy Gear
Anonymous Coward writes "Always wanted to play with the toys James Bond, the CIA and Dateline get to use every day? Now you can surf over to your friendly neighborhood Wal-Mart Online and pick up a spy-cam (complete with audio) disguised as a Smoke Detector at everyday low prices. Or pick from a variety of pinhole and infrared CCD cameras. Walton, Sam Walton... "
Amazing! Wal-Mart seems to have a wide selection of video security gear. I think I'll get one of these for my limousine. Hmmm...
umm "Contents" not recorded. Meaning you can't record the surveillance. In other words if you have camera going to a bunch of tv's with some guy watching them, but those signals are not recorded its perfectly legal (which makes sense as such would only be a space shifting device so that the guards don't have to be everywhere). So no we don't need to assume we are being recorded unless stated in friendly letters on the door that for our safty and security we are being watched!
Usually those places have stickers somewhere near the entrance saying "Smile! You're on hidden camera", or a legal warning saying the same thing.
I do know that video survellance is inadmissable as evidence in any federal court unless the subject knew of it beforehand.
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db wonders why daveo always refers to himself in the third person in all his posts...
Perhaps he has been looking at himself through a pinhole camera all this time?
I had a friend who worked at WalMart who told me
that the most of the ceiling cameras in the
store are fake (complete with blinking LED and
occaional movement) and occasionally floor
personal will call for a security gaurd over the
PA system "Security: code orange, section 3"
for no reason other than to keep potential
shoplifters paranoid.
You'd have a self-contained webcam. With a little ingenuity, and some more power, maybe a wireless solution could be cooked up? Like a car-top webcam. Wouldn't that be nice. (My car is parked at 42nd and Vine. My car keys are on the roof in plain view of the camera)
Wah!
I wonder if they also tell their would-be spies that using such equipment in some states is illegal (without telling the party being spied on).
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Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
All you need is a video capture card ($40 from eBay), a composite video camera, a cable modem or DSL connection, a web server, a device driver, and a few lines of code. Program the driver to take a snapshot every second, and dump the image to a JPG on the web server. Write an HTML page that does an auto-refresh on the JPG, and Presto! instant remote monitoring of your home. Then, if you have the time, you can write an image processing app that compares two successive frames. If there's enough of a difference, it saves the frame to disk. So if someone actually does break into your house, it will record it.
Timur Tabi
Remove "nospam_" from email address
I used to be a support mgr at a smaller WM. The security room was in the same room that the accounting people were in (and the safe).
I put a few of the cameras in the store.
The problem areas usually have them installed. Also, almost every cash register overhead is real. But for the most part, many are fake.
The store tended to play it safe rather than risk being sued.
Hey, I'm gonna run out and buy two of them thangs. One to monitor the bug zapper, and the other to watch...
Beat you to it. The Redneck Bugzappercam , so grab a six pack, sit back, and watch bugs die a spectacular death in a shocking display. Should I provide a streaming mp3 of them getting nuked?
I need a switch from my parallel port and a perl script so the pinhole cam I was showing off earlier in the day can be seen.
Hey, I'm gonna run out and buy two of them thangs.
One to monitor the bug zapper, and the other to watch for any varmits tryin' to steal the wheels off my house.
This is basically the kind of script Randy wrote in Cryptonomicon (Neal Stephenson).
This would work if you have a kind of image encoding where the magnitude of the difference (from subtraction) accurately reflects the magnitude of the difference we would percieve by looking at the two shots. For instance, if each image is encoded as a big long number, and the two numbers subtracted, you would get a very big result if the only pixel changed is the one in the upper left. This is an example of a scheme that wouldn't work.
With a good encoding scheme, this would work very well.
Vidi, Vici, Veni
Most modern black and white cameras are very sensitive to the red/infra red range. A lit cigarette looks like a spotlight at the camera in the dark. If your company has a no smoking policy and you have cameras, watch out.
Color cameras do not seem to benefit from infrared. I have a ccd b/w and it responds in a most excellent way from infrared led's. The b/w also does a pretty good job under moon light. The color does not see this spectrum and is miserable for night viewing.
I also have a image multiplier (got this one at walmart in the hunting department!) that multiplies light 15,000 times. Its great for scoping wildlife out in the woods and other telephoto lenses will fit it. Just don't use it to try finding your way out of the woods in the dark. I tried and discovered the field of vision was narrow and I tripped over every damn thing in the way!
Remember to suggest to CmdrTaco that he add a "Too Much Information" moderation category. Also, buy milk.
There are places selling infrared cameras. I have seen some in industrial catalogs starting at $5000 that will show electrical lines behind walls in computer enhanced color. They also require big batteries, so I'm sure they have some kind of cooling on the imaging sensor. They are useful for finding bad joints in overhead wiring, substations, electrical boxes, and places where the voltages are undesirable to trace by hand. Most industrial engineering supply catalogs should have them.
Black and white pinhole cameras sell for about $50 apiece. All you need to supply then is an RCA cable, a microphone, and a power supply, then take ANY smoke alarm (they're not very expensive), remove the cover, then secure the camera inside of it and VOILA, instant spy camera. Now, if you want to get more fancy, for an extra $100, I can integrate a video/audio transmitter into the case as well, then have a reciever anywhere within 300 meters. So for about $180 this could be assembled by anyone with enough electronics knowledge to successfully hook up your average stereo system.
Of course, this is Walmart we're talking about. This is a CONSUMER product, and of course, there is a high consumer demand for surveillence equipment in the home. After all, this is about the extent that it could be used legally. Nobody will likely use these in a commercial environment when there are better choices available and its illegal to use them in almost any other circumstance. So if you're going to break the law anyways, why rely on a consumer product that would probably be easy to identify.
-Restil
Play with my webcams and lights here
EMPs can be created by using a tesla coil. Basically just step the voltage up to the desired level, and then put an RF component (ie: a coil) into the circuit, and you have yourself a portable EMP.
In short, just ionize the shit out of an area, and then zap it with about 50mA and a few thousand volts, and you'll kill anything with an IC on it.
Try microwaving your walkman to get a good idea of how this works.
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