Security cameras
Oct. 10th, 2008 02:09 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
johnridleyApparently there has been some suspicious activity happening in our neighborhood lately; someone asked a lurking pickup if he needed any help, and the guy sped off, and later that day there was a break-in nearby.
A couple of years ago we had a break-in at the church, and I'd talked about network security cameras for that location at the time.
I think it's important that the camera operate independently, and that it has FTP capabilities so that unless the intruder takes the power or internet signal down, or grabs the camera within 10 seconds of it seeing them, the images of them have already been uploaded to an off-site server.
I looked into them a bit and found that almost all of the inexpensive cameras have incredible amounts of weaselly prose in their marketing. They all seem to say that they do motion detection, email alerts, FTP uploads, and other features, and the camera works "without a PC."
After finding PDF manuals online though, it turns out that almost all of them connect to the ethernet network "without a PC" but that's about it. Once connected, they just sit there. They require a PC to connect to them, pull data from them and the motion detection and other fancy features happen in the (windows-only) software, and sometimes they even only can be viewed from an active-X control within IE.
It looked like the Panasonic camera was the only one that had actual motion detection, FTP and email alerts within the camera, for a reasonably cheap price. The wired version is quite reasonable at about $85, but for whatever reason the wireless version is about twice that. I found an Amazon seller selling one at a discount and ordered it up.
It works OK, has pretty good low light sensitivity (by increasing exposure time quite a bit, which blurs anything moving as would be expected). Getting the wireless set up was a guessing game though. First, it only supports WEP encryption. That would have bugged me more but I'd already gone from WAP to WEP for the Nintendo DSs. The worst part though was that as far as I can tell, it only works with the standard channel 6. Most routers default to channel 6, but I had been using 11 to avoid interference with neighbors. I could not get the camera to work on 11 at all. it had no settings, so I assumed it would hunt. I left it for 5 minutes and it never locked on the signal, and there's no way to know what it was trying to do.
Anyway, I have this thing sitting around now. I don't know if I should put it in the garage (which would seem to be the most tempting target to me, since there's always either a person or a dog in the house) or whether to just point it at the front lawn or driveway, or put it in the house. I may try it in a few locations and see if it produces usable pictures when people or cars move in front of it. Or I may decide to place it at the church in the entryway.
A couple of years ago we had a break-in at the church, and I'd talked about network security cameras for that location at the time.
I think it's important that the camera operate independently, and that it has FTP capabilities so that unless the intruder takes the power or internet signal down, or grabs the camera within 10 seconds of it seeing them, the images of them have already been uploaded to an off-site server.
I looked into them a bit and found that almost all of the inexpensive cameras have incredible amounts of weaselly prose in their marketing. They all seem to say that they do motion detection, email alerts, FTP uploads, and other features, and the camera works "without a PC."
After finding PDF manuals online though, it turns out that almost all of them connect to the ethernet network "without a PC" but that's about it. Once connected, they just sit there. They require a PC to connect to them, pull data from them and the motion detection and other fancy features happen in the (windows-only) software, and sometimes they even only can be viewed from an active-X control within IE.
It looked like the Panasonic camera was the only one that had actual motion detection, FTP and email alerts within the camera, for a reasonably cheap price. The wired version is quite reasonable at about $85, but for whatever reason the wireless version is about twice that. I found an Amazon seller selling one at a discount and ordered it up.
It works OK, has pretty good low light sensitivity (by increasing exposure time quite a bit, which blurs anything moving as would be expected). Getting the wireless set up was a guessing game though. First, it only supports WEP encryption. That would have bugged me more but I'd already gone from WAP to WEP for the Nintendo DSs. The worst part though was that as far as I can tell, it only works with the standard channel 6. Most routers default to channel 6, but I had been using 11 to avoid interference with neighbors. I could not get the camera to work on 11 at all. it had no settings, so I assumed it would hunt. I left it for 5 minutes and it never locked on the signal, and there's no way to know what it was trying to do.
Anyway, I have this thing sitting around now. I don't know if I should put it in the garage (which would seem to be the most tempting target to me, since there's always either a person or a dog in the house) or whether to just point it at the front lawn or driveway, or put it in the house. I may try it in a few locations and see if it produces usable pictures when people or cars move in front of it. Or I may decide to place it at the church in the entryway.
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no subject
Date: 2008-10-10 06:23 pm (UTC)