X10 cameras, or other cheap surveillance suggestions

[EvilPeppard]

I am looking for an inexpensive camera surveillance solution I can hook up to my home network, or similar.

We have been having trouble with kids cutting through our yard repeatedly. We know who the kids are and have even had the police over to their house to warn them, based on our neighbors witnessing the trespassing. The parents also have brought the kids over and made them apologize to us. Everything has been quiet until recently...I have strong suspicions they are cutting through our yard again late in the evening, but I want to actually catch them before I involve the police again. (The police say an automatic trespassing charge will be invoked against them on our next call).

I was thinking of ways I could hook something up to my home network, like a wireless webcam or other. Do you have any CHEAP solutions for something like this?

I looked briefly at the X10 cameras:
http://www.x10.com/products4/google/security_camera_vcr_lpdb.html.
They are wireless, motion activated, and seem like a good possibility. I've seen them advertised for a few years now. Does anyone have any experience with them? Are they reliable? Are they junk?

Let me know your thoughts or any other possible solutions.

Thanks for the help.

 

[Ididmyc600]

A cheap webcam and the right software will do, I had a prog that would allow you to set a field of detection on the camera, when activated it would record the images as pictures or an AVI file that canbe streamed to the web or the pictures emailed to an address, as well as an alert that the camera had sensed movement.

It was called something like webcam watchdog or something,

 

[EvilPeppard]

Anyone with X10 experience and feedback?

 

[KingCody]

I had a wireless X10 camera like that one a few years ago. the model I bought had a remote control pan/tilt base (which you could program for different loactions and scan patterns).

It worked very well in bright light, but it was useless in anything less than bright light. even medium lighting would make the picture very grainy, and forget anything less than medium, you just got a grey/black screen.

It also came with software that allowed you to watch the live video from any computer over the internet (you had to install the client software on that machine, but it worked well).

I eventually sold the whole X10 system on ebay and bought this (there is also a color version)it worked great. The picture was much clearer than the X10 camera. as for the night vision, it needed a little light but not much. that camera worked great but I eventually sold that on ebay as well (simply because it never got used)

bottom line, from my experience with it, the X10 camera worked great in bright light but worked very poorly in anything less. while the "generic" one from harborfreight.com worked great in both bright and low-light condidtions (and costs about 1/3 of the X10's price ). the never X10's may be better, I don't know

cheers :wave:

 

[Tedster]

I am looking for an inexpensive camera surveillance solution I can hook up to my home network, or similar.

We have been having trouble with kids cutting through our yard repeatedly. We know who the kids are and have even had the police over to their house to warn them, based on our neighbors witnessing the trespassing. The parents also have brought the kids over and made them apologize to us. Everything has been quiet until recently...I have strong suspicions they are cutting through our yard again late in the evening, but I want to actually catch them before I involve the police again. (The police say an automatic trespassing charge will be invoked against them on our next call).

I was thinking of ways I could hook something up to my home network, like a wireless webcam or other. Do you have any CHEAP solutions for something like this?

I looked briefly at the X10 cameras:
http://www.x10.com/products4/google/security_camera_vcr_lpdb.html.
They are wireless, motion activated, and seem like a good possibility. I've seen them advertised for a few years now. Does anyone have any experience with them? Are they reliable? Are they junk?

Let me know your thoughts or any other possible solutions.

Thanks for the help.

a mean dog works wonders for that problem!

 

[AMDIsTheBest010]

A lawn chair and Shotgun also works great in my experiences.

Buy a quality webcam, like the new 1.3MP logitech quickcam (good enought that you can tell its the right ppl) and then buy a long enough USB cable, and set it up on your computer to record and leave it on al night

...AMD