network cameras ?

i thinking about installing an outdoor camera and am looking at the wireless network cameras that i can tie into my wifi. i see several on the market for under $100. any one out there using them. any words of wisdom. something like this http://www.tigerdirect.com/applicat...scplp1951927&gclid=CP-o6YSqwMUCFU9ffgodkSoAhg

I've got one that I've had for a couple of years now. The quality of the picture isn't all that great, can't really read a license plate from 20' away at all, so need to try out some of the newer ones. I originally ran mine over wifi, but eventually ran an ethernet cable for it. I found that the streaming video would tax out the cpu on my wifi router, so it would bring any other traffic to a crawl. It didn't have hardly any cpu usage once it was moved to a hardwired cable to the router.

I've been using ispy for my monitoring software, works well as long as the computer is on and you have enough disk space to record. You will probably get a lot of false triggers, especially on a partly cloudy day.

I've been wanting to update to one of the dedicated systems, like Brent installed a while back, but most require hard wiring all the cameras.

Yeah, I've got a few network cameras kicking around for fun, as well as a wired set of 8 cameras.

The wireless cameras I use primarily just for grins and giggles. To keep an eye on the green house, that sort of thing.

The QSEE set of 8 cameras and DVR is a bit of a different beast. The thing about it is it just 'works' and records anytime it detects movement. It's a simple set it and forget it kind of thing until you need it.

The wireless cameras are a bit more fussy and require having something on your computer running all the time to detect movement, record, etc...

It all depends on what you want to use them for.

How locked down are the camera's wifi connection? I ask, because I had a LEO relative that after dealing with a case, he removed the one he had put in a playroom for the kids. I figured if someone else could watch it, they could probably overpower the signal as well, which eliminates any security point of it.

OK I guess I should state my intentions. LOML and I are empty nesters and semi retired. Living in Arizona folks tend to stay indoors or get out of town for the summers. We are planning on doing some travel during those months either to the beach ( Cambria, California) or to the mountains (Flagstaff) or visit family (son lives in panhandle of Florida). We would be gone for weeks at a time. The house has a wired alarm system that was installed when the house was built 8 years ago. I did not however anticipate adding cameras so I did not wire the out side of the house for any sort of Data cables. I did however have several electrical plugs put in for the Christmas lights so power is not a problem.
So my thought are that it would be nice to be able to check on things when we are not here. I understand that any device I add will put a burden on my WiFI but the camera system would be used most when the system is sitting idol anyhow. I already have a 300 mbps wifi but I am planning on upgrading to a 450 dual or even tripple band system so that said what would your thoughts be now. I am thinking 2-4 cameras placed around the outside of the house

We had a wired 4-camera Q-See system at our old house with enough coverage to be able to see the front porch, front drive, my shop outside and my shop inside. It wouldn't have given you a ton more than a vehicle description but let me see if someone was pulling in while in the shop and let us do occasional checks on the place while out of town. Depending on the construction of the house, a skilled installer should be able to run the Still debating doing something at our new house. I lean toward a system like the Q-See again because the cameras are inexpensive and there are numerous options. If a camera dies, its easily replaced. If the DVR dies, just plug the camera into a new one. My second choice would be wired ethernet cameras. If I absolutely HAD to go wireless, I'd put in a second set of access point and put all the video traffic on a separate wireless network.

Well I hope you will follow up as I have an similar interest. Along those lines I read about some one seeing a burgling a business over in England over a web cam from here in the states. Called and owner in England and stopped the robbery or something close to this foggy story.
Garry

Do any of you do offsite streaming as well? Just thinking it would be kind of a bummer if someone broke in and then stole the system that recorded the video as well...

Mine doesn't do the offsite streaming, but it does email screenshots when motion is detected. It's actually pretty cool how they do it. When the system detects motion on a camera, it saves the previous 15 seconds before the motion, as well as the motion while it's going on and then 15 more seconds.

I have thought about locking up the box somehow to prevent the video records from being lost.

The only problem is that it's not all that discriminatory as to what constitutes motion. The shadow of a flag waving is enough to trigger it. But you can edit what part of the camera is in view for it to use to detect motion.

The cameras and videos they record nowadays are pretty good too.

Ryan Mooney said:

Do any of you do offsite streaming as well? Just thinking it would be kind of a bummer if someone broke in and then stole the system that recorded the video as well...

Click to expand...

I am still a the research stages but I do know that some of the cameras them selves can be programmed to e mail you a picture when the motion portion is triggered. I also know that you can through the use of software,program the sensitivity of some of the cameras. My plan is to first get one camera and play with it right know I am still doing my research. He I got time i am semi retired after all... Oh yea i am also deciding on which router to upgrade to so many choices.

I just saw that just confirmed what I said about e mail,

Ryan Mooney said:

Do any of you do offsite streaming as well? Just thinking it would be kind of a bummer if someone broke in and then stole the system that recorded the video as well...

Click to expand...

I set mine up to access via my home vpn, but iSpy connect has a web service you can pay for if you want.. I also have it setup where it will save the photos to a local drive, then that folder is synced via copy to their server since I've got a 20 gig account on it. I typically clear out anything over 7 days old from that folder. iSpy can be setup to email images also.

I guess I'm just being pessimistic, but not sure if worth the expense... it might or might not be a deterrent, and even if you see who broke in and catch them, likely won't get stuff back. My house was broken into when I lived in California... we called the cops within a couple of hours of the break in and were told they would look into it, but likely all the stuff stolen was fenced and gone within an hour of the break in. We never saw any of it again.

Same in Houston, thieves kicked the door in and cleared out the house... cops looked into it, but nothing ever returned... insurance paid full replacement value.

The big driver for the system we bought was to be able to see cars pulling in our driveway which couldn't be seen from my shop. My wife wanted to be able to check on me in the shop, and she wanted to be able to pull up a view of the front door. Remotely checking in on things was a bonus but I didn't store any data offsite. Before setting up something like that I'd look into how much data you'd be moving across your internet connection and any hard or soft limits your ISP may have. I believe my system had a 1TB drive and held about 2-4 weeks of video based on motion triggers. That included pretty much continuous video anytime I was in the shop, every time a bug, snow, steam from the furnace kicking on, a bird, car, wind blowing a bush, cloud shadows, etc, etc.