Setting up security wireless cameras

[cityboy-stl]

I need to set up a couple of security cameras to monitor the front and back of my house. Someone stole my central air conditioning unit last week.

I would like to get two wireless cams and set them in the windows. I am thinking about these Panasonic cameras. They seem to get good reviews. But I am by no means set on them if there are better suggestions.

I have no wireless setup now however and I really do not know what else I need to make this work. It appears software comes with the camera.

I am assuming I need a wireless modem and a router? Are modem/router combination devices better or are separate devices better. I don't need a separate modem for each camera do I? Suggestions for quality devices? Do I need anything else hardware wise?

My computer has two Lan devices so that shouldn't be a problem. It's an I-920 cpu with 12G ram and running Windows 7 64bit.

Does anyone have any thoughts or ideas? Thanks!

 

[T-Rexx]

Someone stole my central air conditioning unit last week.

I know nothing about this. I do not understand why those cameras have an RJ45 plug if they are wireless (maybe they work as wired or wireless?).

The wireless standard for those cameras is 802.11b/g, so, yes, you will need a wireless router. You do not need a wireless router/modem combination (which are rather hard to find in the USA, anyway). The router will plug into your existing modem, creating a home network with a bridge to the Internet through the router to the modem. So long as you set the router up high enough in your home, you should have no trouble accessing the cameras, even if they are outside. You will also need a power source to plug the cameras into, of course. Since the cameras will be inside (looking out a window), I guess that won't be a problem.

Is the area under surveillance lighted well enough to make the cameras effective? If the A/C unit was stolen at night, I'm not sure a camera looking through a window into the darkness would have done much to help you.

It says they use DHCP, so I presume the cameras show up on your home wireless network as unique devices. The software on your PC then communicates with the cameras over the 802.11 wireless and the images or video are transmitted via SMTP or FTP over the network. Very often, surveillance systems take serial photographs of an area, rather than actual video. They do "motion detection" by comparing one photograph to another. If the photos are not identical (i.e., if something has moved into the picture), the system can trigger an alarm. But even changing shadows through the day will make the pictures not identical, of course.

The resolution of these cameras is not that good (640 x 480). You won't get very high resolution photos of your thieves with these.The main usefulness of these cameras is that they are wireless. You could almost do a better job with a cheap but higher resolution web cam and appropriate surveillance software; but I don't know of any wireless webcams. If you could manage with a single web cam connected to a single PC looking out a window, you could save yourself a lot of money.

I will take your word that the software is included, although I did not see that in the camera description. The only free (and open source) camera surveillance software of which I know is called ZoneMinder, and it only runs on Linux. I know that there are many commercial software products available to turn cameras of all sorts into surveillance systems, however, if cost is not that much of an issue.

 

[trawler69]

Most of these cams have the ability to upload videos / pictures to the internet and to be viewed remotely over the internet. It is worth remembering that if someone breaks in they will quite likely steal the cameras / computer so using the motion detect and setting it to email or ftp images to the internet solves the problem of having the evidence stolen.

To set up remote viewing you will need to set up port forwarding on your router and, if you don't have a fixed ip address, then you will need a free Dyndns or similar account so that you can have an address that will always point to whatever ip your connection has been allocated.

If you have a camera pointing out of a window then don't use one with infra red as it reflects off the window and "blinds" the camera. Low light cameras are ok until they see motion and then most of them tend to blur.

640 by 480 may not be much by todays standards but is quite adequate to identify someone at 18 feet even with a quite wide angle lens.

There are many apps now to enable viewing on a number of mobile phone platforms too.

 

[cityboy-stl]

Well, so far so good. Got the camera and router and set it up. The picture is remarkably clear and the wireless connection is stable. The camera can be used wired or wireless and the wired connection is required for the initial setup, thus the RJ45 connection. The biggest problem is glare and reflection from the window glass. I'm going to try a polarizing filter. The recording software that comes with the camera sucks and was clearly written by someone in dire need of English lessons. I found some much better shareware software that also has a built in HTTP server for remote viewing. Works Great. I do need to find some off site FTP location to upload the motion detection videos as they're created. Suggestions Anyone? I'm thinking of getting two more cameras.

Thanks guys.

 

[T-Rexx]

The recording software that comes with the camera sucks and was clearly written by someone in dire need of English lessons.

That is a matter of perspective. Perhaps it is you who need Chinese lessons.

I found some much better shareware software that also has a built in HTTP server for remote viewing. Works Great. I do need to find some off site FTP location to upload the motion detection videos as they're created. Suggestions Anyone?

See if you can upload to Dropbox or 4shared (both offer free accounts). If you have Ubuntu, you can upload to your (free) Ubuntu One cloud drive, even from a Windows computer (I believe). You might also look into Microsoft's SkyDrive, which promises an incredible 25 GB of free cloud storage.

 

[bendted]

Suggestions Anyone?

Outdoor lighting. Not the motion detector types, but ones that stay on all night like the street lamps. Honestly, I think they are more important than security cameras. I've had one for 20 years. Were you home when they stole the A / C unit? They probably stole it for the copper content.

 

[trawler69]

If the cams have infra red illuminators it will reflect off the glass into the cam and you will see nothing at night. Otherwise put a box or a bit of black something behind the cam or get the lens as close to the glass as possible and try to stop light from the room hitting the glass in front of the lens. I have learned from experience that if you want to look out side then the best way to do it is with an outdoors camera.

 

[cityboy-stl]

That is a matter of perspective. Perhaps it is you who need Chinese lessons.

See if you can upload to Dropbox or 4shared (both offer free accounts). If you have Ubuntu, you can upload to your (free) Ubuntu One cloud drive, even from a Windows computer (I believe). You might also look into Microsoft's SkyDrive, which promises an incredible 25 GB of free cloud storage.

Hahaha. "Please pay your attention on cameras button on top which activate privacy feature of softwares".

Unfortunately it does not appear that Skydrive, Dropbox nor 4shared support FTP. I do have Ubuntu running in a VirtualBox but it does not appear that the Ubuntu One cloud drive supports FTP either.

Outdoor lighting. Not the motion detector types, but ones that stay on all night like the street lamps. Honestly, I think they are more important than security cameras. I've had one for 20 years. Were you home when they stole the A / C unit? They probably stole it for the copper content.

Certainly it was for the copper. There is an 8 foot fence around the yard and I already have dusk to dawn lights. The lights are 12 feet from the ground. They had a ladder and unscrewed the bulbs. Clearly professional thieves. I need to put guards over the lights I guess. I was probably asleep when it happened.

If the cams have infra red illuminators it will reflect off the glass into the cam and you will see nothing at night. Otherwise put a box or a bit of black something behind the cam or get the lens as close to the glass as possible and try to stop light from the room hitting the glass in front of the lens. I have learned from experience that if you want to look out side then the best way to do it is with an outdoors camera.

Actually I get a good picture at night with the outdoor lights. The cam does not have infra red illuminators. Most of the reflection and glare is coming from the storm window which I why I want to try a polarizing filter. If I remove the storm window most of the problem goes away. But that's not a good answer in January when it's 5 degrees outside. It's really only bad when direct sunlight is hitting the window. I know an outdoor camera would deliver a better picture but they're so hard to mount and to work with, not to mention more expensive. If it's inside sitting in the window it's so much more accessible.

 

[AstareGod]

Interesting. I had kind of a similar setup for when I lived in college. I rigged up my own security/burglar intrusion system and had an IP camera hooked into the whole thing which took a picture once a second whenever it detected someone had broken in. It also uploaded an image to my website (which was hosted off-site but still under my physical control).

It actually caught a number of people entering, but these were mostly workers in our res-hall. What they were doing during a school holiday while I was out of town remains unknown, but I at least know they went in my room!

Of course all of the software I used for it was my own creation. It was easy to hook into the camera's built-in HTTP server and just grab the image, save it to the computer's hard disk, and upload it to the website. I'm not sure if you're an experienced programmer, but for this cause I'd be willing to work with you on trying to create something out of it. It would be good for me too because I could learn on how to make it more customizable for other people.

 

[cityboy-stl]

Aw, gee thank you so much. I appreciate your offer. I am not as experienced in the PC / Server side of the world as I would like to be. In real life though I write assembler code on big iron IBM mainframe systems. I'm enjoying the challenge of figuring it out and getting it working the way I want on a different platform. If the offer is open though I may ask you some questions if I get stuck on something.

Thanks

 

[AstareGod]

Absolutely! I'm more of a VB.NET/ASP.NET kinda guy but I have a huge amount of services up and running ranging from home security, weather alerts, database replication, calendars, blogs, private messaging, development tools, and a lot of other stuff. I hope I'd be able to help out; plus I always like a challenge