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Security Graphics Software Technology

Ultimate Wireless Webcam? 58

Posted by Cliff from the remotely-watching dept.
Chris asks: "I am in need of a webcam for home security. I want it to be able to connect to my home wireless network (802.11g) and have access to its images from a secure website. I also want to be able to access images from it on my cellphone. Is there a webcam that does this?"
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Ultimate Wireless Webcam? More

Ultimate Wireless Webcam?

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  • IT? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Atrax ( 249401 ) on Thursday December 23, 2004 @10:06AM (#11167390) Homepage Journal
    Surely this is an 'ask slashdot'?

    or am I just making that up?

  • Veo Observer (Score:5, Informative)

    by AtariAmarok ( 451306 ) on Thursday December 23, 2004 @10:14AM (#11167447)
    The Veo Observer [veo.com] is worth checking out. Looks like a one-eyed snakehead, but it does have its own built-in web server, is pretty easy to use, and they offer a wireless one. It has tilt, pan, zoom too.

    Not only this, unlike X10, they have never spammed me or put annoying popups on web pages.

  • More cameras (Score:3, Interesting)

    by $exyNerdie ( 683214 ) on Thursday December 23, 2004 @10:20AM (#11167494) Homepage Journal

    DLink makes some wireless cameras. Page is here: http://www.dlink.com/products/category.asp?cid=60& sec=0 [dlink.com]

    Here is one from Linksys: http://www.linksys.com/products/product.asp?grid=3 3&scid=38&prid=650 [linksys.com]

    • Forget the Lynksys one. Viewable in IE for Windows only only.
    • I checked the specs on the DLink unit and i'm pleased that it's power requirements only need 12 volts. This means you can hook it up to a large lead-acid or gelcell battery, and it can run outdoors for about 3 to 10 days, depending on how big of a battery you use. Now if only they had infared LEDs wired in with the cam.. That means that you'll have to bash together a setup where you can slew the camera to it's stop, hitting a switch to turn on the lights, then slew it the other way to the opposing stop to
  • Anyone else think this is ott, and gonna cause paranoid problems?

    I mean, accessing it from you Cellphone? How much you actually going to be able to see? You going to run home everytime theres some kind of movement outside? Could be some one breaking in.... or could just be next doors cat.

    How about just get one that will take a pic every time there is movement, then if someone DID break in, you would have pictures of who it was, plus insurance company can't say you didn't take enough steps.

    Having this kin

    • Re:Paranoid? (Score:3, Informative)

      by gregmac ( 629064 )
      How about just get one that will take a pic every time there is movement, then if someone DID break in, you would have pictures of who it was, plus insurance company can't say you didn't take enough steps.

      It would be nice if there was some kind of open-source project [zoneminder.com] that wrote software for this kind of thing, too...
      • Yeah. Or even alternative [sourceforge.net] options.
        • We tried implementing motion and ZoneMinder where I work, and while they have promise (especially ZoneMinder), they required a LOT of work to get things running properly, and even then we had some issues with the cameras. Once it was working, it was fine, but the headaches involved with the initial setup frightened off management. Most of the proprietary solutions weren't much better. Those that were relatively easy to set up had poor interfaces, and those that had decent interfaces were short on feature
          • I'm a Motion user, myself.

            I'll admit, it's more oriented towards the hackerish experimenter, since it required that I rebuild my kernel with the Video 4 Linux modules. It took me a weekend to get the software part up and running and calibrated for the environment (noise masking, sensitivity, etc).

            The hardware took longer since I had to learn how to run cables. Obviously, this *could* be done with wireless cameras, but my paranoia level was such that I don't want jamming or simple signal intercept... But I
            • IIRC, the V4L part was what caused the highest consumption of pain killers, because time was spent trying to get the wrong version to work (I think it was newer than motion was designed to work with, and something fundamental had changed), and even with the right version, it was still a major hassle.

              But again, the proprietary stuff we could find in general wasn't much better. The best solution I could see for ease of implementation was a pure Axis system, with Axis cameras and software (which I've used be

    • Re:Paranoid? (Score:5, Funny)

      by bhima ( 46039 ) <Bhima.Pandava@DE ... com minus distro> on Thursday December 23, 2004 @11:58AM (#11168417) Journal
      I actually took the paranoid monitoring thing to mean "I think my Wife / GF is cheating on me and I want to be able to confront them in the act"
      • Funny?? How the hell is this funny? I just finished watching "Das Geheime Fenster" which really creped me out. Why is it that so many of Steven King's creepiest stories involve writers?
      • More like "I think my Linux desktop is cheating on me while I'm at work with my neighbor's Windows desktop. I want to catch them in the act before I have little bastard Windows PDAs running around here."
    • I had a simple webcam setup for security that would snap video and pics whenever there was movement. I could even email the snapped photos if I wanted, which could (I guess) be easily sent to a cellphone.
    • My motorola V300 has a 16 bit color, 176x220 transflective TFT display. If I could get enough bandwidth for a video stream, it would look just dandy. It even has java 2 so it could run some kind of streaming client... It cost me about $150. I'd love to have a camera set up here so I could keep an eye on things, for example a sick pet or my front porch for a dropped-off delivery. (I work about 3 minutes from home.)
    • This is what I found out when I setup a panorama webcam and motion sensing webcam for my building site, ( treecam [boutade.net]). I had it setup to SMS me everytime motion was detected, but had to turn it off after a couple of hours. I would mostly get some nice pictures of nothing but shadows moving across the ground.
      The only time that I did video something significant was when someone pinched some stuff [boutade.net], but it was all retrospective as we only looked at the video once we discovered things were missing.

  • X10 (Score:3, Informative)

    by thewhitenoise ( 812390 ) on Thursday December 23, 2004 @10:23AM (#11167518) Homepage
    I'm sure we've all seen the ads for the "amazing X10 webcams" online at one point or another. They're designed to provide home security for less than 80 USD (currently running a special). I think they have a web interface which will allow tilt/zoom. The only problem is that they're easily "hackable". Anyone with a receiver in the range of the camera is able to view the feed, so they're not very secure themselves. Of course, it's essentially the same as running an unencrypted wireless router in a densely populated area.

    • Re:X10 (Score:5, Informative)

      by antifoidulus ( 807088 ) on Thursday December 23, 2004 @10:51AM (#11167771) Homepage Journal
      From what I have read(which includes the book hardware hacking for geeks) the quality on the X10 really blows. You can get better quality cameras for about the same amount of money, avoid the X10 if at all possible.
      • "I have heard something is lousy and we should avoid it..." You work for SCO or Microsoft?

        Here's an actual example of a standard X-10 cam image [thornynorny.com](it's a test page, no updates.) These are the standard color cams, there is also a wide angle B&W camera too and ones with the pan/tilt thingies. The wireless reciver outputs a standard composite video feed (you could split to a VCR). The supplied X-10 uses a USB decoder wich is pretty lo-res, the cameras output higher res then the digitizer. The software do

      • You sir are.... Correct! (unusual for /., eh? ;-) ) X-10 camera quality sucks the big one. I should know because I own no less than 5 of their crappy cameras. I bought them shortly after a peeping tom started bugging my neighbors. I set them up on my wall facing the spacing between our houses. I walked by and let it take my picture and I couldn't even tell it was me. Yeah, they suck. Still with a company that makes decent quality cameras.
    • I wouldn't consider John Public being able to view the unsecured video signal as being "hackable". However, monitoring the RF signal in order to determine the type of security in use and then circumventing it would make it "hackable" in my book.

      -Slashdot Junky
  • Webcams suck for CCTV work. Now there are IP cameras that are ment for monitoring but you're looking at a much higher price range. If you want a controlable (PTZ) camera prepare to shell out alot more. And if you want more then one, then get a number of analogue cameras and find a company that makes a capture card and software. There are a number of them that have software that support web access, e-mail on motion, ect....

  • Wireless camera theft (Score:5, Funny)

    by fstat(pipe) ( 147352 ) on Thursday December 23, 2004 @01:02PM (#11169031)
    A guy at work was showing the cool live webcam stream of his front yard when the neighbor kid walked up and stole the webcam.
    Funny as hell.

  • First back up a bit... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Dr. Spork ( 142693 ) on Thursday December 23, 2004 @04:19PM (#11171070)
    What exactly are you trying to make secure? Do you really think that this can prevent house intrusion? I hope not. Checking the internet or your cell phone and seeing a blurry picture of some guy with a mask going through your drawers is going to accomplish... what? If you wanted to use the footage as evidence, you'd better use tape; any decent defense lawyer will get x10-type footage thrown out of court because it's so easy to manipulate. And if you're trying to use this to watch your unsupervised children, you're an irresponsible sicko and you'd be much better off spending your money on a babysitter instead.

    In general, it looks to me like you haven't really thought this through. I suspect you don't need any such camera at all.

    In general, your post makes you sound like a paranoid pussy with too much stuff in your house and too much money to blow, who for some reason feel the need to brag about this on Slashdot. Well, I'm not impressed.

    • Oh come on....That's an easy one.

      That's when you hit the web-enabled "wireless Shotgun" and activate the "street sweeper" mode.

      Next question.
    • Recording from multiple angles makes such legal arguments a lot trickier, particularly if the recording is periodic except for motion captures.

      And maybe his kids are supervised, but he wants to watch the watcher. It's handy to know when the kids are being ignored and/or terrorized by the babysitter.

      Digital recordings are often used now in criminal investigations, because the systems are becoming more reliable and higher quality than tape can do. Tape is usually limited to TV resolution at best, which is
  • But I don't have any money :( So I'm using a webcam and TV card I bought for $30 6 years ago... it does the job [wired.net.nz] although I think I'll move the camera out to that archway you can see, so I get better pictures next time.

    Recently I got given a crappy old laptop, no battery or drives and the HDD was stuffed. I had a spare drive, it runs off 12v just fine. I've added a 802.11b card and USB webcam and it lives in my van now. I just need to add config to 'motion' so that it'll watch and store the output of the va
  • You want a wireless webcam that anyone driving down the street can tap into? You do realize that a popular new wardriving activity is to hunt for homes with wireless webcams and watch people in the evenings when they're home, right? Or they can see when you're NOT home, and then find out where your cameras are, and disable them before they get caught on camera burglarizing your stuff?

    Do yourself a favor and get a hardwired webcam, there are plenty of FireWire cams that you can put up to 1000 feet from your
    • I thought all the new D-Link and LinkSys cams utilized all the security options alloted to them via 802.11B/G. That was my understanding at least. Can anyone with one of these cameras speak up and let us know? I'd be interested in finding out. And I agree on the el cheapo POS camera (read: X-10). Those are extrememly easy to eavesdrop on.
  • One thing to remember is if you have an in-house always-on camera is to try and keep it secure. Make sure the webpage (if it has one) isn't too easily web-accessible to unwanted visitors. Make sure that if it's connected to a PC then you don't have one of those amusing viruses that captures your camera pictures...

    Why? Because if you forget that the camera is one, and happen to walk past after recently emerging from the shower, then you might just end up on somebody's webpage. Personally, I keep my cam unp
  • panasonic network cameras. 802.11b only -buy the wired model and put in a ethernet-g adapter.

    I own and love my veo observer, but it limits reception to IE users..

    I've since become EXTREMELY enamored of panasonic netcams, they only thing they suck on is sound, they have no audio... take a look at them [panasonic.com] try a websearch for urls that include "viewnetcam.com/" to find a camera on the internet-- I found one listed with someones posted hijack this log (I won't post the url) but it's an amazing device- p

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