Re: Compact cheap "surveilance" camera

["Steve m..." <Stevem5215@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I agree with the other posters about the old computer with USB and a cheap
ebay camera.   I have a couple of these setups working right now.  Mine at
home is a 500mhz AMD with 128meg memory and Windows 98 with Webcam32
connected through a router to a ISP which saves the pics.  I have 2 of these
setups one for monitoring a store for motion and one as a test setup for my
next setup.  I use a USB cam from 3com called a Homeconnect.  The advantage
of this camera is it's low light capability.   It is very reliable with the
exception that you need to take it apart about once a year and clean the
blue filter inside the camera.  These cameras are available for around $20
on ebay.
Here's the URL to steve's basement cam.  It's up currently but may not be
there after this week so look quick and please, no hackers.  I know 98 isnt'
the most secure software since MS has abandoned it totally with no further
patches released for it.
http://www.lhsc.net/hometemplate.html

Steve

<bitsyboffin@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:1151300045.515892.131920@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>A club I am a member of has a problem, members keep leaving the club's
> buildings unlocked, unalarmed and even with the doors open on occasion.
> All the members are of course entitled to use the facilities when they
> please, they pay for it after all, but the trouble arises because the
> last person leaves for the day and either forgets to lock up, or thinks
> somebody else is still around.  It's only through pure luck we havn't
> been fleeced already.
>
> So what I'm considering is a compact and reasonably cheap solution to
> have a time lapse series of digital images taken, ideally, a looped
> recording so it can just overwrite old images as it fills up.  That way
> when somebody discovers the doors open I can grab the device and have a
> look to find who was last there and give them an ear bashing.
>
> Something like the "L'espion S" (
> http://www.thinkgeek.com/electronics/cameras/7886/ ) but with a much
> larger capacity so it can take and store an image every, say, 120
> seconds for a week, and even better if it had "night vision".  Doesn't
> need to be colour (8 bit greyscale is fine, only need to identify the
> people passing through, not judge thier fashion sense) or high
> resolution (probably could get away with 320x240, but 640x480 would be
> better).  Battery powered would be best, but I guess it could be
> plugged in if necessary, but we don't want to have it connected to a
> computer that then has to run 24/7, it would only be connected to the
> PC when we need to review the images.
>
> Anybody seen such an item?
>