I upgraded my CCTV on Saturday afternoon from a crappy £40 camera with a built in microphone that used non-time dated video tapes which needed changing or rewinding all the time to a proper digital video recorder with a decent semi-hidden camera and seperate totally-hidden microphone.
On Sunday morning at 1:50 I had unwelcome visitors and the whole lot was recorded with good sound and vision.
Apart from the police taking until Thusday night to arrive and view the footage is this a record?
The charges are interfering with a vehicle, theft, threatening behaviour, criminal damage and indecent exposure and the yobs have all pleaded guilty.
I fitted the CCTV system myself in less than 2 hours at a cost of £400. A bargain I think
It is for me. We've had to call the police twice in recent years. Once for a mugging and once for a burglary. They've always turned up promptly (i.e. within a couple of hours), been very polite and appeared to take the situation very seriously. In the case of the mugging, it was followed up after a couple of days with a presentation of possible mug shots and an update on their investigation. In the case of the burglary, they attempted to take fingerprints (they think they were wearing gloves) and DNA samples. This was Thames Valley Police.
I'd be interested too, I've looked at many systems in the various catalogues (Machine Mart etc) and can't really decide what I should be getting. I have decided that one of these hard drive storage devices will be much better than tapes.
With a bit of time and technical know how it is possible to set one up your self using free software called "zoneminder" which runs on free operating system (Linux). We use a PC at work conencted to a remote camera to record activity in the school's corridors. The software can monitor mulitple cameras and can be set to record on detection of motion only and even (IIRC) to detect in zones and then record the previous x seconds and the following x seconds. So it will ignore people passing by your gate, unless they come in and then it will record them entering (allows you to ignore shadows cast on your property without missing the action!
night shot is showing glare from the outside light on the grass. Todays job is to swap the light for a lower powered one. These shots are take from behind glass as I am moving the camera outside as well today.
The system is a 4 channel triplex digital video recorder with a 300Gb hard drive (CCT715) that will take another 300Gb as a slave. The camera is a
3.6mm lens B&W outdoor version with a 86 deg view (their advanced vision cameras)
I purchased them from
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a company that only deals with the trade (a friend has an account there) buy it easy to set up your own account
It was possibly a mistake not buying a recorder that has a LAN output for future use. I have seen plenty about with this facility at similar prices to my model
Next jobs are a camera with a bigger lens to close in on the van and a camera at the back of the house.
Perhaps if its the van your protecting that lens needs to come up a bit in the mm scale perhaps a 12/16 or so, other wise you'll see that "someone" was doing the van over, but not a hope in hell of resolving who it was!..
Agreed. The initial protection was for me. The van security will be updated later with an 8mm lens camera. Even at the range shown it was very easy to ID the yobs pissing on my van and letting the tires down, women eh?
I've been using a homebrew cctv system for a few years now, based around various software apps, webcams, old video cameras and capture cards. A decent webcam is good enough for normal light conditions, but an old video camera gives a far better image across a wider range of lighting conditions - though it's a great deal bulkier than a webcam, which can be stripped of its casing and inserted into all manner of everyday objects ( I've used birdboxes, flowerpots etc. ). An excellent basic and cheap webcam is the Logitech Quickcam Messenger,
There are many apps out there that can be used to build a homebrew cctv system - a decent ( and free! ) one is Pryme:
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the shareware version, Tincam ( linked on the same page ) is even better. Both versions will do motion detection and automatic ftp uploads to a web page.
Quality of image is largely dependent on the camera, and the choice of format the image is captured in. I've uploaded a couple of shots from an old system here:
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used a cheap no-name webcam and compressed images saved to .jpg format.
You can now pick up unwanted video cameras from your local tip ( cost about a fiver as a rule ), and provided you have the necessary leads and a basic video capture card ( ebay, about a fiver again ) you can get excellent results for the price of a few pints. While you're at the tip you could also pick up an old computer to act as a dedicated cctv machine ( again, usually the obligatory fiver ). I'd recommend using at least Windows2000 - I've found W9x can be problematic with cam apps.
I only have their catalogue that my friend gave me as a guide. Not great I know.
I have found better recorders for sale on the net for the same money, I think (until you buy and use them it is diffiult to say). I would definately shop around in future but time was limited in this case.
Nope, the general quality of CCTV systems out there is abysmal, it's amazing that people get caught from CCTV images. Loads of scabby old VHS timelapse systems still out there and loads of crappy DVR systems that are so low frame rate and resolution they aren't much better than the VHS stuff unless your offender is full frame.
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