Traps for people who pinch security cameras

[Dave]

Naw, they are pussy cats. Try a funnel web instead. :-))))))))))))

Dave

[Tim S]

Grimly Curmudgeon coughed up some electrons that declared:

Don't think they have many (any?).

Oz, OTOH...

[ARWadsworth]

I have an Oz customer who has an odd habit of shaking his shoes before he puts them on. He says old habits die hard. After twenty years in Yorkshire he passes as normal.

Adam

[Matty F]

A continuous light is not good enough because the number plate is blurred when the car is moving at speed. I need a flash, like this taken on my digital camera:

lower car is moving at about 60 miles an hour and its number plate is perfectly readable.

But I want a non-visible flash, i.e. infrared. And it needs to flash about 10 times per second all night, every night. Or I need a video camera with a shutter speed of a thousandth of a second.

[Tim S]

ARWadsworth coughed up some electrons that declared:

I was at a coal mine in Oz a couple of years back. Snake catcher was looking worried as they lost a brown snake (fairly nasty). Apparantly the catcher was showing a trainee how to bag a snake:

1) Catch snake with tongs thingy

2) drop snake in sack

3) spin sack around so as to close the opening

4) tie off sack

5) put sack down

She forgot step 4! ;-O

6) Pissed off and dizzy snake makes a bolt for freedom under the building.

I must admit, I shook my boots out, even though the area wasn't know for evil spiders. More likely to get a kangaroo jumping in front of the car - apparantly...

Cheers

Tim

[Matty F]

NZ has fierce-looking wetas. But they won't be seen in the dark so wetas and spiders are no good. I could put up a fake wasps' nest in case they check it out during the daytime.

I've found good idea, a large horizontal pipe along the top of the fence. It has bearings so that it rotates and is impossible to stand on or hold.

[Tim S]

Matty F coughed up some electrons that declared:

8" long:

that!

[geoff]

In message , Matty F writes

You're getting into the realm of expensive here

is it really worth it ?

[Matty F]

I'm being paid handsomely for stopping criminals from vandalising the expensive house next door. I have eight CCTV cameras that record 24 hours a day, or record when they detect motion. As a side benefit, vandalising and tagging and robberies in my part of the street have dropped to almost nothing. Some of the worst taggers in my city have now stopped their tagging.

[Andy Dingley]

Real nightvision rig.

Also check out the legality of black powder alarm mines. Although you have to be careful about just how they're deployed, you can still use them in some situations.

Paintballer's paint mines are fun too, although they're also legally doubtful owing to the "noxious fluid" issue.

[Rob Horton]

Some how coat the outside with hydrofluoric acid?

From the Haynes manual:

"Special hazards Hydrofluoric acid l This extremely corrosive acid is formed when certain types of synthetic rubber, found in some O-rings, oil seals, fuel hoses etc, are exposed to temperatures above 400°C. The rubber changes into a charred or sticky substance containing the acid. Once formed, the acid remains dangerous for years. If it gets onto the skin, it may be necessary to amputate the limb concerned"

This is not a serious suggestion.

[Matty F]

It occurs to me that it would be amusing to make a fake security camera out of solid steel. They would be unable to get it off the 2 inch pipe that's 3 metres up in the air, or to break it.

[Fredxx]

Or when they unbolt the camera it's so heavy they fall off the ladder with it?

[Matty F]

They are not on a ladder. They are standing on top of a 6 foot fence, and the camera was 6 feet higher than the top of the fence, on a 2 inch steel pipe.

real camera is to the left. Nobody seems to notice it. It's a building site with stuff sticking up everywhere.

Now if I put a plastic pipe loosely over the steel pipe so that it rotates easily, and a steel camera on top, they will probably fall off and not manage to get the camera. Perhaps I should put a real camera up there to record the fun.

[dennis]

it reachable by a dwarf.

Maybe you should just paint the pole with anti climb paint?

Greasing the horizontal bits might make them fall off however it might be illegal. However I could imagine you wanting to protect the pipe from corrosion and putting a plastic sleeve on the pipe, it might be difficult to stop the sleeve rotating though. ;-)

[Matty F]

I will cut off the bit of wood next to the pole so they can't stand on it. I'd like to put horizontal plastic pipes as well. If they can stand on horizontal rotating pipes and hold on to a rotating vertical pole while trying to take a camera made out of solid steel that is bolted to the 2 inch steel pipe, I will be very surprised. Perhaps an alarm going off in their ear would help.

[Owain]

Anti climb paint isn't illegal above 6' height with warning notices.

Prickle strip or barbed wire wrapped round the horizontal pipe

Have you considered electric fencing (from a farm supplier, not 13A socket!!)

Recorded message shouting at them ('audio challenge' in security terms) can be effective.

Owain

[george (dicegeorge)]

I'd go for filling it with paint or that dye that they put in cashpoint machines and a weakpoint so that it would fall on anyone messing with it, but that would probably be you when you next go to adjust it

[g]

[Mike Barnes]

Anti-vandal paint on the pole seems like the obvious answer. Battery, loud alarm, tilt switch, in the dummy camera. A much slimmer pole. A big dog. Strobe lights are pretty disconcerting.

[Owain]

One of those bird-scarers that uses blank cartridges?

Owain