Thinking about setting up home surveillance

[MockY]

I have been wanting to hook my house up with a couple of "security" cameras and a way to remotely monitor them, possibly even recording.
However, I know absolutely nothing about this, hence have no idea what type of equipment to get, or what this kind of stuff cost. Maybe someone in here have some kind of setup?
I am absolutely not looking into something fancy and what sparked the interest is that I more often than not think I forgot to close the garage door when leaving for work, and these impulses have forced me to turn back home many times just to find out it was in fact closed (I probably never will forget the close it). I would much rather continue to go to work and check from there.
But that is besides the point. I would want a way to check it from anywhere. Also, it is comforting to keep an eye on the pets while I'm gone. So I guess a set of webcams is all I need, but what should I hook it up to, and how do I get the stream to my home server?

As you can tell, I don't really know where to start.
So if someone would want to help me brainstorming, that would be awesome.

[gn2]

I've set up a webcam for a friend of my wife so she could keep an eye on her horse in it's stable while she was at work.

You need an "IP Camera (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IP_video_surveillance)" and either a fixed WAN IP or use DynDNS which can be done either with a router or client software on a PC that's left on.

The camera I used was a Rimax IP 7100 (http://www.rimax.net/ing/html/ficha_descripcion.asp?tipo_producto=47&id=332) which I got second hand, it works very well.

[mips]

...and what sparked the interest is that I more often than not think I forgot to close the garage door when leaving for work, and these impulses have forced me to turn back home many times just to find out it was in fact closed (I probably never will forget the close it). I would much rather continue to go to work and check from there.


I think you suffer from a bit of obsessive compulsive disorder.

But don't worry you are not alone as I do exactly the same thing. I will drive halveway down the road and then go "Did I close the garage door?", turn around just to go check. This happens despite the routine I have. The garage remote is attached to my house keys. When I get into the car I open the garage door put the remote on the passender seat, reverse out, stop, close the door and put the remote in the center console.

I have never left the door open but I turn around a lot to check, dunno why.

[gn2]

We can all be forgetful at times.
I was on my way to a fishing trip and after about 30 miles I realised something was missing.....
I had forgot to put my rods in the car.
When I got home the rods were still lying beside where the car had been parked.

[ice60]

the shop where i used to buy linux format asked me to set up their cameras, in the end they did it themselves lol, but i did bookmark these two links at the time -
http://ubuntu.wordpress.com/2005/12/13/setting-up-a-physical-security-camera/
http://www.zoneminder.com/

i thought i had a bad memory, maybe it's not too bad because i remember the guy from the second link was on tllts -
http://www.zoneminder.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=8377

[ice60]

i just read through this thread, as i said i have a bad memory too, recently while at home i noticed my flies where undone and as i'm lazy too i thought "i'll do them up later", about an hour later i went out for the day, when i got home i noticed my flies where still undone lol. i wonder what the ladys thought when they saw me grinning at them while i was out that day?

[skymera]

Point a camera at the fridge.

Guard the milk!

[Icehuck]

For pretty cheap and easy home surveillance I would say X10.

The website makes you cringe, but they're stuff is pretty good. I think I remember hearing you can set it up so that LinuxMCE will integrate nicely with it.

http://www.x10.com/

[doug1212]

Talking to someone recently about IPcameras and apparently the better ones have a little web server built in to administer, but most of the cheap ones sold on fleabay and the like are only accessible from windows machines with IE as they require activeX :( so may be worth checking the small print.

Doug

[LookTJ]

IP camera with a DVR system/software installed should do it. http://www.pelco.com/products/default.aspx?id=658 is a list of network cameras

[LookTJ]

here's a dvr too, http://www.pelco.com/Products/default.aspx?id=537