I am about ready to get into home security cams after being robbed this week

[USDashCamera]

so without getting into too many personal details, i currently live with a roommate, we both rent a town house together. we have butted heads a lot lately and a lot of it has to do with us being kicked out because the place is being sold. got into a huge argument two fridays ago and i was afraid she might have a party or something while i was gone and bring strangers into my home, or retaliate against me. i took photos of all my electronics.

fast forward to this sunday... i am packing to move, notice several video game controllers, and my playstation vita are missing. over all almost $600 worth of stuff gone.

called the police, they told me to look through my stuff that i was packing and if i want to file a report i can but i should make sure its not packed away. i was sure i didnt. at this point i forgot i took those pictures. wasnt until tonight when i said to my roommate (who i dont think did it) any of her friends that were here were the only ones here the past few weeks and she needs to ask them to return the stuff. then i remembered i had the photos to show exactly where all my stuff was that i hadnt touched since.

i do have renters insurance but i still want it returned.

what sucks is i had considered setting up a mobius with motion detection on that would have caught them but i didnt. and if i did, there was a high probability that the location i was planning, they may have noticed the camera and taken it.

i dont want to resort to cameras in my own home but i have been robbed numerous times, by guests of roommates, by people breaking into my home... tired of this ****.

edit: i forgot the important part. i have a very good lead, and know the guys that were over are friends with a neighbor punk who has been in lots of trouble with the police supposedly. i have seen him talking to these guys multiple times.

 

[Street Guardian USA]

That sucks, Mobius with the remote lens to hide it inside something non-attractive might be pretty good. (maybe even add a battery/power pack.) Innov C3?

Blue Iris the gold standard of DIY home security, compatible with 100's of cams.
http://blueirissoftware.com/
Wonderful iPhone/Android app too

 

[USDashCamera]

i dont think the mobius motion detection is quick enough, it seems to have a 5-10 second delay before recording, i cant remember exactly. but then again it is cheap. have having it record only minute segments when it needs to can save space, and i dont need some expensive system haha.

im moving next week though still living with another guy so i can save money, but all my stuff is staying in my room. i hate that i gotta be that way but its happened numerous times. also doesnt help when i am still in my 20s and so are my friends so having parties isnt uncommon still for me, even if just a small party.

 

[reverend]

Blue Iris is awesome - I also have a Foscam FI9821W wifi camera that I was testing for home security for a while - you can configure it to send files to an FTP site as soon as it detects motion - might be something else worth thinking about as you can pick up wifi cameras cheap? We use it as a baby monitor for now and it's great - it's not glitched in over a year of use now.

I've got my eye on some power over ethernet compatible cams for the new place just to cover our backs a little. I've also got some Tenvis cams that were cheap from when I was dipping my toe in the water but those things are pure garbage.

For the iPhone I settled on LiveCams Pro in the end for accessing cams remotely

 

[kamkar]

With friends like that, who need enemies.

Remind me of my 16 year birthday, i invited about 25 ppl and made sure there was stuff to eat ( not normal with food at our parties back then )

I had a huge room in the basement of my parents house, so the guests where told the following.

1. guys just go out in the garden and take a piss there.
2. girls there is a bathroom upstairs, just make sure to keep the stairwell door closed so that the cat dont get down here.


The day after i found out that guys had been pissing at the wall in another room in the basement, and the little room there with food and drink stuff in had 5 bottles of booze missing.
And the girls could not handle the door so the cat escaped 2 times during the night.
And in my room i had a cocus carpet and it all had to be changed due to food trown on it ( i cant say spilled food as only a spastic could spill so much food )
Allso a door into the room with the heating was ruined and 1 basement window broken.

Since that day i have been wery carefull about who i call friends, actually since then i only found 1 friend.

I did continue to hang out with many of the ppl at that party, and a little later on we did make a lot of mony together, but in the end i had to cut all ties as that kind of ppl can not be trusted and especially not in crime.

I am sorry you had to go thru this pizzaengineer, it just proof that dumbass is a worldwide phenomenon

 

[USDashCamera]

when i was robbed about 4 years ago i confronted one of the guys and scared him into returning everything. later he got evicted from our duplex and he broke into my house and stole something again... i wont go into details but him and his friend are serving 7+ years and another friend 20+ years. coincidently he was evicted because he robbed some russian guy who sent some goons after him and they kidnapped him and his friend and assaulted them pretty badly. cops raided our duplex over this which is why he was evicted after having the police called too many times. he should have been evicted long prior though. same night him and his friend robbed me he tried breaking into my neighbors house and the neighbor pulled a gun out on him and he fled.

 

[USDashCamera]

Blue Iris is awesome - I also have a Foscam FI9821W wifi camera that I was testing for home security for a while - you can configure it to send files to an FTP site as soon as it detects motion - might be something else worth thinking about as you can pick up wifi cameras cheap? We use it as a baby monitor for now and it's great - it's not glitched in over a year of use now.

I've got my eye on some power over ethernet compatible cams for the new place just to cover our backs a little. I've also got some Tenvis cams that were cheap from when I was dipping my toe in the water but those things are pure garbage.

For the iPhone I settled on LiveCams Pro in the end for accessing cams remotely

Can foscam cams record to a dvr? I assume that is a standard feature of security cams but the review I watched made it sound like it just is for live surveillance.

 

[reverend]

You can hook them up to Blue Iris and it can do the recording there mate

 

[USDashCamera]

You can hook them up to Blue Iris and it can do the recording there mate

Their website won't load for me now, so it's just software you have to run on a pc?

 

[soddo]

wow that's a lot of drama! Is there a way you can secure your room, rather then monitor? I.e big ass padlock on your bedroom door.

 

[Street Guardian USA]

Their website won't load for me now, so it's just software you have to run on a pc?

Whoops looks like it's down yeah. You run it on a PC. You can have clips upload to dropbox to keep thieves from taking video evidence too.

 

[USDashCamera]

wow that's a lot of drama! Is there a way you can secure your room, rather then monitor? I.e big ass padlock on your bedroom door.

Well I don't really wanna live in fear and be a hobbit I want to live comfortably in my own home. I have too much stuff to hide in my room haha, FE $1000 worth of Shun kitchen knives. thousands in camping and fishing gear.

Whoops looks like it's down yeah. You run it on a PC. You can have clips upload to dropbox to keep thieves from taking video evidence too.

Does it cost monthly?

 

[Street Guardian USA]

Web site is back up, one time cost

 

[reverend]

Yeah it just runs on your PC and saves either to a PC or NAS etc.

It's less than £50 in the UK so quite cheap but can do a lot for the money! Just noticed you have to pay for the iOS client as well but with the two you're still under $100.

Actually it's under $50 in the US and Foscam seem to have licensed it too - lots of options on Amazon.

 

[Dashmellow]

Blue Iris the gold standard of DIY home security, compatible with 100's of cams.
http://blueirissoftware.com/
Wonderful iPhone/Android app too

Blue Iris is excellent, highly capable software but it is NOT the "gold standard of DIY home security". The "gold standard" for any CCTV system both residential or commercial is a stand-alone dedicated DVR or NVR. While many people find Blue Iris and other PC based systems such as SecuritySpy suits their needs, such as with a modest set-up or as a baby monitor these systems present problems, especially for anyone who doesn't have a very fast machine with lots of memory and graphics power. The reason for this is that this type of software based CCTV system running on a PC uses an enormous amount of bandwidth and processing resources. Running such software 24/7 not only presents problems with having to keep the PC up and running at all times it will also compromise anything else you need to use your computer for. There are many examples but let's say you want to view and/or edit a dash cam video while your graphics card and CPU are busy supporting the surveillance system. You will likely not experience the performance your computer is capable of because it is otherwise busy running as a surveillance system and so you could run into slow performance or stuttering video. If you run Photoshop or any other graphics and CPU intensive software you will also experience poor PC performance while Blue Iris is running simultaneously. The other issue is your hard drive. Not only are you constantly writing large amounts of data to your drive, you are doing so 24/7 and this will likely lead to premature drive failure. This also presents problems with backing up your PC since most people don't really want or need to permanently back up Gigs or Terabytes of old surveillance footage. Depending on your machine, you could probably install a second drive but you are still pushing your other resources pretty hard. If you spend any time on CCTV forums or talk to people in the trade you will hear these things over and over. Some people report that they run BI without too much of a bandwidth problem but many find it unworkable. One way or another there is just no way round the fact that BI is a resource hog.

Blue Iris is most useful as a proper multi-camera CCTV surveillance system when it is running on a dedicated PC and indeed could be a viable option because it is feature rich but many find that a dedicated full time NVR is the more reliable logical solution with the same or similar features. In my own situation where my home and business is halfway up a mountain in a rural area and my computers periodically get shut down due to thunderstorms or for maintenance or software installs I have dedicated CCTV systems running full time that I never have to worry about or interrupt and I can enjoy the full performance my computer is capable of.

 

[USDashCamera]

if i got one of the indoor foscam cameras that can be rotate/tilt, and put it in one of their outdoor "enclosures" will the IR reflect in the plastic bubble? i saw they sell an outdoor enclosure for them but I would assume the IR would reflect on the plastic similarly to how IR reflects on the glass for dash cams in cars.

 

[USDashCamera]

Blue Iris is excellent, highly capable software but it is NOT the "gold standard of DIY home security". The "gold standard" for any CCTV system both residential or commercial is a stand-alone dedicated DVR or NVR. While many people find Blue Iris and other PC based systems such as SecuritySpy suits their needs, such as with a modest set-up or as a baby monitor these systems present problems, especially for anyone who doesn't have a very fast machine with lots of memory and graphics power. The reason for this is that this type of software based CCTV system running on a PC uses an enormous amount of bandwidth and processing resources. Running such software 24/7 not only presents problems with having to keep the PC up and running at all times it will also compromise anything else you need to use your computer for. There are many examples but let's say you want to view and/or edit a dash cam video while your graphics card and CPU are busy supporting the surveillance system. You will likely not experience the performance your computer is capable of because it is otherwise busy running as a surveillance system and so you could run into slow performance or stuttering video. If you run Photoshop or any other graphics and CPU intensive software you will also experience poor PC performance while Blue Iris is running simultaneously. The other issue is your hard drive. Not only are you constantly writing large amounts of data to your drive, you are doing so 24/7 and this will likely lead to premature drive failure. This also presents problems with backing up your PC since most people don't really want or need to permanently back up Gigs or Terabytes of old surveillance footage. Depending on your machine, you could probably install a second drive but you are still pushing your other resources pretty hard. If you spend any time on CCTV forums or talk to people in the trade you will hear these things over and over. Some people report that they run BI without too much of a bandwidth problem but many find it unworkable. One way or another there is just no way round the fact that BI is a resource hog.

Blue Iris is most useful as a proper multi-camera CCTV surveillance system when it is running on a dedicated PC and indeed could be a viable option because it is feature rich but many find that a dedicated full time NVR is the more reliable logical solution with the same or similar features. In my own situation where my home and business is halfway up a mountain in a rural area and my computers periodically get shut down due to thunderstorms or for maintenance or software installs I have dedicated CCTV systems running full time that I never have to worry about or interrupt and I can enjoy the full performance my computer is capable of.

if i do this, i will be building a dedicated PC to do it.

 

[reverend]

When I tried a Foscam FI9821W pointing out a window with the IR on it was unusable - I'm guessing the performance would be similar inside the dome?

I'm guessing turning the lights off on the Foscam, sticking it in a dome and then using a seperate IR light source would be a good alternative?

 

[USDashCamera]

When I tried a Foscam FI9821W pointing out a window with the IR on it was unusable - I'm guessing the performance would be similar inside the dome?

I'm guessing turning the lights off on the Foscam, sticking it in a dome and then using a seperate IR light source would be a good alternative?

i will likely just skip the outdoor camera. i just moved into my new place this week, it is a town house, and getting approval to install a camera on the outside might not be possible. there is only one entrance into my place, the front door, and only one window on the ground floor (the place is not as ****ty as i am making it sound haha) so I might just have a hidden camera facing the front door on the inside.

 

[USDashCamera]

oh an update on the burglary, after taxes, i lost $790US of my stuff after going through all my belongings and the pictures I took just a week prior of my stuff FOR THIS VERY REASON. have leads and a first name or one of the 3 guys involved, and the first name of one high school kid who bought one of the items. i dont know if the investigator can do anything with that info, but the name of the kid who bought one of the items is not a very common name and I know what high school he goes to (i know someone in his lower 20s that knows some Somalians in highschool, and all the Somalians in that city know each other, the three thieves were Somalian high school teens so it didnt take much digging to get info on them) so maybe I can get lucky.