Home video surveillance system can cost thousands of Dollars. A cheaper but still valid alternative is to utilize equipment that is already available in the household. One of the possibilities includes webcams that can be used as video surveillance systems with the right software or service.
Ugolog is one of these services that can turn a webcam into a basic home video surveillance system. It has its limitations obviously as this is usually limited to single room surveillance unless multiple webcams are connected to the computer systems of the home. One of the major advantages of Ugolog besides offering a free version is that it requires no software installation. The full service is started and controlled on a web interface.
The limitations of the free service are a maximum utilization of two webcams, 500 snapshots and 5 minutes of video per day. Those are fairly acceptable values for a video surveillance system. Interestingly enough the premium plans are freely usable during beta phase with the state of the art plan allowing to add unlimited cameras with 15K snapshots and 4 hours of recording. These plans will eventually turn into subscriptions.
Everything is controlled on the web interface of the service which is only available to registered users. Users can access previous recordings, watch a full day in fast access mode or record videos or snapshots. The main advantage of Ugolog is that it is operating system and web browser independent and that its only requirement is a webcam that is connected to a computer system. Grabmotion is a similar software that can be used to monitor a room.
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5 Responses to “Home Video Surveillance System Utilizing Webcams”
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[...] Vía: Ghacks [...]
There are quite a few open source solutions to this.
The best and easiest by far I have found is motion:
http://www.lavrsen.dk/twiki/bin/view/Motion/WebHome
It’s Linux only and CLI only, but very resource efficient and works with almost all cameras and there are a few web interface alternatives out there.
Then there is Zoneminder:
http://www.zoneminder.com/
A much better inteface but doesn’t work so nice with as many different camera as easily.
And finally, there is Home Camera, a great free service with paid for additional options:
http://www.homecamera.com/web/Home.do
I wrote a little about it al myself here : http://www.prupert.co.uk/2009/03/18/motion-1-zoneminder-0/
Plus a handy script to turn off and on motion via your bluetooth connection on your phone ;)
http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/years/2009/0409092boynton1.html
Webcam XP is best.
http://fileforum.betanews.com/detail/webcamXP-5/1004419964/3
To make a proper home video surveillance system I would advice to check the field of view of a camera using calculators like http://www.jvsg.com/online/
Also it make sense to check required storage space. Video archive of just one camera at 10 frames per second can easily overcome 40 GByte per day in case of constant recording.