Home video surveillance

weatherproof

We're actually not that worried about night. We're there with a burglar alarm that's activated at bedtime. We're out in the woods, and both of us work days, which makes us particularly vulnerable during daylight hours.

The license number was my real hope. I realize they could cover it, but you can't plan for everything. Our driveway is the only way in or out of the property and is about 100' long. If I could cover that drive with a good camera, I was really hoping for a shot of their face coming in and the plate going out. It sounds like the x10 is definitely not the way to do that.

Yep. That's a real concern. However, my alarm company notifies me and the police, so they've got limited time there -- probably 20 minutes max --, and I'm hoping they clear out a lot quicker than that.

I got hit last week at 10:00 in the morning, but what they got didn't take 5 minutes to load, and they left some valuable stuff behind. The alarm didn't stop them, but I feel it ran them away pretty quickly. It just gripes me that I had no way to try to film them, thus this project.

Based on what I've read here, I won't be ordering from them.

Thanks

Yes, but the quality of the X-10 image might not be, especially in low light. I dumped most of my X-10 cameras in favor of wired, weatherproof bulletcams with Sony ExView or HAD extremely low light cameras. I also have some IR cams that have their own built-in illuminators and switch from color in the daytime to B&W at night.

If you're burglarized by someone using a stocking mask, X-10 images will probably be useful only in confirming you've been robbed, and not who did it. I doubt very much if you'd be able to pull a license tag off any car that drove up unless you really planned for it.

I wouldn't count on hiding it well enough.

Make sure X-10's still offering a 30 day money back guarantee in case you discover the resolution isn't good enough.

-- Bobby G.

Sounds practical but beware of the X10 cameras - for the most part they're junk. Get cameras with CCD sensors - not the cheap CMOS ones.

From:Frank snipped-for-privacy@excite.com

There are a lot of options with widely varying prices.

has a nice selection and good pricing (even cheaper on their ebay store). I've played with several cameras and ended up biting the bullet and going higher end. I have a couple of Panasonic HCM-280 units with pan-tilt-zoom and internet access. I'm building a house next door and monitoring the progress with one of them. During daylight hours (Hawaii time) you can see how it works by going to I also have a Toshiba internet enabled camera that has excellent low light capabilities but the Panasonic is better overall. For fixed cameras you want to get one with a variable lens so you can customize it to your situation. Without that you need to choose carefully. I have two bullet cameras that look identical but have different fields of view which makes a huge difference in gathering evidence quality recordings.

From:Frank snipped-for-privacy@excite.com