video surveillance

Would a simple webcam inside a window work? Or is it a dark area that this damage is occurring in? Does the camera need to be outdoors, and do you need more than one?

This company is known for having a large selection of cameras and good prices (I have no affiliation ... just bought some stuff from them once.)

From past experience... The problems you are going to need to solve might include the following...

1. Inexpensive cameras, in general, do not perform well at night. You may need to go with infrared illumination. Catching the guys face on camera and identifying him might be difficult.
2. Storage - The more disk space you have, the better. If you are recording 24/7 you will have hours (and hours) of nothing to see. If you go with motion detection, you will save some on all that wasted space, but at the price of increased complexity. Does your recorder put in a time/date stamp?

For example, how do you set the threshold of motion to detect if something critical is happening? Remember... you will have different lighting conditions throughout the day/night/variable weather. Multiple cameras compound this challenge.

What is the guy doing specifically? Can you install a sensor (for example) if he is breaking into a shed and stealing your property? Is he messing with your vehicles? An alarm trip that turns on the video recorder might be more feasible for you...

1. How about audio? If the guy is caught in the act and becomes threatening. It might be a good idea to record the audio portion of the incident. Again, you might have issues of extra complexity - weatherproof microphones, etc.

Beachcomber

See

for the Watec brand which is what you want to use. Night vision needs a very low lux resolution, you can't go below 0.003lux or the image smears. Lower lux values are for use in

Check your local laws about audio recording. Surprisingly ( but not really, if you think about it) there are numerous laws regarding the recording of conversations without permission, even and sometimes especially during the commision of a crime. In your situation, (and it also depends upon what state you live in), you could lose in any law suit,simply because you taped audio. Video, on the other hand, as of yet, has not been the issue of as many laws and mostly has fewer restrictions, except in "expected privacy" situations. Just check it out with the police or perhaps the district attorney and do it in writing ..... just as a precaution.

Louroe mics always come with those nice little warning decals. A decal a day keeps the FBI away.

Check your local laws about audio recording. Surprisingly ( but not really, if you think about it) there are numerous laws regarding the recording of conversations without permission, even and sometimes especially during the commision of a crime. In your situation, (and it also depends upon what state you live in), you could lose in any law suit,simply because you taped audio. Video, on the other hand, as of yet, has not been the issue of as many laws and mostly has fewer restrictions, except in "expected privacy" situations. Just check it out with the police or perhaps the district attorney and do it in writing ..... just as a precaution.

Hosted Video surveillance or Video surveillance as a Service is another eco nomical option. Here you don't need to invest in expensive NVRs or DVRs. In stead, all the videos will be stored in secure servers for upto 30 days. Th e biggest advantages of these systems are that they give you near real time alerts to your mobile as SMS or as push messages and can provide direct ac cess to your recorded videos, which I guess is not available in standalone systems. In a way hosted systems are more into proactive surveillance. A fe w good examples of a similar service is

and www.dropcam.c om.

Most of these systems won't even exhaust your bandwidth as new cameras have h264 streaming, which will even work in low bandwidth connections. These c ameras also provide motion detection, audio detection, tampering detection, PIR detection etc etc.