I am new to computers and wireless. I am gone alot from my house and would like to know what is going on in there while I am gone. (Especially children).
Is there a way I can monitor rooms in my house from my computer at work over the internet without the kids being able to find out on my main computer at home? (Which they use alot)
Yep. I'll assume you have a broadband connection. Purchase one of the numerous internet cameras, that have a built in web server. The really fancy ones also have remote zoom, pan, and swivel. Set it up on your LAN (ethernet or wireless) and point it at the kids. If you don't have a static (fixed) IP address, subscribe to one of the numerous dynamic DNS services so that you can find your home IP address. Redirect the necessary IP ports, in your router configuration, to the camera. It's all in the instructions. From work, just run something like:
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the URL is whatever you setup as a dynamic DNS name, and the
5000 is what I vaguely recall is the default port for DLink. Most cameras include audio, so you can also listen.
Just one flaw in this method. If your kids have an IQ over 100, they will instantly find the camera and find a way to defeat or circumvent it. If their IQ is under 100, they will instantly find a way to destroy it.
Drivel: I wanted to monitor what my worthless cat was inviting to share his food. So, I setup a very large camcorder on a tripod, in the living room, and pointed it at the doorway. I used an IR motion detector to trigger the recorder. I got a few odd photos as various neighborhood cats arrived, ate, and escaped. However, I had an interesting suprise when I taped my neighbors 10 and 13 year old brats, burglarizing my house. How they could have missed seeing the camera is beyond my limited imagination. When they denied performing the burglary, I played the video for their horrified parents.
The D-Link DCS-900W has it's own WWWebserver, so you can watch stills or motion video from any browser with the appropriate passwords. You have to poke the appropriate holes in your firewall and manually set up some dynamic DNS, but it works pretty well. It may, however, noticably impact your bandwidth, so even with the activity light on the camera turned off, the kids may notice (even if they don't notice the flashing lights on the router/modem.)
[Another "is it crap?" product from DLink. Turns out a carefully crafted URL will enable you to bypass the password protection, and while it supports automatic DDNS updates, it hands out the DHCP address it got from _your_ router, which isn't very useful. There's a
2.28 firmware update that I haven't applied yet, but it doesn't mention those two misfeatures. Sigh.]
How old are your kids? Are they smart enough to unplug the silly thing, hard-reset it, or block it's lens? I'm not a big fan of technical solutions to social problems...
Webcam servers are a bit like Swiss cheeze. Full of holes.
For DCS-900, See:
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Then, go unto to the search page at:
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use "webcam" as the keyword for 22 assorted vulnerabilites with webcams. You might also find the keywords "camera" (22 hits) or "dlink" (13 hits) of interest.
Oh swell. Microsoft ASP.NET with a hole due to hand crafted URL's.
It is interesting that builders of security devices seem to follow the microsoft "security" model. I was working with one network accessable that didn't even allow for a simple password. If you found the device you owned it and the network it was running on.
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