Posted: 11/16/2005 8:04:42 AM EDT
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I stayed at a Holiday Inn that had a video surveillance system that you could monitor on a channel in your room and the desk clerk said the Manager could view it at his home on the internet. I'd really like to have something like that for the front door of my home. Does anyone have any experience with this or could you recommend a set up under $200. (too bad it wasn't a Holiday Inn Express or I'd already have the system set up) |
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Anything nice is going to cost more then your indicated budget. Best way to go is to get a DVR card that attaches to your computer's PCI slot. Then it connects to cameras via BNC connectors that you route to the location of your cameras. I personally have a quad camera setup for my house. The easiest one to use are called network cameras. They attach to your computer via RJ45 line which you can log into through your network. These often offer the best quality images, and can offer PTZ (Pan Tilt Zoom) function which you can access from the web. Geovision has some great DVR cards which have excellent software. I don't care much for Digivue though. I prefer to use fixed mount cameras due to cost. You can get good cameras for about 160 each. You can go with more subdued hidden cameras for similar price. Here is my basic setup:  I have my cameras so they only record during the presence of motion to save on hard drive space. That way you're not stuck watching endless hours of tape and can then save months of "motion" video to a 250gb hard drive. And yes, the third camera tends to look directly down low cut shirts on girls. Purely by accident I mind you.  -Steve |