surveillance ideas

[Dutch445]

had a call from a neighbor this morning, she watched a guy in my back yard looking into the
back windows of my garage. she confronted him, and he made up an excuse that he was
looking for the owner. he was backing away and walking around the back of the house away
from her, as she asked more questions. she then saw the guy heading down the road as
a passenger in a pickup truck, so they had been parked over at my pole barn on the opposite
side of the property. (i'm sure they got a good look there, and that is where the most valuable items are,
as i'm storing a couple bikes for friends, along with my own stuff)
we're pretty rural, but live close to a fairly well travelled highway.
we reported this, and the neighbor gave her statement to LEO, but i was advised it might
be a good idea to get some game cams in my outbuildings as they find that when inside
they work well for identifying people better than outdoor ones that are pretty easy
to defeat, and then they aren't visible until they get inside.
i'm looking for a reasonable recommendation for some game cameras that will work on
motion and record photos or video. the LEO mentioned there are some out there for less
than $100 that will work just fine for this purpose.
any thoughts?

 

[Ken]

A month ago neighbor dairy man had all of his tractor tools stolen. jacks battery charger
also the game cameras that were recording the theft.

Sheriff said to list the items taken and should they be located they would call.

thieves also know about cameras.
ken

 

[ksluy]

The only problem with a game camera is the red light for night shots. I think you may get your stuff and your camera stolen. It would work great in daytime.

 

[Jim Nelson]

I got one a while back just to see what animals we have around at night and it is fun but I'm not sure how good it would be for ID at night as the infra red turns everything white and there's quite a bit of distortion if the animals are moving. The day time pics and video are very good though.The unit I have is a Stealth Cam model STC-G42NG and it cost just a little over $100 and then you have to buy the card and batteries.I got this one through Amazon. This unit will take either a single photo,a burst of 3 photos or a 10 second video when tripped. It also has custom settings that are a little more complicated to set up and with the interpreted Chinese instructions it's beyond me but my grand kids could probably do it easily.

 

[Dutch445]

thanks, i'll look at that one some more, at 10 mp it should be decent,
but i guess it'd have to be hidden for best results....
i started looking at the home security stuff, but that would need wires from
the cameras to the controller/hdd.

 

[Pixguy]

There are systems that are wireless to dvr in house so you might want to ck those out although more than couple hundred. It may be a good time to take photos and or video of everything you have, helps with ins. co's if a claim is necessary.
Bass Pro put up an ad earlier for a game camera for $69 I believe although I'm not sure how good it is.

 

[dave1949]

Access Denied

I like the wireless idea. If someone steals the camera the images are already saved in another location.

 

[Pixguy]

Access Denied I like the wireless idea. If someone steals the camera the images are already saved in another location.

Nice but he'd still need power to the camera although the wifi is wireless.

 

[Country Geek]

The game camera can be useful though as others have said the red light will give it away at night. Rather than have one set to record people in your barn, better to set it to see cars going in and out of the driveway so they'd be less likely to see it. But you might have to step up to pretty good resolution and shutter speed to get one that can do license plates, especially at night.

One other consideration I learned about when using game cameras to monitor my driveway that isn't really talked about but really makes a difference is shutter delay. A lot of them have a 1-3 second delay between the time the motion is first detected and it takes pictures. That can be enough time for someone to walk past it so that by the time it takes the picture, all you have is an empty frame. Or for a car to drive far enough away from it that the plate isn't readable. I think they do this on purpose to avoid false alarms since they were designed to take pictures of deer or other wildlife grazing, not for security. So if the camera has this, you would need to position it so that the subject is coming toward it or otherwise so that a shutter delay doesn't negate its effectiveness.

Given the above game cameras are nice and they can be useful but what's really needed is a game-type camera that's designed for security, rather than game.

 

[Dutch445]

Access Denied

I like the wireless idea. If someone steals the camera the images are already saved in another location.

that sounds like a good idea, i can get power to the camera, and if they see it upon entering the garage/barn i will already have
them recorded, hopefully. especially if they look and say, cheese! i'll look into that a little more.

outdoor cam is tough, i have large parking areas , and these 2 buildings are on opposite sides of my house.