Remote Video for Absentee Tractor Owners

[OverlyRun]

I suspect that many of us don't really live where our tractors do...visiting them on weekends mainly. Since there is no "urban living" thread, I've put this "rural visiting" post here.

Has anyone put together the bits and wires you would need to have remote access to a video camera that would let you keep track of your of barn/house/garden while you sit at your city desk? Unlike many I am not a computer whiz, but I am thinking dial up to a retired computer and use PCAnywhere or some such to access a camera that is trained in the appropriate direction ....or better yet, remotely controllable. Can this be done with fewer than 15 trips to Radio Shack and three week's pay? Or without buying a whole alarm system and service? I have one phone line into the place.

While it would be nice to check the tractor, I am actually thinking about weather checks (could train the camera on a thermometer and the background) and security issues.

Is there a bits and wire integrator on this Board who can suggest the least cost/most versatile/easily assembled such system? Or is there something already available off-the-shelf that I have simply been too dull-witted to find?

Still picture attached (weather, house and tractor were, according to this picture, OK last May).

Chas

 

[MossRoad]

Check out <A target="_blank" HREF=http://www.x10.com> x10.com </A>. They have all sorts of stuff to monitor cameras over the internet. The hardest part is going to get a computer that will stay on for several months at a time /w3tcompact/icons/laugh.gif.

 

[Knight9]

No comment on the video stuff as I can't help at all, but that is a great photo!! Looks like a beautiful area!

Kevin

 

[JoeR]

Try this link...

http://www.concealedcameras.com/catalogue/main.html

Joe

 

[RanchMan]

From the picture you posted, it appears you have electiricty and I assume a phone line as well, so that should make your task a LOT easier. I've been considering the same thing, but since I don't have either of those 2 things, it makes it a little more complex.... not impossible, just complex and expensive.

 

[dmccarty]

OverlyRun,

If you have power, I think the x10 path is the one to take. I looked into this a few months back and it seemed somewhat affordable IF you have power. I don't have power on my property so it makes it more expensive.

There are also sensor's that can be hooked up to camera's that can take still pictures. I bought a sensor but the LCD froze what night when the temps when into the teens. I never did get it fixed.......

Hope this helps...
Dan McCarty

 

[njrqs]

Something i have gathered from lots of reading on TBN is that a lot of you US guys seem to live in one place, and play tractors elsewhere???

Is it a weather thing, or so you just like having 2 places??

Over here, we normally live in the one place. Sure some people have a beach house or something, and maybe ocassionally a farm for weekends but it seems to be a hot topic here on TBN.

Maybe having tractors, I have just hit the demographic that does have weekend farms??

Any comments as to this pratice in the US??

Cheers

 

[Harv]

<font color=blue>a lot of you US guys seem to live in one place, and play tractors elsewhere???</font color=blue>

Neil -

I'll be interested in hearing the answers you get to that one. In my own case, it was a matter of me growing up in a mostly citified area, building a career there, and then gradually taking on maintenance duties on my parents' retirement property up in the boonies. Fell in love with the property, which I have now inherited, so I wind up commuting between the two properties.

I know it is common where I live for people to make their living here in the S.F. Bay Area and then retire to a roomier, more rural life. Betcha there's a few folks here who are still working, but have acquired their tractor property in preparation for retirement.

 

[njrqs]

Yeah that sounds like what has happened judgin by a lot of the comments as to Family properties etc.

I find it interesting hearing about the different way of life over there. I have always had a thing about the states and am learning lots now !

We don't seem to the have the same ways here. Either families live on BIG farms and keep them in the family, or the people live and die in the city. Not too many move from 1 to the other.

I suppose here where I am is "Rural-Residential" zoned, meaning we are part of suburbia really.

Oh well, see what they have to say.

Cheers

 

[MikePA]

I'm only a 30 second walk to my tractor /w3tcompact/icons/smile.gif. I play tractor where I live.

 

[RanchMan]

There seems to be 2 ways folks get property around here in Texas. How they come by the property has a direct relation to how many "places" they have. If it is handed down through the generations, people are a lot more likely just to have the one location as you do.

However, if you weren't fortunate enough to have an ancestor who gave you the property, you got to buy it - and with land prices what they are in the US, and how slim the margins are on agriculture now days, it is virtually impossible to make enough money to make land payments, much less have anything left for general living expenses.

Of course this isn't always the case, but it is pretty common - so, to get to the answer in a round-about way, a lot of us have to work in the city to make enough money to pay for our ranches/farms, which are in rural areas. (here where I live, it is not uncommon for people to have their farm/ranch 100+ miles away from their regular residence.)

A lot of us "weekend" farmers/ranchers would love to give up the rat-race, but the finances just don't work out.

 

[MossRoad]

Before I was born my parents bought a small house in the city and paid it off in 5 years. Then my father bought a nice 20 acre piece of property with a business partner and they subdivided it and sold off the lots. They kept the best lots for themselves. When I got married, he told me to buy some land like he did, but don't subdivide it. He said that he always regretted cutting it up into 1 acre lots and wished that he would have kept it as one piece.

So, my wife and I got married and did the same thing. We bought a small house, then 20 acres, then a larger house on 1 acre on the edge of town. Now we are saving to build on our 20 acres and hopefully that will be our last house. So I keep my tractor here at home to use on the lawn and will take it out to our property several times a year to mow trails and cut a place out of the woods for the house.

I also saw the pics of your place, before and after the neighbors left /w3tcompact/icons/laugh.gif. I'd like to put in a pond some day. We do have a creek running across one corner of the property, but I would like to stock a small pond with fish.

 

[njrqs]

OK, so then is there acreage close to cities/towns in the US?

Eg. here I am say 10 miles from our town which has 60,000 people.

Where I was born, the town has say 2,000,000 people but you can still live on acreage close to town - Say 10-20 miles away.

Mind you I am only talking about small acreage (1 to 10) but there is lots around. Certainly big enough for tractors !!

Hmmmmmmmm

 

[OverlyRun]

Moss Road, JoeR: Thanks for the leads. Both look like they would handle the camera part and I suspect the dial-up part too, but it isn't dramatically obvious from their web site, so I have asked them the detailed question. And the price is not out of reach.

The problem of computer reliability is one thing (though the PC here at home seems to run for days on end). The problem you guys remind me of is that of power reliability. For this to work I'd have to add a real UPS to deal with the frequent, though short, power outages. The refrigerator will go on when the power comes back on, but I'm not sure that a computer will re-boot and load the remote camera program.

Neil: We live in the city because it is what lets us afford to have the country house and land. While our farm once was home to several hundred cattle, it's been tree farm for 25 years and timber prices are even worse than cattle prices I am told by my weekend neighbors. Increased property assessment this year suggests that we are not the only ones buying second homes...well at the outerbounds of the gravitational pull of Washington DC.

If I get a camera set up, maybe I'll feed it to a web site and all the TBNers can help me watch the deer eat my new apple trees.

Chas

 

[MossRoad]

After thinking about it for a while, the PC probably wouldn't be that bad. You could run Win98 with no login and put the camera software in the startup folder. If the power died, Win98 would boot up, run scandisk, login and start the camera software for you. From what I have read, that software from X10 will dial a web site automatically and post pictures for you. It might even send e-mail, but I can't recall. I've been playing around with the X10 cameras at home. I have a color wide angle with sound pointed at our pool. That way we can keep an eye on it in the summer just by flipping to a channel on any TV in the house. The next thing that I'll buy from X10 is the software for what you are talking about.

 

[RonL]

Neil

I now live in the City that I was born in. It is an old New England industrial City. The City itself is densely populated but you do not have to go far to be in the "country". It was common when i was young for people to have "camps" on lakes outside of the City. These were usually summer only shacks that were cheaply built. The pipes were drained and they were closed up in the winter time. Some people also had hunting camps further out in the country. With urban sprawl the value of water front property rose dramatically. The summer camps became year round homes. Stricter building codes and septic codes also eliminated many camps.
When I took my current employment 19 years ago I was required to live within the City limits. I bought an old Victorian Mansion that had been converted to several large apartments. It was situated on a fairly large lot ( by city standards ). The house was in a fairly decent area. Since that time the area has gone downhill. I see my " customers " all around.
My wife and I bought 12 acres of land in the mountains of Northern New Hampshire. The area is rural/wilderness. It is about a 3 or 3 1/2 hour ride from our house in the City. We are in the planning/ preparation stage of building now. This will be a weekend/ vacation retreat for us until we retire, at which time we will move there permanantly. The area where our City property is located is seeing somewhat of a revival. Thre are several " urban renewal' projects going on. Westward sprawl from the Boston area is also pushing up values in the City. Hopefully when I am ready to retire the value of my City property will be high.

RonL

 

[RanchMan]

There is acerage near most cities & towns, (small 1-10 acres like you mentioned), of course, the bigger the town, the further out you have to go to find it, and the closer in to the city/town, the more expensive it is. Like the old saying goes, Location, Location, Location!

 

[njrqs]

Oh well I guess the good old US of A is much the same as here.

As I said earlier I am probably just hearing lots of stories from guys with farms and tractors making me think it's the norm. Probably a very small percentage when compared to the whole US.

Much like here !

Oh well, I am still taking it all in......

Cheers

 

[Anonymous Poster]

Chas,

Take a look at www.starkelectronic.com/vsecam.htm - they offer a remote video camera that doesn't require a local computer. It transmits video images over a standard telephone line. It won't be full motion of course, but it should work for what you want to do.

Charlie

 

[DAP]

Howdy all .. sorry I been away so long ... job woes ... anyway ... I bought 500$ worth of x10 gear. I returned it all. It is well ... um ... ya get what ya pay for. I cannot recommend this stuff.