Scruit

I've already explained to her that there's a difference between a image good enough to recognize someone you know, versus a 'wanted poster' image (a pic so good you could put it on a wanted poster). I spoke with her again on friday, and this is turning out to be a scary story. She no longer has even one piece of jewelry as it is all missing. This person she suspects has stated that he owns the furniture, but is not going to admit to taking it. I told her to get a safe for her valuables and her response was; "I've nothing left to put in a safe!" A Camera system won't help her unless she can tell very quickly when someone's been in the house. She's changed all the locks and she's also going through an exercise of replacing the hardware ont he windows to ensure they can all lock. I'm heading up there in a couple weeks to take a closer look. I've notice that Lowes and HD don't carry RG59 any more so I've been doing all my cameras with RG6. My lonegst run is about 150' and I've not seen any obvious issues with the video. I think what she wants more than anything is peace of mind knowing WHO is doing it. If it is this guy then she can filoe a tresspass order on him, but only if she can prove it was him. That's why the camera is so important to her. BTW, this lady is my child's Godmother, so I'm not out to make money from her.

I tried that before with a $1 bill on my desk. It was picked up by the first cleaner who saw it, but he replaced it again a few seconds later. Maybe it wasn't worth risking his job for a Buck. Maybe if it was a 20... I need to make a nice fake $20 bill and leave it on my desk... Or even better, if I can get my hands on a broken IPOD or soemthing for free, then I could leave that on my desk... That would grow legs the first night!

Last night the cleaner emptied my trash can, as she is supposed to, but then reached over my desk and tried to pick up the port replicator for my laptop. I'm not suggesting she was trying to steal it, but if your job is to empty trash cans then you have no business trying to pick up electronic devices off my desk... Still watching...

Things I learned today: 1) People can only see what they are specifically looking at. I didn't think this camera was hidden well to avoid detection by someone who looked at the PSU closely. Apparently that is not the case - someone picked up and looked at the PSU and never saw the camera. 2) Weird stuff happens when you're not around. Someone came into my cube last night and rummaged through the pile of computer parts that the PSU cam was in - nothing missing though (the pic 2 posts above was taken before I left last night, so I could compare and make sure nothing was missing) The part are all old and useless, which is why I'm not using them! 3) You just can't *know* people. You really can't. The person who went digging for cool stuff in the 'pile of parts' is someone who sits 3 cubes away and I've been friends with for 3 years. :-/

The PSU-Cam is in place, and tonight is cleaning night (last incident was cleaning night)

Have you tried a portable monitor at the camera?

She has 3 dogs - neither apparently do any good. I've told her best bang for the buck is just new locks and a monitored alarm system. We'll see if she takes that advice.

It's not so much a 'gearhead' problem, it's more of a 'Trying to remain inconspicuous' thing. I'm going to stick out like a sore thumb if I carry a ladder into the building. There is a printer outside my cube, with stacks and stacks of reams of papaer. Maybe I can install a camera in there, knowing that I woudl have access to a power outlet next to the printer. I can make a "ream cam". Probably not a good name for it though. Well, there's no reason why the camera can't be on the floor under the printer table and facing the opening of my cube. I coudl take one of the boxes that the paper comes in, mount the camera so it faces trhough the open handle hole in the side of the box, then put it at the bottom of all the paper... It's never get moved or disturbed under there. Then I'd just need some way of taking a standard TV signal from an RCA plug and recording it on my old laptop. Hey, ebay has a bunch of those "USB DVRs", right?

Power is the problem. I wanted to obtain a fire alarm siren/strobe box like they have on the walls around here and install a Swann Microcam in it - about the size of a 9v battery - then put one up on the wall outside my cube. Pretty good angle, but no power source available, and I can't go around cutting up the walls. Heck, I got yelled at for putting up a whiteboard that 'Facilities' forgot to put up. "Quit taking our job" "Start doing your job! It's been sat on the floor here for 3 months!" How about a pair or 12v sealed lead acid batteries? from an old UPS. Should hold a charge long enough run a 200ma camera for a few days, right? Sprinker heads won't work inmy case because the sprinkler system is recessed into the ceiling, and I can't cut the tiles... Errr... If I can find a tile with the corner broken off then I can switch that tile to above my cube and have the camera poking through the hole. But then I'd have to climb up to a 10' ciling to install, the change batteries.

I have one better. I have a Targus PA400U alarm that uses a small electric wire that runs from the unit, through the stuff you want to secure, then back to the uni to make a continuous connection. When armed, cutting the cable, or moving the alarm box, will trigger a 95dB alarm. I'll run the cable through the eyelet in the flag and truck the alarm box in a drawer, armed. If someone tries to take the flag them everyone on the floor will know about it.

I went to my boss today and told him stuff was stolen from my cube. He asked if my camera caught it. I told him I took it down because he asked me to earlier. His response was; "Well, I said I was checking to see if you broke any rules, I didn't say you had to take it down right away." So, the way I figure it, if they decide I shouldn't be recording then the fact that my boss is already aware of it and is condoning it means they won't sack me, just formally demand it be taken down. "Legal" never did respond. I'll tell him I'm putting it back, and if he doesn't object then I'm in the clear. I also found out that the security department has a website that I can visit and "Request Security Camera". What they will do is put a covert camera in the cubicle and watch for crimes being comitted. Problems with that are that I have no control over the video, and they would potentially have someone watching the video live and seeing me picking my nose all day. Finally, it has to be justified by a "Cost Avoidance", such as potential cost of theft of company property etc. Someone a few cubes down from me got a camera installed to try to catch who was making international calls to mexico in the middle of the night, but only becuase the calls were costing hundreds of dollars. They dont care about employee personal property (their response was "Don't bring personal property to work"), and especially not a British flag. I also need to bolt that bloody flag down. What is it with Union Jacks? Every US company I've worked for I've had problems with people stealing/destroying/defacing my flag? I told one guy I was gonna replace with it w bigger flag and his response, matter-of-factly, was; "You're just asking for it to get torn up." I had a US flag of the same size right next to it, so there was no disrespect to the US.

Ok, this is as stealthy as I can get in 30 minutes. This power supply will be placed in the middle of a pile of old computer parts that is directly below the camera in the first post. The camera will be facing away from the cube entrance. Hope this winds up being stealthy enough.

The ads on the baby cameras always seem show the sleeping baby's head taking up all the shot.

Your eyes can see the visible light from a campfire and the iris will close.

There is a company out there called Drivecam that makes self-contained camera/recording devices that attach near the rear-view mirror and have one camera facing forward and a fisheye facing into the cabin. Their recording is something like 30 seconds before and 30 seconds after an 'event'. An event can be an impact greater than a threshold g-force, or it can be when the driver presses a button on the device itself. The number of events that can be recorded is something like 128. I'm not totally sure of that, but that's what get from their website. They are focused on fleet customers and won't even talk to consumers - I've tried - but a taxi fleet could get their attention. Best I could figure was they ran about $700 each, and you needed to have a central download server. What I'm thinking is that if the driver reaches up and presses a button on the camera as the passengers get in then it will record at least 30 second of the passenger's face. Also, if robbed (and the driver has the presence of mind) then he can press the button after the robber leaves and will get the 30 seconds before the button was pressed. Finally, the primary benefit of the drivecam is to record car accidents, triggered automatically by impact forces. I wonder how configurable the drivecam is - maybe it can be hooked up so that the opening of either rear door will trigger an even and record for a minute.

Well, I'm not saying that I know them to be harmful, just that I don't know them to be safe. You would be amazed at how much light those IR LEDS put out. Even a remote control for TV my was able to light up my whole arm standing 5' away from the camera and 3' from the remote control, even with the lights in the room on. To my untrained eye the light level appeared to be roughly equivalent to a 2AA flashlight - although I have no equipment that will measure the comparative light levels. The only subject I know less about than CCTV is medicine, so this advice is worth what you paid for it... For me the biggest concern was the fear that IR, being invisible to humans, would not cause the human iris to close to reduce the light level hitting the back of the eye. Therefore it would be like when you get those dilating drops at the optician's office and then go outside - your eyes cannot close to reduce the light and it's uncomfortable. Well, imagine that all that light is streaming into your eyes, and they are not reducing the iris to compensate. You cannot see or feel the discomfort. So, it seems reasonable to believe that the IR light is flooding into the eyes without much control... The question is, does that IR light have any effect on the eye? The rods and cones are not sensitive to that light, so will it affect them? It may be that the IR light hitting the back of the eye has zero effect, but that's the bit I really just don't know about. I know the light gets in there, but I don't know if that makes a difference. When it comes to "I don't know if this is hurting my child or not" I tend to err on the side of caution.

I'm not a professional, just a home user. I have a camera in my toddler's room - it's been there since soon after he was born. It also has sound. This is hooked up to the tv in my den so I can switch over to the baby-cam if I hear noise from his room. The camera is a cheapo ebay B&W which is sensitive to low-light, but has no IR leds. pretty much the saem reasoning here - I don't know what effect the light would have on him etc. At first we had a night-light in his room which provided enough light that the camera can easily tell if he's moving around in bed or if he's settled - and that's all it really needs to do. I don't need to identify a burglar or anything. The sound helps with that also. It's proven to be most useful when we hear him screaming in his room we can switch over to the camera and listen to what he's screaming about, usually wants water/milk or a toy - then we can take that straight to him rather than making a seperate trip upstairs to figure out what he wants. This is another "had a spare camera" type of project rather than actually buying the caemra just for this. These days (3yo) he insists on having his desk lamp on all night - it has a 14w compact flurescent bulb that provides ample light.

I'm not a professional, just a home user. I'm an IT guy and was a network engineer for several years, starting back when we used bnc coax for networks. I can crimp bnc with my eyes closed (and some people say it looks like I did. ) I've been pulling cables through walls for the last 10 years both professionally (networking, all cat5/5e/6 these days) and have used I don't mind the F-type and bnc twist-on for indoors, where there is not going to be any strain on the connector. Outdoors I prefer crimps. The camera system in my car is all crimps as twist-on doesn't seem to handle the vibration too well, I was always having to tighten them every week or so.

I have a no-name color 1/3" sony 480tvl ccd camera with a 4mm DC auto iris lens installed in my car. It does not have a mechanical ircut filter. Inside the garage under artificial light it sees colors normally, but outside in bright sunlight it sees everything as having a bright yellow/orange hue, especially reds and greens. Grass appears yellow, but even red cars appear yellow under direct sunlight. In the underground parking lot at work the car colors are all normal. Do I need an IRCut lens? EDIT: SOLVED!! Marzsit nailed it. The problem was I used an indoor camera that had no IRCut filter. Adding an IRCut to the lens corrected the colors.

The images are kinda blurry because I'm always messing about with the camera and lens trying to figure this thing out. I have no idea why the grass appeared yelloe, but holding that filter up turned it back to green. I dunno - I'm not an expert. I've been ripping my hair out on this thing for a few weeks now and I'm just glad to be on the home stretch. THe images would be blurry if I captured them right from the camera but they're being recorded by the DVR first then replayed and then paused - and then a tv capture card is used to grab the paused image and save it to a jpg. There's a chain-of-custody I woudln't like to explain in court. Thanks for you help and patience, rory. And all who provided opinions. (Oh, and the cost of the filter and camera combined was about $100, so I probably would have been better buying the right camera back at the start, when you count the 4 or 5 hours I've spent farting about with it)

Before: After: I just need to mount it permanently (so you can't see the black ring) and then adjust the focus/brightness/contrast again. And yes, the house in the distance is slightly yellow in real life. No accounting for taste I guess.

Update: Problem is fixed. The IR cut filter makes the grass appear green (what a concept). It also means the camera can no longer see the light from the IR illuminator on the front of my house. I'll post pics a little later on when I get a chance download the images from the car dvr.

That's the next step. I just want to see what impact the IR filter has first.

Hope not. I'm still clinging to the IR theory like a shipwreck survivor clings to a piece of broken wood.

Here's an extreme example of smearing from my car camera before the auto-iris lens. The white vertical line is the smear. This image was take at midday on a clear day in full sun - yet the image is useless. After installing an auto-iris lens the smearing went away, although the image is still heavily impacted by the sun - the the image around the sun is at least usable.