Infrared illuminator to thwart creep?

[Emtae 0]

Hello folks, I have a neighbor who I've noticed has been watching our pool from behind his shades in a room in his house that faces my yard. At first I thought it was because of my wife, but then I'd see his outline when my wife wasn't there but my children were. Now, he just set up what looks like the regular Q-See cameras on his house and has one pointing at my pool. The pool is in my backyard, not visible from the street. Unfortunately due to an elevation advantage favoring him, he can see over the hedge line and into my pool from where he mounted the camera. I see that an infrared illuminator will make it difficult to see anything with the camera but I'm thinking this is just at night or low light. I'm hoping you fine folks know whether or not one mounted on a post and pointed at his camera will work in the daytime as well? The post would be set up about 50' or so away from the camera. I am hoping that at the very least I can force him to change the angle so he can still view his property without being able to say that the view into my pool is just "collateral" coincidence.

 

Thanks for your time and help.

[Boogieman 1]

Hello folks, I have a neighbor who I've noticed has been watching our pool from behind his shades in a room in his house that faces my yard. At first I thought it was because of my wife, but then I'd see his outline when my wife wasn't there but my children were. Now, he just set up what looks like the regular Q-See cameras on his house and has one pointing at my pool. The pool is in my backyard, not visible from the street. Unfortunately due to an elevation advantage favoring him, he can see over the hedge line and into my pool from where he mounted the camera. I see that an infrared illuminator will make it difficult to see anything with the camera but I'm thinking this is just at night or low light. I'm hoping you fine folks know whether or not one mounted on a post and pointed at his camera will work in the daytime as well? The post would be set up about 50' or so away from the camera. I am hoping that at the very least I can force him to change the angle so he can still view his property without being able to say that the view into my pool is just "collateral" coincidence.

 

Thanks for your time and help.

IR wont help you during the day...

[Emtae 0]

Thanks, that's what I figured. I guess I'll have to go with interrupting line of sight.

[riri7707 0]

You can try with a laser pointer enough powerfull shooting through the lens of the cam.

But this is an extreme solution.

Do that when you are sure he is not there and be discrete.

But you will begin a war between him and you as probably you will distroy the CMOS/CCD captor of his cam.

[Emtae 0]

Thanks for the input. I really don't have any desire to destroy anything of theirs. Well, let me rephrase that. I would love to destroy it, I just don't have the conscience to allow me to do it. As far as a war goes, ha! It's already been one waged by these two neighbors, but very one sided. Both he and his girlfriend are just shy of 50 and we are in our 30's. The stories I could tell of the garbage they pull could be a best selling book. Our friends and co workers ask all the time for what the latest antics are and they always act unprovoked. I truly think that just living well is what fires them up because we do absolutely nothing to draw their ire. They're just miserable people I guess and this is why I will not destroy their property so at least when I recount all the things they do we can still say we took the high road.

 

But a camera so this perverted old man could voyeur young children in the pool, no. This one I simply can't ignore and chalk up to feeling sorry for people who have nothing better going on in their lives that they have the time to think up of new things to do. I'll put up some lattice and some flowering vines and interrupt his line of sight.

[tng5737 0]

You should check to see if he is on your state's sex offender registry.

[Maggan 0]

Your kids are most important. You just find what ever It takes and kill his cam!

[Geneyus 0]

Any updates to this? I'm curious about what you did.

[Emtae 0]

Well, two weeks ago while my wife and I were working out, we had left the house leaving the shades up accidentally. My daughter texted me frantic that he was taking pictures of her and she was upset and hiding. We had her close the shades, came home and called the police. Police came and.....he did have pictures of her on his phone, however he said he was simply taking pictures of my wife's car in front of my house. Since the car was in the photo too, there wasn't any way to refute that. I told the police that between the leering through the window, camera on my pool, and now pictures of my daughter when we are not home there has to be some sort of intent that can be proven. Like I expected, because of his excuses justifying his actions, there's nothing that can be done. As soon as the ground thaws I will put up something to interrupt his line of sight. Seems that's all I can do without breaking a law myself.

[joseph.chen0312 0]

Simple method is setup a mirror toward even a used CD to camera he aim you then he can see bling bling picture.

[Emtae 0]

So an update. As soon as the warmer weather hit, I installed 10' posts with lattice screwed to them and planted fast growing vine plants. Once I was done installing them my wife suggested we leave the house with the gopro shooting our yard to see if we catch this guy doing anything because he only ever tries his bull when no one is home to confront him. So we left and the camera was shooting. When we came back we checked the camera and found that he laddered a tree and placed a new camera way up into the tree to see over the obstacle we had put up to block his line of sight.

 

Now we figured this action proved his motivation was to voyeur my daughter while she used our deck and pool and not simply monitoring security in his property since the camera was a redundant field of view to the lower one. We went to the police. The police said they didn't know know what we could do. So we went to the states attorney's office and shared the story. They were shocked at the actions and looked up current laws for me and then called saying unless they specifically said they were watching is, there was nothing we could do(a new voyuering law just got passed since and I haven't yet had a chance to read it).

 

So, I started speaking to local cops, shared the story and asked if I made a sign and put it up and they got called for a complaint would they require I remove it. All said absolutely not. I went to staples and had a 6'x2' banner made. I framed the banner and I installed it at the top of the lattice. The sign reads -

 

Stop Filming Our Children!!

Installed obstacle to block line of sight on 19Apr and you immediately installed another camera high into a tree to see over into our pool and deck

Why are you trying so hard to see what's going on over here

 

This was on Saturday, the day before Mother's Day. On Mother's Day morning, he called the police on me. Police came over, looked at the sign and told him to pound sand. The sign stayed. He attempted to block the sign by cutting a branch from a tree and stuck it in a pole mounted in front of my lattice and sign. In an hour the leaves were wilted enough that you could see the sign easily. They went to the city and filed a false claim in zoning against me. I countered the claim immediately, proved it false and showed the zoning office how their time was just wasted by someone who's been on a harassment campaign for years.

 

So his camera remains high up in the tree so my sign remains up and there's where we currently stand.

[Boogieman 1]

Holy crap....good for you..I cannot believe they dont want to do anything...you have an expectation of privacy in your back yard. Now I can understand a standard camera overlooks a yard, but the deliberate placed of that camera is worry some to me. Upload the video to youtube and create a simple easy to remember url that links to the video and include it on your sign so the entire neighborhood can see what this POS did.

I would put another sign out front that says something similar to the first but indicates who this person is and leave it there until he takes the camera down..

What state do you live in?

[afremont 0]

I too am curious as to what state the OP lives in. This is ridiculous. The perv next door has made his motivation quite clear. He is intentionally invading the privacy of the OP and taking pictures for his own sexual gratification. If the daughter is under age, then the neighbor should be jailed. I have to wonder what kind of wife the neighbor has that is okay with all of this.

 

That said, here is what I would do. I would blind the camera with a laser. If it didn't destroy it, I would mount one permanently aimed into the lens to keep it blinded. I wouldn't bother to hide it either, just make sure it didn't go into the sky where some airplane could be hit by it. I would then write a letter describing this whole story and confront the neighbor by threatening to hand it out to the entire neighborhood if he doesn't stop. If that didn't work, I would hand it out to them. Then I would contact the local news and encourage them to do a story on it. Given the trivial things that end up on the news in Houston, I can't imagine them not taking the opportunity to stir some folks up with how the law is allowing this perv to get his kicks this way.

 

After all that, I think that I'd simply catch him one on one and threaten to clean his clock if he didn't stop. At that point, the PD is not going to listen to him without some kind of proof that he was threatened.

[Lunchietey 0]

Send the letter to all of the neighbours anyway, and make sure you take heaps of pictures BEFORE you do it so the neighbour cannot deny it was there.

 

Then stick the laser in it. If the cops did nothing when a paedo was filming your kids, then they won't care that the dirty pricks camera isn't working.

 

If he comes to your door after the camera dies, then give him a serve or maybe even a 'physical warning'.

 

If someone tried that with my daughter, I wouldn't be making a sign....

[UncleDirty 0]

I have a wicked lasers spyder s3 artic that would burn that and every camera that guy installs.  You can see the camera???  You can mount a laser pointing right at it every time your kids go out.  Set it up right there and burn his cameras up.  Literally destroys the things.  Any laser over 300mw should kill them permanently.  

[UncleDirty 0]

This is at night, my laser has 30mw setting and 1000mw setting.  Camera digital hardware goes bye bye when exposed to several suns worth of light.  You can see the effect even without my laser pointed directly at it.  On 1000mw setting it starts to "blind the eye" of the camera as it moves closer to it.