Home Security

[DrDetroit 0]

I am having trouble with the neighbor kid. He likes to deflate our tires, steal our decrotive rocks, and put sticks into our grass like punji sticks. His mother is of no help to us. So we would like to be able to catch his deeds on video so that we can press charges on him. My question is: Can anyone recommend a camera system the 1) works well in the dark ( he is outside quite late) 2) can be made to swivel and track to sound and 3) doesn't cost a vast fortune for I am retired and live on a fixed income.

[kensplace 0]

Have you actually seen him do it, or are you assuming its him?

 

How old is he?

 

Have you contacted the police to let them know what is going on, and to see if they can have a word with him/his parents?

 

As for cams, I have not come across any cheap cams that can follow sound, if you want them movable then you will need a pan/tilt head, and controller.

 

Those are not cheap new, you can pick them up cheap second hand, but if you dont know how to interface them and how to get the controller/telemetry etc then it could work out very expensive in the long run.

 

Best bet would probably be a highly visible deterent, ie a big housing stuck outside your house pointing at the trouble area. A decent b&w cam with maybe some security lighting for night vision, and some means of recording the camera (either a pc dvr card like a low end geovision card, a single channel dvr or even a vcr)

 

If you can stay up and trigger the recording when you see trouble about to start then you can catch the bugger in the act, but whatever you choose its important that you do a test run, where you or a friend pretent to be the trouble maker at night, to see if your system can record sufficient detail to identify the person involved.

 

As its a generic request, I can only give general answers, you need to be careful about the choice of lens, to wide angle and you will see a large overview but not be able to make out small details, or id a person, to narrow a angle of view and you will miss what is going on unless lucky!

 

The other alternative is to go covert, and hide a small camera somewhere,

so the kid does not know he is being filmed. However, this will result in him probably doing the crime, being caught, then getting really p***d off at you for being sneaky, and could result in further trouble down the line.

 

A visible deterent may be sufficient to deter any trouble from happening in the first place (but then again, to some people cameras are like red flags to a bull!). Where I live people dont care if cameras are present, they just dont care at all, it does not bother them, but I live in a rough area in the uk, and people are used to cameras over here.

 

I would have a word with the police, see what the say first, then maybe post back with more specifics.

[Thomas 0]

Eh, I'd suggest the painball method for this.

[CollinR 0]