Security Camera’s

Security cameras have always been for the Rich & Famous in the past, but now they are an easy DIY project that doesn’t have too much of a hefty bill.  I just found this site (www.networkcamerareviews.com) tonight that does reviews on IP based Video cameras.  There is a massive amount of information on this website, and if your interested in the idea I suggest you check it out. 

Trendnet TV-IP512WN

Some people might think that they don’t need security cameras, and I’d probably agree with most people on that.  Although they can provide you with some other benefits that you may have not been aware of.  For an example, if the doorbell rings, and your home alone on your computer, you can connect to your camera via a web browser and see who is there.  Even if your out, you can have your camera record video based on motion sensitivity and you can see who came by your house when you were out.  One of my co-workers had a bull-dog puppy and he has set his security camera up inside the house so that he can check it from work to see what his little puppy is up to.  Or maybe you just want to catch which neighbor is bringing their dog around to crap on your lawn (yes one of my co-workers bought one for this reason).

Some features on various cameras can include:

• Email you pictures of when motion is detected
• Record video when motion is detected onto a network share or computer
• FTP a picture when motion is detected (this is great as if you are getting robbed, this can send the picture to the internet so that if your computer is stolen you can still find what was on the camera)
• Record sound as well as video and even have speaker attachments.  This way you can hook a speaker up to your camera and talk through a microphone hooked up to your computer – this will drive your pets crazy
• Cameras that Pan/tilt and swivel, that you can control via your web browser (or even automatic target tracking so that it can follow a subject walking by - possibly creeping out your visitors)

 Now when I think of a wireless security camera I think it can provide a little more security on your house as people may be intimidated to rob a house with them.  On the other hand, maybe people will think you have something worth robbing… 

Wireless security camera’s aren’t the most secure.  They do have built-in security, but for some of those hackers out there, they could essentially hack into your camera to either disable them or see what they are seeing.  So I wouldn’t 100% rely on these cameras for full home security.

The camera in the picture at the beginning of this post is by TrendNet.  They have quite a few affordable cameras with some great features.  Also most cameras will come with TrendNet TV-IP512WN I listed above comes with software that can control up to 32 cameras – for the extra paranoid. 

I will personally be purchasing a couple of these, as I think they are a “Soup up my House Essential”.  This is definetly a wow factor to people who visit your house, nevermind the people you can show at work.

If you have any experience with any of these cameras please let me know.  I’m interested in the different software each brand comes with and how good they are. 

What do you think, good investment? or kinda creepy?

Computers… Can’t live with them, can’t live without em.

Well my computer hard drive decided to die yesterday morning…  Got to love it!  For those of you who have had this happen, if you know a little about computers, or if you have a friend who knows there is a great program to restore your data.  While chances are some of it will be corrupt you often can get back a majority of it.  The program is called “GetDataBack for NTFS“.  It costs approx $80 USD, and requires quite a bit of patience.  My drive to scan is going to take approx 6 hours, then to copy the files to another drive will take probably another few hours.

I always stress to people how important it is to back up your computer data.  Nothing is worse than losing all your pictures, documents (resume especially), and favorites list.  There are a few sites out there that allow free backup online of approx 2GB of data.  This isn’t even close to big enough for most peoples pictures these days but it is good for some important documents.  Microsoft has a pretty good site that is free to register which integrates into Microsoft Office nicely.  The website is http://workspace.officelive.com/.  There are quite a few services online that do this, this blog mentions 5 that he liked http://franticindustries.com/2007/07/12/5-simple-ways-to-store-your-files-online/.  Another one which seemed to return a bunch of hits was http://mozy.com/.  While I’ve only tried the Microsoft version I’m sure they probably all work quite similar and and pretty good.  My main concern would be choosing a company that you know isn’t going to disappear within a couple years.

Anyways, just thought I’d let you know of some of my fun.  This has kinda put a huge damper on things since I was planning on finishing a few renos that I’ve been putting off for weeks.  I’ll try to do some with the rest of the day and post my progress tonight.

Something I forgot to mention, just a trick that I’ve picked up from somewhere.  If your hard drive has died, and it makes a clicking noise when you try to start your computer.  If you take out the hard drive, put it in a ziplock bag, then put it in the freezer for a couple hours.  Take the harddrive out and put it in your computer, and it “might” work for a short amount of time (enough to pull some of your data off).  I know a few people that this has worked for.

For those of you buying a new computer, you can look at a computer that has a RAID 1 (Mirror).  What this is, is there are 2 hard drives in your computer that are exact mirror images of each other.  Should 1 die, you can run off the other one automatically.  Mind you that this does cost a bit extra for the RAID feature set in your computer and the extra hard drive, but for important data it is sometime worth it.

If you use any online backup software that you really like please let me know, I’m sure there are a bunch out there that are really good that I’ve never heard of.

Eric