Smart Home Blog

Sure it’s better to have some professional solution to organize surveillance system in your home. Moreover the integration with home automation system will be useful as well. But sometimes people need something easy installed and simple in use. The new wireless surveillance system UDW10003 from Uniden fits those criteria. It contains two parts – indoor/outdoor camera with IR night vision and monitor (both are wireless). The monitor can be with 3.5-inch or 7-inches displays. The price of the basic package including 3.5-inch monitor and one camera is just $199.99. The bundle with 7-inches monitor and two cameras is $299.99 and each additional camera is $99.

The Uniden wireless surveillance system is an ideal solution for the most people who don’t want to spend time and money to install complicate system.

[via SlashGear]

EyeSpy247 is an on-line based CCTV system. It offers following features:

• Monitor your home or business 24/7
• Set up multiple cameras on one account
• DIY plug ‘n’ play camera install
• Choice of wired and wireless cameras
• Arm/disarm monitoring from a pc or mobile
• Images/video stored off-site for remote access
• Get event alerts via email and/or SMS
• Add friends and family to receive alerts
• UK based support team

The EyeSpy247 supports wired and wireless IP cameras from Lincsys, Y-cam, Panasonic and Axis (you can buy cameras in the EyeSpy247 shop or use yours). It doesn’t need some special knowledge to install and configure a new camera. Recorded video is stored on-line. So, user can access to it via web browser from anywhere (just need Internet connection) and share it with family members. Additionally the video is safely backuped by EyeSpy247.

Unlike the other similar system EyeSpy247 doesn’t have any monthly fees. User should pay just for the space for recorder video and sent SMS notifications. So, at the first glass it looks like good choice for simple home surveillance system.

Mobotix has a brand new intelligent IP camera in the form of the M22 that can survive even under the most extreme of industrial environments such as mining and manufacturing. The M22 is capable of providing clear indoor and outdoor as well as day and night visualization without missing a beat. Additional features include a 4x digital zoom, video frame rates of up to 30fps in VGA resolution, and full 802.3af Power over Ethernet standard. You can install the M22 to support either security or process monitoring applications. A built-in microphone and speakers round off the list of specifications, enabling you to achieve audio functionalities like VoIP and SIP telephony with video.

Australian company Swann offers the cool way to make surveillance – Digital Private Eye. Basically it’s a small video camera placed in a case which looks like an alarm passive infra-red device. So, nobody knows that everything under your control.

The camera comes with a built-in motion detector that starts taking shots each time it is triggered, storing up to 30,000 images on a single 1GB SD card. It can be powered by a 9V battery or a power cable for 24-hour surveillance. You can view camera’s shapshots by connecting it in USB port of your PC or read them directly from SD card. The Digital Private Eye may use mostly as stand alone spy recorder and not as part of real time surveillance system. You can be a lucky owner of this spycam just for $199.00.

[via Ubergizmo]

I came across this Skype hack which turns your PC with webcam and Skype account into surveillance system. Sure if somebody asked about this functionality this means it’s useful. But IMHO it’d much better to use simple IP camera for this purpose. IP camera is more expensive than webcam but it doesn’t need PC to work. Usually, IP camera already includes web server with user interface. So, it needs just an Internet connection.
For example D-Link IP camera (just about $100) exists in two variants: wired and wireless. It allows to monitor your home/office without PC. You have to connect the camera to LAN and configure it via web interface. The camera has built-in web server with web interface and motion detector. It may record video and send notifications via email if some motion will be detected. And so on.

But anyway, if you like Skype you can use it to monitor your home.