I am hoping that you folks might be able to provide some advice on the purchase of some security cameras. I live in a sparsely populated rural neighbourhood which has recently seen some vandalism and theft... in fact there are some neighbours who are under the impression that they know who is doing it but have no proof. I would like to get that proof if I can. Here are my basic requirements:
- Night shots/IR: Most of the vandalism seems to be at night and so obviously it would make sense that I would need cameras that have decent "night vision". I have done some surfing to try to find some appropriate cameras and have seen a number of them listed with specs on how many meters they can see in the dark. Of the few "night shot" cameras I have tried I have found them to be mediocre at best unfortunately. Is there anything in particular I should look for to obtain the best night shots?
- WiFi: I do not like wireless networks and always prefer wired if I can, but since I am in Canada I would have to bury any cabling out to my cameras because of the winter - and I do not feel like digging a couple of 200 foot trenches to lay cable. So, the ability to connect to 802.11g with WPA2 would be pretty important.
- Live view: I want to be able to open an application (preferably a browser) and view any one of the cameras across the network. I would really like it if any and all software needed for using the cameras would not be dependent on Java, .NET, BlahBlah Runtime files, or any other "interpreter" type dependencies or browser plugins beyond regular Flash. PTZ (pan, tilt, & zoom) are not essential for live view but are a bit of a bonus I guess.
- Motion Detection Auto-Record: I would like them to be capable of recognizing motion and starting to record video or at least interval images. I am perfectly willing to setup a separate server for this function and in fact already have a couple of machines (XP and Debian) that run 24/7 that this kind of service could be added to (assuming that it does not depend on Java, .NET... blah blah blah).
- User Authentication and Encryption: I would like it if access to the camera were SSL encrypted and authenticated for obvious reasons.
Any thoughts?
S.