Wednesday, January 5, 2011

Introduction

Though I live in a very quiet and safe residential area where I have not heard of any criminal incidents for a long time, I have always wanted to have more peace of mind especially when I was away for a long time during a vacation, for example. But I was not quite interested in commercially available security surveillance systems that are often expensive using proprietary and closed  design.

I did a market research and found that Panasonic was making a variety of IP network cameras ranging from reasonably-priced simple models to more feature-rich versions. One day, I decided to try one of those for experimental purposes. I chose the least expensive model, BL-C1A. I bought one from eBay for as little as $70 US and conducted an evaluation process to see how I could make it fit to my home network.

My design goals of the system were to:
  • Watch images of multiple cameras securely from anywhere in the world over the Internet
  • Save captured motion images for a reasonable time period for later review
After the initial evaluation, I found that ,although the camera had a few shortcomings, it would be possible to write a set of software programs of my own to build a practical system.

So far, I have installed a total of seven Panasonic cameras in both indoor and outdoor places in my premises. The cameras not only provide real-time views of the areas but also record captured motion images for as long as 3 months (configurable) for reviews with a simple web interface. The cameras gave me not only the peace of mind I was initially expected; one day, when no one was in home, a USPS delivery person unresponsively left a $400 merchandise parcel  Ifrom Amazon.com on our driveway in front of my house's garage door. The package was perfectly visible from the public street. I happened to be watching it as it was the scheduled delivery date. I immediately called my next-door neighbor with Skype and asked to pick up the parcel for saving it in his house. This is how I secure my assets.

Proceed to Screen Shots.