On Mon, 26 Jan 2009 13:46:06 -0800 (PST), wrote:

-snip-
Does the strobe light require to be on the whole time? And can it be
controlled remotely, i.e. shut off prior to going to attic so as to
not damage human eyes.

I just thought of this after reading about motion detectors and such.

CDHK (Canon Hack Developers Kit) is open source freeware that you put
on a Canon point & shoot camera that will allow it to use motion
detection to take a picture. I've been playing with it for a
week or so & it boggles the mind how cool it is.

For your usage you'd need a Canon point & shoot that takes an ac
adapter- and depending on the camera you might want a small light left
on in the attic or the ability to manual focus. Set it to flash-
and you'd probably scare off the intruder, but you'd also capture what
it was and how 'scared' it was by the flashing light. [I'd put the
camera in a cage in case a raccoon enters your attic. It wouldn't
surprise me if a coon would be more curious than scared.]

The Wiki for CDHK is at
http://chdk.wikia.com/wiki/CHDK
I'm old and not a complete geek so it took me a few days of reading
before I put it on a card and tried it--- [keep life simple and use
a 4gb card or smaller]-- my 22 yr old son skimmed the page, loaded it
up and was shooting in 20 minutes.

Jim