I upgraded my CCTV on Saturday afternoon from a crappy £40 camera with a
built in microphone that used non-time dated video tapes which needed
changing or rewinding all the time to a proper digital video recorder with a
decent semi-hidden camera and seperate totally-hidden microphone.

On Sunday morning at 1:50 I had unwelcome visitors and the whole lot was
recorded with good sound and vision.

Apart from the police taking until Thusday night to arrive and view the
footage is this a record?

The charges are interfering with a vehicle, theft, threatening behaviour,
criminal damage and indecent exposure and the yobs have all pleaded guilty.

I fitted the CCTV system myself in less than 2 hours at a cost of £400. A
bargain I think

Adam

On Sunday morning at 1:50 I had unwelcome visitors and the whole lot was
recorded with good sound and vision.

Excellent result!

Apart from the police taking until Thusday night to arrive and view the
footage is this a record?

It is for me. We've had to call the police twice in recent years. Once for a
mugging and once for a burglary. They've always turned up promptly (i.e.
within a couple of hours), been very polite and appeared to take the
situation very seriously. In the case of the mugging, it was followed up
after a couple of days with a presentation of possible mug shots and an
update on their investigation. In the case of the burglary, they attempted
to take fingerprints (they think they were wearing gloves) and DNA samples.
This was Thames Valley Police.

Christian.

I would be interested to know what equipment you installed. I have
been thinking about putting in some sort of CCTV system.

Thanks

Alan

ARWadsworth wrote:
I upgraded my CCTV on Saturday afternoon from a crappy £40 camera with a
built in microphone that used non-time dated video tapes which needed
changing or rewinding all the time to a proper digital video recorder with a
decent semi-hidden camera and seperate totally-hidden microphone.

On Sunday morning at 1:50 I had unwelcome visitors and the whole lot was
recorded with good sound and vision.

Apart from the police taking until Thusday night to arrive and view the
footage is this a record?

The charges are interfering with a vehicle, theft, threatening behaviour,
criminal damage and indecent exposure and the yobs have all pleaded guilty.

I fitted the CCTV system myself in less than 2 hours at a cost of £400. A
bargain I think

Adam

result :-)

"AlanC" wrote in message
oups.com...
I would be interested to know what equipment you installed. I have
been thinking about putting in some sort of CCTV system.

I'd be interested too, I've looked at many systems in the various catalogues
(Machine Mart etc) and can't really decide what I should be getting. I have
decided that one of these hard drive storage devices will be much better
than tapes.

ARWadsworth wrote:
I upgraded my CCTV on Saturday afternoon from a crappy £40 camera
with a built in microphone that used non-time dated video tapes which
needed changing or rewinding all the time to a proper digital video
recorder with a decent semi-hidden camera and seperate totally-hidden
microphone.
On Sunday morning at 1:50 I had unwelcome visitors and the whole lot
was recorded with good sound and vision.

Apart from the police taking until Thusday night to arrive and view
the footage is this a record?

The charges are interfering with a vehicle, theft, threatening
behaviour, criminal damage and indecent exposure and the yobs have
all pleaded guilty.
I fitted the CCTV system myself in less than 2 hours at a cost of
£400. A bargain I think

Well done - nice deterrent too, once they've told all their mates how clear
& damning the footage was.

In article , Steve Walker spam-
writes
ARWadsworth wrote:
I upgraded my CCTV on Saturday afternoon from a crappy £40 camera
with a built in microphone that used non-time dated video tapes which
needed changing or rewinding all the time to a proper digital video
recorder with a decent semi-hidden camera and seperate totally-hidden
microphone.
On Sunday morning at 1:50 I had unwelcome visitors and the whole lot
was recorded with good sound and vision.

Apart from the police taking until Thusday night to arrive and view
the footage is this a record?

The charges are interfering with a vehicle, theft, threatening
behaviour, criminal damage and indecent exposure and the yobs have
all pleaded guilty.
I fitted the CCTV system myself in less than 2 hours at a cost of
£400. A bargain I think

Well done - nice deterrent too, once they've told all their mates how clear
& damning the footage was.



And how soon will they be doing it again somewhere else;(
--
Tony Sayer

tony sayer wrote:
In article , Steve Walker spam-
writes
ARWadsworth wrote:
I upgraded my CCTV on Saturday afternoon from a crappy £40 camera
with a built in microphone that used non-time dated video tapes which
needed changing or rewinding all the time to a proper digital video
recorder with a decent semi-hidden camera and seperate totally-hidden
microphone.
On Sunday morning at 1:50 I had unwelcome visitors and the whole lot
was recorded with good sound and vision.

Apart from the police taking until Thusday night to arrive and view
the footage is this a record?

The charges are interfering with a vehicle, theft, threatening
behaviour, criminal damage and indecent exposure and the yobs have
all pleaded guilty.
I fitted the CCTV system myself in less than 2 hours at a cost of
£400. A bargain I think

Well done - nice deterrent too, once they've told all their mates how clear
& damning the footage was.



And how soon will they be doing it again somewhere else;(
--
Tony Sayer


With a bit of time and technical know how it is possible to set one up
your self using free software called "zoneminder" which runs on free
operating system (Linux). We use a PC at work conencted to a remote
camera to record activity in the school's corridors. The software can
monitor mulitple cameras and can be set to record on detection of
motion only and even (IIRC) to detect in zones and then record the
previous x seconds and the following x seconds. So it will ignore
people passing by your gate, unless they come in and then it will
record them entering (allows you to ignore shadows cast on your
property without missing the action!

IIRC it will also email/call you when triggered

Might be worth looking into!

I upgraded my CCTV on Saturday afternoon from a crappy £40 camera with a
built in microphone that used non-time dated video tapes which needed
changing or rewinding all the time to a proper digital video recorder with
a decent semi-hidden camera and seperate totally-hidden microphone.


What make / model? any chance of seeing a (normal) still captured from the
camera
in normal light and lo light please.

Are cctv cameras that bad no one publishes stills from them so you can see
the quality (or lack thereof)

Julian wrote:
"AlanC" wrote in message
oups.com...
I would be interested to know what equipment you installed. I have
been thinking about putting in some sort of CCTV system.

I'd be interested too, I've looked at many systems in the various catalogues
(Machine Mart etc) and can't really decide what I should be getting. I have
decided that one of these hard drive storage devices will be much better
than tapes.


There's a demo up on www.cop-eu.com somewhere. Its worth browsing
if nothing else.

"DMac" wrote in message
o.uk...
I upgraded my CCTV on Saturday afternoon from a crappy £40 camera with a
built in microphone that used non-time dated video tapes which needed
changing or rewinding all the time to a proper digital video recorder
with a decent semi-hidden camera and seperate totally-hidden microphone.


What make / model? any chance of seeing a (normal) still captured from the
camera
in normal light and lo light please.

Are cctv cameras that bad no one publishes stills from them so you can see
the quality (or lack thereof)

http://i11.tinypic.com/49kdkrd.jpg
http://i11.tinypic.com/2mrfywn.jpg

The night shot is showing glare from the outside light on the grass. Todays
job is to swap the light for a lower powered one. These shots are take from
behind glass as I am moving the camera outside as well today.

The system is a 4 channel triplex digital video recorder with a 300Gb hard
drive (CCT715) that will take another 300Gb as a slave. The camera is a
3.6mm lens B&W outdoor version with a 86 deg view (their advanced vision
cameras)

I purchased them from http://systemq.com/ a company that only deals with the
trade (a friend has an account there) buy it easy to set up your own account

It was possibly a mistake not buying a recorder that has a LAN output for
future use. I have seen plenty about with this facility at similar prices to
my model

Next jobs are a camera with a bigger lens to close in on the van and a
camera at the back of the house.

Adam

In article ,
ARWadsworth writes

"DMac" wrote in message
. co.uk...
I upgraded my CCTV on Saturday afternoon from a crappy £40 camera with a
built in microphone that used non-time dated video tapes which needed
changing or rewinding all the time to a proper digital video recorder
with a decent semi-hidden camera and seperate totally-hidden microphone.


What make / model? any chance of seeing a (normal) still captured from the
camera
in normal light and lo light please.

Are cctv cameras that bad no one publishes stills from them so you can see
the quality (or lack thereof)

http://i11.tinypic.com/49kdkrd.jpg
http://i11.tinypic.com/2mrfywn.jpg

The night shot is showing glare from the outside light on the grass. Todays
job is to swap the light for a lower powered one. These shots are take from
behind glass as I am moving the camera outside as well today.

The system is a 4 channel triplex digital video recorder with a 300Gb hard
drive (CCT715) that will take another 300Gb as a slave. The camera is a
3.6mm lens B&W outdoor version with a 86 deg view (their advanced vision
cameras)

Perhaps if its the van your protecting that lens needs to come up a bit
in the mm scale perhaps a 12/16 or so, other wise you'll see that
"someone" was doing the van over, but not a hope in hell of resolving
who it was!..


I purchased them from http://systemq.com/ a company that only deals with the
trade (a friend has an account there) buy it easy to set up your own account

Phwarr!, can U buy her on the front page

It was possibly a mistake not buying a recorder that has a LAN output for
future use. I have seen plenty about with this facility at similar prices to
my model

Next jobs are a camera with a bigger lens to close in on the van and a
camera at the back of the house.

Adam


--

"tony sayer" wrote in message
...
In article ,
ARWadsworth writes

"DMac" wrote in message
.co.uk...
I upgraded my CCTV on Saturday afternoon from a crappy £40 camera with
a
built in microphone that used non-time dated video tapes which needed
changing or rewinding all the time to a proper digital video recorder
with a decent semi-hidden camera and seperate totally-hidden
microphone.


What make / model? any chance of seeing a (normal) still captured from
the
camera
in normal light and lo light please.

Are cctv cameras that bad no one publishes stills from them so you can
see
the quality (or lack thereof)

http://i11.tinypic.com/49kdkrd.jpg
http://i11.tinypic.com/2mrfywn.jpg

The night shot is showing glare from the outside light on the grass.
Todays
job is to swap the light for a lower powered one. These shots are take
from
behind glass as I am moving the camera outside as well today.

The system is a 4 channel triplex digital video recorder with a 300Gb hard
drive (CCT715) that will take another 300Gb as a slave. The camera is a
3.6mm lens B&W outdoor version with a 86 deg view (their advanced vision
cameras)

Perhaps if its the van your protecting that lens needs to come up a bit
in the mm scale perhaps a 12/16 or so, other wise you'll see that
"someone" was doing the van over, but not a hope in hell of resolving
who it was!..

Agreed. The initial protection was for me. The van security will be updated
later with an 8mm lens camera. Even at the range shown it was very easy to
ID the yobs ****ing on my van and letting the tires down, women eh?

Next jobs are a camera with a bigger lens to close in on the van and a
camera at the back of the house.

Adam

In message ,
ARWadsworth writes
I purchased them from http://systemq.com/ a company that only deals
with the trade (a friend has an account there) buy it easy to set up
your own account
Excellent site, they want you to register before they'll even allow you
to see what they carry.
--
Clint Sharp

On Sat, 4 Nov 2006 09:54:06 +0000, tony sayer
wrote:

In article ,
ARWadsworth writes


I purchased them from http://systemq.com/ a company that only deals with the
trade (a friend has an account there) buy it easy to set up your own account

Phwarr!, can U buy her on the front page

photoshoped!

On Fri, 03 Nov 2006 23:19:15 GMT, "DMac" wrote:

I upgraded my CCTV on Saturday afternoon from a crappy £40 camera with a
built in microphone that used non-time dated video tapes which needed
changing or rewinding all the time to a proper digital video recorder with
a decent semi-hidden camera and seperate totally-hidden microphone.


What make / model? any chance of seeing a (normal) still captured from the
camera
in normal light and lo light please.

Are cctv cameras that bad no one publishes stills from them so you can see
the quality (or lack thereof)

I've been using a homebrew cctv system for a few years now, based
around various software apps, webcams, old video cameras and capture
cards.
A decent webcam is good enough for normal light conditions, but an old
video camera gives a far better image across a wider range of lighting
conditions - though it's a great deal bulkier than a webcam, which can
be stripped of its casing and inserted into all manner of everyday
objects ( I've used birdboxes, flowerpots etc. ).
An excellent basic and cheap webcam is the Logitech Quickcam
Messenger,

There are many apps out there that can be used to build a homebrew
cctv system - a decent ( and free! ) one is Pryme:
http://www.hilo.dk/pryme.php
...and the shareware version, Tincam ( linked on the same page ) is
even better.
Both versions will do motion detection and automatic ftp uploads to a
web page.

Quality of image is largely dependent on the camera, and the choice of
format the image is captured in. I've uploaded a couple of shots from
an old system he
http://www.shwoodwind.co.uk/cam.htm
....which used a cheap no-name webcam and compressed images saved to
..jpg format.

You can now pick up unwanted video cameras from your local tip ( cost
about a fiver as a rule ), and provided you have the necessary leads
and a basic video capture card ( ebay, about a fiver again ) you can
get excellent results for the price of a few pints.
While you're at the tip you could also pick up an old computer to act
as a dedicated cctv machine ( again, usually the obligatory fiver ).
I'd recommend using at least Windows2000 - I've found W9x can be
problematic with cam apps.

Regards,



--
Stephen Howard - Woodwind repairs & period restorations
www.shwoodwind.co.uk
Emails to: showard{whoisat}shwoodwind{dot}co{dot}uk

Steve Walker wrote:
ARWadsworth wrote:

I upgraded my CCTV on Saturday afternoon from a crappy £40 camera
with a built in microphone that used non-time dated video tapes which
needed changing or rewinding all the time to a proper digital video
recorder with a decent semi-hidden camera and seperate totally-hidden
microphone.
On Sunday morning at 1:50 I had unwelcome visitors and the whole lot
was recorded with good sound and vision.

Apart from the police taking until Thusday night to arrive and view
the footage is this a record?

The charges are interfering with a vehicle, theft, threatening
behaviour, criminal damage and indecent exposure and the yobs have
all pleaded guilty.
I fitted the CCTV system myself in less than 2 hours at a cost of
£400. A bargain I think


Well done - nice deterrent too, once they've told all their mates how clear
& damning the footage was.


This brings to mind how bad the photos are in the news papers from CCTV.
Do they dumb them down for print and keep the actual shots pin sharp?

Dave

"Clint Sharp" wrote in message
...
In message , ARWadsworth
writes
I purchased them from http://systemq.com/ a company that only deals with
the trade (a friend has an account there) buy it easy to set up your own
account
Excellent site, they want you to register before they'll even allow you to
see what they carry.

I only have their catalogue that my friend gave me as a guide. Not great I
know.

I have found better recorders for sale on the net for the same money, I
think (until you buy and use them it is diffiult to say). I would definately
shop around in future but time was limited in this case.

Adam

In message , Dave
writes
Well done - nice deterrent too, once they've told all their mates
how clear & damning the footage was.
This brings to mind how bad the photos are in the news papers from
CCTV. Do they dumb them down for print and keep the actual shots pin
sharp?
Nope, the general quality of CCTV systems out there is abysmal, it's
amazing that people get caught from CCTV images. Loads of scabby old VHS
timelapse systems still out there and loads of crappy DVR systems that
are so low frame rate and resolution they aren't much better than the
VHS stuff unless your offender is full frame.

Dave

--
Clint Sharp

On Sat, 04 Nov 2006 16:51:32 +0000, Dave
wrote:

Steve Walker wrote:
ARWadsworth wrote:

I upgraded my CCTV on Saturday afternoon from a crappy £40 camera
with a built in microphone that used non-time dated video tapes which
needed changing or rewinding all the time to a proper digital video
recorder with a decent semi-hidden camera and seperate totally-hidden
microphone.
On Sunday morning at 1:50 I had unwelcome visitors and the whole lot
was recorded with good sound and vision.

Apart from the police taking until Thusday night to arrive and view
the footage is this a record?

The charges are interfering with a vehicle, theft, threatening
behaviour, criminal damage and indecent exposure and the yobs have
all pleaded guilty.
I fitted the CCTV system myself in less than 2 hours at a cost of
£400. A bargain I think


Well done - nice deterrent too, once they've told all their mates how clear
& damning the footage was.


This brings to mind how bad the photos are in the news papers from CCTV.
Do they dumb them down for print and keep the actual shots pin sharp?

Dave

They dont want you to know how all seeing Big Brother is

On 04/11/2006 15:43 marvelus wrote:

On Sat, 4 Nov 2006 09:54:06 +0000, tony sayer
wrote:
Phwarr!, can U buy her on the front page

photoshoped!

Siliconed!

--
Frank
(Beware of spam trap - remove the negative)

Stephen Howard wrote:
snip
I've been using a homebrew cctv system for a few years now, based
around various software apps, webcams, old video cameras and capture
cards.
A decent webcam is good enough for normal light conditions, but an old
video camera gives a far better image across a wider range of lighting
conditions - though it's a great deal bulkier than a webcam, which can
be stripped of its casing and inserted into all manner of everyday
objects ( I've used birdboxes, flowerpots etc. ).
An excellent basic and cheap webcam is the Logitech Quickcam
Messenger,
snip

The Phillips Toucam Pro / SPC900 are CCD rather than CMOS and
particularly good in low light. Amateur astronomers are using them on
the back end of telescopes (often modded with a B&W chip and 3rd party
firmware - not too hard, I've done a couple), It's also sensitive in the
near IR if you take the filter off the back end of the lens.

Chris

--
Spamtrap in use
To email replace 127.0.0.1 with btinternet dot com

On Mon, 06 Nov 2006 20:26:20 +0000, Chris Hodges
wrote:

Stephen Howard wrote:
snip
I've been using a homebrew cctv system for a few years now, based
around various software apps, webcams, old video cameras and capture
cards.
A decent webcam is good enough for normal light conditions, but an old
video camera gives a far better image across a wider range of lighting
conditions - though it's a great deal bulkier than a webcam, which can
be stripped of its casing and inserted into all manner of everyday
objects ( I've used birdboxes, flowerpots etc. ).
An excellent basic and cheap webcam is the Logitech Quickcam
Messenger,
snip

The Phillips Toucam Pro / SPC900 are CCD rather than CMOS and
particularly good in low light. Amateur astronomers are using them on
the back end of telescopes (often modded with a B&W chip and 3rd party
firmware - not too hard, I've done a couple), It's also sensitive in the
near IR if you take the filter off the back end of the lens.

Nice tip, thanks!

Regards,



--
Stephen Howard - Woodwind repairs & period restorations
www.shwoodwind.co.uk
Emails to: showard{whoisat}shwoodwind{dot}co{dot}uk