Car stolen from driveway. Need a video surveilance system

[troyvcd1]

My car was stolen from my driveway. I got it back 2 days later and I am going to install a car security system. I also want to install a video surveilance system on my house to monitor my neighborhood. There is a lot of crime and I need something that can record in low light at night. I dont know if I need to record to a vhs tape or maybe directly to my computer. Any ideas.

[DereX888]

I'd rather hook up auto-firing shotgun underneath the steering wheel in my car...
What the video surveillance will help you out? LOL
The thief - assuming you'll catch him - will be out next day. Only blowing off balls of few such bastards will make the others think twice before they touch someone else's property.

[TBoneit]

Well What I would do is investigate low light cameras and a multi channel capture card. We did one recently at work for a customer. As I remember it the cards come in 4, 8, 12 or 16 inputs. The software can be set for how often to write the captured stills to to the drive. Thatll save disk space In my testing I just used a regular 8mm Camcorder. The cards come with Coax or RCA connectors. If you are interested I'll look up the spare manual for the model and name. The software seemed pretty good. Could display all the active inputs on the screen at once, clicking on the camera's display would bring it up to a larger display if needed. Also I seem to recall the cards didn't need a super computer so an older system with a large capture drive would work. Keep in mind that you would probably want a very visible fake camera and a real hidden camera so that it couldn't be disabled easily, IE Spraypaint over the lens or just steal it even.

Cheers

[garry]

Before you spend lots of $$, how about looking at a few cheaper options along the lines of the webcam motion detection software (some nice cost effective software out there), Hook it up to your PC & some software will send image to server off site (incase of theft of your PC)

Instead of a webcam, look for an old video camera that may not record anymore to tape & still have a good picture. (got a few in my cupboard like many of you have). You will get much better image than cheap webcam (which is what you want to see the faces)

If you go along the line of motion detection..... lose the cat!

[SHS]

The eazy thing to do add an motion detection ligth

DVR Surveillance Product that will depend on what you after all there are two class type of board Hardware and Software and OS.
Be sure check with local state law on what can and can't do.
The questions is what are you after?.
Ready to go system or do you want build up you own DVR system?.
Windows or Linux?.
B/W or Color camera setup?.
Yes you can get Night Vision Security Camera.
Standard or High Resolution camera (As rule of thumb the Higher the camera lines resolution is the better the PQ well be but you also have take in count for frame resolution and video bitrate).
Wireless, Hardwire or Network setup?.
Number of camera need after all they start out from 2 to 16 ports capture board?.
There also a few type output and input type like BNC and Composite.

Check out ProVideo and AVerMedia