someone tried to get in my house TWICE. I NEED VIDEO ADVICE

[Target1911]

92f

Lost of good info there but you left something out that is very important. Lile your fee to come help set this thing up. :)

[Target1911]

As far as door to door sales....
The open door happened at 11:50PM and he rung the door bell at 12:30AM

I doubt it was a D2D sales that time of night.

[Keith B]

They do have to have a power source. ...usually wired.

Also I have heard of problems with wireless. Easier to jam and hijack the signal.

I do want WIRED cams.

As far as a security system goes...we live in a lease house and will be moving within 6mo so I'm not going through the that cost till we get moved.

I know you view what HAPPENED and its not much for prevention but I also can't ID who it was at my door without the cams.
It is my first step in the right direction.

They are all encrypted with wireless security, so if using WPA2 they are no more easily hacked than your wireless network. However, you do have to consider the signal and them getting to your wireless router. I have two of them and one is on the ragged edge of being strong enough to stay connected and drops at times. I need to either put in a wireless range extender or move my router (WAP) closer to the one camera without taking it out of range of the other.

[92f-fan]

92f

Lost of good info there but you left something out that is very important. Lile your fee to come help set this thing up. :)

I can help with the Network side remotely... All I need in trade is a big box of 22 lr shells

[rotor]

Sam's club has wired camera setups at a reasonable price. Since you need to have a power supply for each camera you might as well just use a wired solution which always works rather than a wireless which sometimes doesn't and still needs a power source. In my opinion you are wasting your money as noted, the police won't care and if someone does break in you may have a picture but what good will that do. You need a security system if break in is a concern and it needs to be monitored so that the police are dispatched asap. It can also be hooked to a panic button if someone is home and needs rapid police presence. There are no "cheap" ways to do this. My daughter had a similar incident, 2 weeks later her car was stolen from her back yard.100 pound dog slept through the whole thing. No alarm system.

[92f-fan]

if you are going to go "wired" consider a power over ethernet solution
Just run one network wire to deliver power and network - easier and cheaper to run
But will mean more expensive cameras. You will either invest in the cameras or in the electrician ...

[Keith B]

I can help with the Network side remotely... All I need in trade is a big box of 22 lr shells

My God man, you're requesting to be paid in GOLD to help him? Sheesh!!!

[Redneck_Buddha]

Costco has a nice 8 camera/DVR/web monitoring/still pic texting setup for $500.

[baldeagle]

Wireless webcams have improved dramatically. They can now alert you through email, IM, phone or smartphone.

They use WAP2 Enterprise security, so hacking them is non-trivial. Many of the new ones also upload their data to the cloud, so you don't even need local storage and don't have to worry about your DVD being stolen.

Their main weakness is that they need a power source, so you need to mount them somewhere that only a well prepared burglar could get to. If you're worried about the power line being cut you need to use conduit to protect the wiring. If the bad guy can cut the power cord, the camera just became a boat anchor.

They have infrared for night vision, motion detection to set off an alarm, pan and tilt and high resolution. All of this comes at a cost, of course, but a good Foscam outdoor wireless IP IR pan tilt high resolution camera will cost you less than $200. You can set the whole thing up yourself and store the data in the cloud. It's the ultimate in home security for an affordable price. You can view on the web, on your smartphone or through an app that collates all of your cameras. Some cameras use Power over Ethernet, but wiring all that up is a chore and you have to know what you're doing.

[Pecos]

I Had a Game camera once hidden out side my house. Pointed towards my door from the yard(I live way out in the Blackjacks)
The only things I captured after a month was:
a Possum
A skunk
A Badger
2 of my cats
Kangaroo Rats
1 Raccoon
No Bad Guys
Seriously maybe a few wild life cameras would be an option. They range in price.

[n5wd]

Cameras will tell you if it was a door to door sales person who is trying to hard or worse.
Dont expect to use the footage for ANYTHING other than piece of mind and perhaps a deterrent. The police RARELY care or are interested in the footage. ...

Just to debunk that urban legend... your cops might not be interested, but after a young girl was killed and dumped at an intersection in a neighboring town, their police were all over neighborhood security cams looking for information about who was driving in the neighborhood around that time. While the kid that did it turned out to be a neighbor, DFW television often (like most nights) were showing screen grabs of this car or that car, in an attempt to identify who it was and why they were in the neighborhood.

All that's just another way of saying whether your local cops are interested in your security cam footage is "it depends". Around here, they seem to use it quite often.

[VMI77]

Web cams are probably cheapest --just add Blue Iris software, which was $50 when I bought it a couple years ago. With four cheap web cams from Amazon you could probably set it up for less than $150 total. Yesterday I saw the local Walmart has a four camera wired system with DVR for $300. I got something similar for $250 at Harbor Freight and it has remote over the internet monitoring capability.

[3dfxMM]

I Had a Game camera once hidden out side my house. Pointed towards my door from the yard(I live way out in the Blackjacks)
The only things I captured after a month was:
a Possum
A skunk
A Badger
2 of my cats
Kangaroo Rats
1 Raccoon
No Bad Guys
Seriously maybe a few wild life cameras would be an option. They range in price.

That's exactly what I would expect since you used a Game camera. You should consider replacing it with a Bad Guys camera.

[Dave2]

I Had a Game camera once hidden out side my house. Pointed towards my door from the yard(I live way out in the Blackjacks)
The only things I captured after a month was:
a Possum
A skunk
A Badger
2 of my cats
Kangaroo Rats
1 Raccoon
No Bad Guys
Seriously maybe a few wild life cameras would be an option. They range in price.

That's exactly what I would expect since you used a Game camera. You should consider replacing it with a Bad Guys camera.

[92f-fan]

Cameras will tell you if it was a door to door sales person who is trying to hard or worse.
Dont expect to use the footage for ANYTHING other than piece of mind and perhaps a deterrent. The police RARELY care or are interested in the footage. ...

Just to debunk that urban legend... your cops might not be interested, but after a young girl was killed and dumped at an intersection in a neighboring town, their police were all over neighborhood security cams looking for information about who was driving in the neighborhood around that time. While the kid that did it turned out to be a neighbor, DFW television often (like most nights) were showing screen grabs of this car or that car, in an attempt to identify who it was and why they were in the neighborhood.

All that's just another way of saying whether your local cops are interested in your security cam footage is "it depends". Around here, they seem to use it quite often.

Its not urban legend - Its my experience.
But we are not talking here about a child disappearing - we are talking about burglary. Or attempted burglary.

So perhaps ( stating the obvious ) the difference is in the crime - In my experience North Dallas, Carrollton, Grand Prairie, and Duncanville Police are uninterested in Video - Even GOOD video when its a traffic or property crime. They cant even be troubled to come get the video or look at it. If a small child is involved I wouldnt be surprised if everyone involved is more engaged.