Hi all I'm considering buying an ip camera; I live in a large shared house and I think the house manager does a little snooping when we're all at work! Has anyone had any experience of a sub £50 webcam that you can access remotely and has motion detection? Was thinking something like this but not too sure about picture quality!
I used to have a logitech webcam that you could set to record when it detected motion via the supplied software. I used it for the same reasons you are inquiring for. I left the PC running with the screen locked and came home to a collection of stills about 5 seconds apart showing our culprit rifling through personal belongings. No need to spend out on an IP camera to catch someone out. A modern webcam will capture stills in HD too.
I have one you can have for £15? Its one I got off amazon just like the one you posted. I played around with it for my synology NAS but after setting it up, I realised I didnt really have any need for it. Infact, it is the one you linked on amazon but in white! Interested?
I have one of these which, using the software you can download from their website, does exactly what you want it to - I know because I just tried it out and it's really good! (720p too so the picture quality is awesome )
I've had a play with the Foscam gear which is pretty good - we've got a few set up to keep an eye on the workshop at home and they're around the £50 mark for a P/T (but not Z) version
I have the same camera at home, works surprisingly well. When I am home I could take a screenshot for you so you can get an idea what its quality is like.
Haha yeah it doesn't say foscam in the description but it is one! Tarka Dahl - could you post a screenie please? Would be interested to see the quality first hand as a couple of youtube videos suggest mixed results. My concern is that buying something like this would result in grainy/useless pictures! Would also be a bonus to use it for the occasional drunken chat roulette of course Forgot to mention - another requirement of mine is to have the camera switched on and connected to the router whilst the PC is turned off as I regularly go away for 5 days at a time. timmehtimmeh - may be interested - if you could pm me details I'd appreciate it
In that case my webcam suggestion wouldn't work... What would you have it record to if your PC is off?
Most IP cams have a built in system to e-mail stills to a pre defined account. I record to a NAS but get sent stills to my GMAIL account, so, if my NAS is misbehaving or gets nicked I'll still have decent stills to use. Just be careful with the make you get, do your research. My Tenvis one I have will send a set of 6 stills, but my better quality TP-Link only sends the one. Depending on lighting the TP-Link will sometimes miss the motion activation or it is a bit pre and you only get a shadow. S.
The Foscam ones we have will do a run of stills (although I think this must be configured). I didn't set them up, so I'm not sure - I can ask though!