Why would I ask for such a thing? Because somebody got into my car last night. I honestly can’t remember if all my doors were locked (a couple of my doors are those kind where you have to hold the lever open while you shut it for it to stay locked — a stupid design in my opinion). But my car was certainly opened, and everything inside the main part of the car was moved around. Thankfully, nothing was taken. Other than my drumsticks and my music in there that belonged to COCC, there was nothing of significant value in the car. But whoever did this rummaged through my glove box, tore out the few things that were under my seat (mostly radiator fluid and a windshield screen), opened my drum stick bag (which I never leave in my car, but was just tired after band rehearsal last night), took my few cruddy CDs out of a little storage cubby, and even threw my ice scraper across the seat.
So basically from what I could tell, they were trying to find some quick cash or quick something they could pawn off for a few bucks (my stereo isn’t worth removing — it’s a piece of crap). They didn’t find anything, and they moved on (they popped my gas cap, for some reason).
What’s weirder is that they didn’t touch my wife’s car, which is a far nicer car — they decided to pick my crappy little car to rummage through.
But the reason this has me spooked is that back in 1999 when I was in college and living in Eugene, I made the mistake of leaving my laptop under my seat in my car (it was a long night of studying that I had gotten back home at 1:00am). My car was locked, but I woke up to a broken window, and my laptop, my bag, and my laptop was gone (you can read all about it in a ranting pissy online column I wrote which I’ve mirrored here as the original link isn’t rendering things properly).
I don’t want that to happen again where a momentary lapse in my judgement screws me over good or does something to me or my family. It’s one thing to screw me, but when there’s a chance that something might happen to my family, then I get a little angry.
So I’m looking to fight it and catch bastards like this in the act — I’m looking to setup a home-brew surveillance system. I know good little Web cams are getting fairly inexpensive now and I might have enough spare parts that I could build a computer to tether them to for archiving of images.
Has anybody done anything like this or have any suggestions? Linux-based systems are totally fine (and will probably be cheaper), and support for at least three cameras that I can access via the Web is a requirement (as I can route a URL to my house, if need be). Built-in motion sensing (it doesn’t need to record all the time) is basically a must. And if anybody has any spare parts that they’d like to contribute to the project, I’d be immensely grateful. I’m open to any thoughts and/or suggestions for anybody who has done this type of thing before.
Needless to say, I have filed a police report, and my cars are locked up.
Comments
I had the exact same thing happen to me about a month ago. Somebody went through and moved everything around, but nothing was gone. My car certainly wasn’t the nicest around and it was just full of worthless junk. Before that I didn’t lock my car much because I there was never anything of value in it.
P.S. work in the second paragraph should probably be worth
Fixed. Thanks, David.
hade the same thing happen to my car the night we moved into ournew house. stole some cd’s and the change holder. nothing much. but i just got a e-mail saying that theifs can just look through the glass and get your VIN NUMBER. they just have to go to that dealer ship and tell them the vin # and they get free keys. law says you cant remove the vin # but can cover it up. you can get fake cameras in orential trade magazine .
I’m not sure of the prices where you are since I live in Australia, but have you ever considered installing sensor security lights?
When our house got broken into twice in one year (losing about a couple of grand in cash and jewelry), my dad installed these lights around our house and since then we’ve had no break-ins. That was about 12years ago now and they still work so they’re long lasting. All you have to do is set the units so that the sensors turn the light on for a second or two, before turning back off again. Anybody moving outside would then set the thing “flashing”, grabbing not only your attention but the neighbours as well.
Now, you’re probably saying “I wanted to protect my car, not my house!”. Well, I’m just suggesting these as they also do a great job in covering our driveway. The sensors are powerful enough to cover the whole of our driveway but weak enough to not be set off by cars on the road. They’d probbly look better than having cameras everywhere as well…
Sorry that I don’t know about prices, but an educated guess says you’d get decent ones for around $40 each (I think they were $130 a pop for us, but that was 12yrs a ago). You’d probably find cheaper ones, but I wouldn’t trust those. They come in a range of styles and colours so them not fitting with your house isn’t a problem.
I reckon these are the best choice since:
A). Cameras don’t prevent you from getting robbed. When you actually catch the culprit he/she’s probably already pawned your stuff.
B). Robbers are opportunists and go for things that are easy. If you make things hard for them (eg. taking away the darkness, hence putting them in the open) they will simply go away.
C).Wouldn’t you go look if one of your neighbour’s outside lights was flashing constantly? I know I would, even if it was just to go say to that neighbour that it was annoying you.
Hope this helps.
P.S. Sorry for the super long post or if I’ve gone around in circles. I have a tendency of doing that… :S
Try looking at zoneminder. The link is http://www.zoneminder.com. I have this setup in my house and the only special hardware needed is a capture card that works in Linux. It has a nice web interface for checking on cameras and setting up cameras. It does work with web based webcams.
You can check the web site and the forum for hardware that will work with it. There is a live demo cd you can dl and try it. If it is what you want then you can then install the live demo cd to your hd and have a complete install done all at once.
Camera wise, I would suggest having a look at http://www.axis.com – not the cheapest cameras around, but very nifty feature-sets, can run on any network (they have their own webserver – hence no additional hardware or software needed), most have motion detection and can email you photos.
I occasionally use one myself (pointed at the front door so I can see who is at the door without having to leave my computer room) and we use one at work (with a microphone as well).
On the side of locking your car – sometimes my Father used to think “There is nothing worthwhile stealing in the car, the car is only worth xxx, but it’ll cost yyy (yyy being larger than xxx) to get a window replaced – may as well leave the door unlocked so if a theif does come along, they don’t have to break the window.”
Jake, what about hooking the cams up to motion-sensor lights? Have the cams powered-up by the triggering of the lights!
You’ll need to install the lights anyway, in order for the cameras to see anything in the dark. 🙂
Motion-sensor lights are awesome. 🙂
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