Time Lapse/Security Camera software

[Kryten]

Folks,

Starting to feel a little unsafe in our brand new flat, one of our neighbours (whom I went to school with) had his motorbike stolen from the car park.
It was all locked up, double rimlocks, alarm, locked to the barrier.
Yesterday, it went. Broad daylight, back of a van. Nicked.

Spoken to many of the more decent tenants in the flats here and it's clear we all want CCTV. The housing association isn't interested, annoyingly due to the price we pay and location of the building, so it looks like I'll be taking matters into my own hand.

I'm looking to build a security system, hopefully with nothing more than a Shuttle computer system (no monitor) and a wireless camera, either screwed up inside the building in a communal area, or in one of the flats facing the car park (our particular flat isn't).

Idea is, shuttle system will be remotely managed via wireless, and also talk to the camera via wifi (all secured). I've got a camera that'll do this on my desk, broken. I'll be fixing that and getting it set up, and probably a 1tb drive in the shuttle to run windows XP (for brevity and cost reasons, I've a spare licence and media).

The only thing I'm not sure about doing is the software side of it. Obviously I don't intend on recording constantly, high quality etc, and therefore some time lapse (one frame every second) or software specifically designed for security camera systems would be ideal. Has anyone ever done anything like this or can recommend some software to do just this?

Cheers

 

[WPKenny]

About Active WebCam

Might be along the lines of what you're after. I've used it before and it's quite HDD intensive but that was years ago.

 

[Kryten]

Cheers buddy, will take a goose

 

[wyrd_fish]

what brand/model's the camera?

 

[Kryten]

Cant remember

I know i've got a big, very high end remote control Sony video conferencing camera I can use but I don't feel particularly safe leaving it unattended in communal areas of the building

 

[DaGaffer]

You'll also have to get official permission to do it as you're talking about installing a camera for use outside your own premises.

 

[Kryten]

Yeah, just had a reply back from Landlord/agency about that, and I would indeed have gotten a slap for it.
So instead are rallying the tenants together and will force them to fit a proper system, otherwise they won't be getting any rent until they do

 

[Tom]

My advice would be to try it with a digital camera, rather than a video camera. The resolution will be much higher. You only need a frame every few seconds.

 

[Bahumat]

Hire ninja's to stay watch and protect you. Tell them you are a Sensei or something.

 

[old.user4556]

This is interesting because I was wanting to do the same. I live in a private block of flats, pretty nice area, but one of the flats on the opposite block is rented and three chavs have moved into it. They let their dog shit in the ground and get up to all sorts of anti social behaviour and I want to get evidence so I can get them evicted. I also fear for my beemer, and I don't want anything happening to Bavaria's finest (or at least I want to know who if anything happened).

Keep this thread going Kryten, interesting to see how this project pans out.