As some of you may know my apartment was burglarized a few months ago. It really sucked to come home after a long day at work to find a hole in the wall where my TV used to be. A slew of things were taken, obviously chosen by a group of individuals with the mental capacity of 12-year olds – as in take the time to rip the TV off the wall and pack up the XBox 360 controllers but leave the Denon receiver and speakers! I guess I should feel lucky that more of my stuff wasn’t taken but somehow I can’t get over the inefficiency of these morons!
I have great insurance so at this point most of my things have been replaced. The one thing that you can’t really replace is your sense of security. I felt so violated and I am SO mad at these idiots who are too lazy to get a job and work for their money. I hope they are rotting in prison somewhere.
I did realize that I was pretty vulnerable so the very next day I started researching backup strategies, security systems and video surveillance systems. If these bastards come back I want to be protected and IF they come in I want to be able to give the police some good video! Okay really I’d rather just deter them from coming into my place at all… I bet the stickers that came with the security system will take care of that all on their own! I suspect that I could have saved myself some money and bought just the stickers!
Being the geek that I am (no, you don’t say, Steve? Really?) I knew I could leverage the computing power in my home for the video surveillance portion of the project and in the back of my mind I wanted to integrate my computers, alarm system and cameras together to be able to monitor the status of my humble little apartment across the inter-tubes.
After extensive research and some thought about what price point would be appropriate (Let me explain the “price point" comment – in my opinion it would not be worth spending thousands of dollars on security equipment when in reality my insurance is my real security blanket and safety net. Sure, some things can not be replaced but I’ll take measures to ensure those things are safe. In reality my apartment is fairly small and after my 
divorce I really don’t have that much stuff anyway so I want to be protected but not at ANY cost.) I finally decided on the GE Simon XT Home Security System for the base alarm. It is VERY simple to setup and use. It is wireless which in the alarm world means that of the sensors are wireless and it allows you to arm and disarm the system from a key fob remote much like a car alarm! A wireless alarm was extremely important to me since this is just an apartment I’m renting – no way can I drill holes and modify the place to run wires!
Once the alarm was ordered I switched my research to the video surveillance system. I really considered the WiLife system from Logitech but decided that it was 01) a bit too pricey 10) the cameras are HUGE! 11) it is too limited and proprietary for my tastes. After much deliberation I finally decided on the Blue Iris Video Security and WebCam Software yes it after some initial research it seemed like the right decision to pick the cam software before picking the cameras themselves.
Surprisingly this is a fairly small market. Blue Iris is the best that I tested and it works with almost every IP and webcam available (or ever made!). This was important to me because technology advances at such a rapid pace that I want to be free to chose a different camera next year or three years from now when I expand the system (Blue Iris supports up to 25 cameras). One feature I really wanted was for the camera software to email and text message me when any of the cameras detected movement since I could not find an alarm in my price point that could email or text. Blue Iris does this and a lot more. Setting up the software took a bit of work but all-in-all it wasn’t too complicated and now it is running very smoothly on my main office PC. Eventually I plan to build up a “security” computer solely for the task of running the surveillance software but for now running it on my main PC is not too painful. If anyone would like me to do a full review of the Blue Iris software, comment away!
Once I decided on the software picking the cameras was a breeze… I went to Best Buy *shudders* and bought two D-Link DCS-920 Wireless G Cameras because they were on sale. It was nice to not be locked into any one brand or any one technology. I am fairly impressed with these cameras but when I want to expand I’ll look at all brands and options for the best price-point.
So finally I’m getting to the good part of this post… or not because as it turns out this will be a series of posts. I’ve had this basic security setup working for the past few months and while I’m generally happy with it I’m not COMPLETELY happy… the biggest issue is that the alarm and cameras are not linked together as a whole system. The keyfob remote arms and disarms the alarm system it does not automatically start and stop the video surveillance – so every time I leave I have to go into my home office and start the video software and every time I get home I have to go into my home office and stop it, getting text message warnings along the way since I cross paths with a couple cameras on the way to my office.
I really have three goals to accomplish before I’ll be happy with my system:
- I want to setup and maintain a solid backup system for all of my data - from my computers and my WHS.
- I want to physically secure my Windows Home Server.
- I want to integrate my systems so that when I arm my alarm system my video surveillance system becomes active and when I disarm my alarm the video surveillance stops. Seems like a simple request but since the systems are separate and dissimilar how will I get this to work? Stay tuned to find out!
A fourth goal that isn’t really necessary is building the aforementioned video surveillance computer to take the burden off of my main office computer. This is an extra-credit project and I don’t plan on accomplishing it any time soon.