Wireless surveillance cameras

TangoWhiskey

TangoWhiskey

Touchdown! Greaser!
Joined
Feb 23, 2005
Messages
14,210
Location
Midlothian, TX
Display Name
Display name:
3Green
I need to get a couple of wireless (802.11g/n) cameras to try and figure out which one of the house cats is defecating and urinating in inappropriate locations. Would like to keep the cost under $100/camera.

Will put one in the laundry room where the litter box is, and one in the game room. Want something that comes with software that can record images or video to my NAS. Do not need remote zoom or pan. A/C powered is fine, there are outlets in the rooms.

Suggestions, or known devices to avoid based on experience? I have a primarily Dlink networking environment and NAS boxes, and have been pleased with those, so was leaning towards one of their cameras.
 
Harbor freight has some around $300 (4 cameras and receiver). A game camera may work as well and be cheaper<$100. I'm going to set one up for the neighbors dog, tired of cleaning up my yard , I have no pets.
 
I have bunches of Foscam wireless IP cameras, which are perfect for the mission you have in mind.
http://foscam.us/products.html/

I'll send you one of my new in box http://foscam.us/products/foscam-fi8910w-white-wireless-ip-camera.html 8910Ws for $65 + shipping!

I need outdoor cameras, not indoor.

You can control them with a web browser. Now they come with Windows software for recording. I use IP Camera Viewer on Android which will also record.

The Panasonic cameras are OK, but they don't have IRs or night vision.
 
If you are interested in any other detection methods, here are a couple of suggestions:

Chop up a light colored crayon and put it in one of the cat's food and see which one is pooping crayon.

Urination is a little harder, but you can get some fluorscein stain from a vet and put it in a capsule and give it to one cat. Fluorscein stain is actually and eye stain you will have to get from a veterinarian. The urine will fluoresce under a black light. We often loan our woods light for this purpose. If you have more than two cats it will be a process of elimination.

Just as an added comment, both of these behaviors could well be medically related, or they could be a result of some sort of stress. (like a Tom cat prowling around outside, or a litterbox too close to a noisy washing machine near the litter box that changes cycles while the cat is using the box). If you would like, I can send you a handout we give cat owners on litter box problems.
 
JOhnH said:
If you have more than two cats it will be a process of elimination.
Click to expand...

Very punny.

JOhnH said:
Just as an added comment, both of these behaviors could well be medically related, or they could be a result of some sort of stress. (like a Tom cat prowling around outside, or a litterbox too close to a noisy washing machine near the litter box that changes cycles while the cat is using the box). If you would like, I can send you a handout we give cat owners on litter box problems.
Click to expand...

Two new puppies, and the cats just got a new self-cleaning litter box. But some cat(s) is/are peeing on beds, leather couches, behind furniture, and leaving droppings in upstairs bathrooms and on the floor just outside the litter box. Litter box is in the laundry room, but relatively quiet nice machines.

Would love the handout. Can you send it via PM?
 
One of our cats used to both pee and poop on the couch, so we got her a second box, which, in addition to special diet + pepcid for IBS, cleared up her behavior for a few years. She started back at it again recently, nearly daily. Wound up putting a plastic dropcloth on the couch, and a sheet on top of that, as stopgap harm reduction.

Her bloodwork came back normal, so the vet prescribed prozac for her, and we've been accident-free for a few days now... we'll see.

Back to the topic at hand, I remember looking at such cameras a while back and leaning towards D-Link. It seemed that most had the capability to just hose out images over FTP or HTTP, and seem to support some kind of motion detection / image deltas, at the $75 or so price point...
 
TangoWhiskey said:
Very punny.
Click to expand...
Purely unintentional. Otherwise I would take credit for my great wit.



TangoWhiskey said:
Two new puppies, and the cats just got a new self-cleaning litter box. But some cat(s) is/are peeing on beds, leather couches, behind furniture, and leaving droppings in upstairs bathrooms and on the floor just outside the litter box. Litter box is in the laundry room, but relatively quiet nice machines.
Click to expand...
Any one of those three things could cause it. I have heard many stories about the self cleaning litterboxes scaring the crap (intentional this time) out of a cat.

TangoWhiskey said:
Would love the handout. Can you send it via PM?
Click to expand...
Check out the my web site from on the previous post.

Good luck. This problem may not sound serious to some people, but it can be extremely frustrating and is actually one of the leading causes of death (through euthanasia) in cats.
 
If you do the camera thing, Vitamin D software will work for recording. It has a great feature of automatically identifying the segments with motion and separating them out from all the rest. So hours and hours of recordings are reduced down to a handful of segments. Single camera version is free.
 
GeorgeC said:
Her bloodwork came back normal, so the vet prescribed prozac for her, and we've been accident-free for a few days now... we'll see.
Click to expand...

I am curious: Did they take x-rays? Or Urinalysis? Or was a urine culture performed?
Blood tests rarely disclose issues that cause these problems. Urinary crystals, bladder stones or urinary tract infections are much more likely. Also, litterbox issues are often part of the problem. (See my previous post).

Again, good luck with this. Whatever is causing it is probably more painful to the cat than it is to you.
 
Thanks for the handouts! No xrays or urinalysis, this time around, anyway. Would urinary tract issues also present as pooping outside the box? I'm religious about keeping the boxes clean.

JOhnH said:
I am curious: Did they take x-rays? Or Urinalysis? Or was a urine culture performed?
Blood tests rarely disclose issues that cause these problems. Urinary crystals, bladder stones or urinary tract infections are much more likely. Also, litterbox issues are often part of the problem. (See my previous post).

Again, good luck with this. Whatever is causing it is probably more painful to the cat than it is to you.
Click to expand...
 
TangoWhiskey said:
the cats just got a new self-cleaning litter box.
Click to expand...

My sister got one of those and the cats were afraid of it. It's more of a problem when you have multiple cats and a cleaning cycle starts due to cat A just as cat B is about to use it.
 
GeorgeC said:
Would urinary tract issues also present as pooping outside the box?
Click to expand...

It would not be a first guess, but it can.
A urinary tract infection causes pain when they urinate. They urinate in the box so they correlate in their little feline brains that they have pain when in the litter box. So they avoid the litterbox. I am not diagnosing, just offering a real possibility.

But no matter how clean you are, if they don't like the litter they may avoid it. And a lot of cats really don't like those scents they put in scented litter.
 
i use trendnet cameras in my house. One in the kids' bedroom and one in the kitchen
 
CatCam is on duty! Idea is to capture the cat box (the white circular contraption middle upper left) and the back door's red carpet (where some cat keeps leaving droppings).

attachment.php
 

Attachments

  • ScreenShot402.png
    ScreenShot402.png
    671.7 KB · Views: 127
Last edited:
I'm having similar problems with our cats and am about to pull the trigger on getting one of these cameras.
Question: What do you do to record the output for review later? Free software? Comes with camera? I don't think these cameras have a built in SD slot, so I'm assuming I'd have to leave my PC up & running during the 'investigation' phase... :)
 
crash7 said:
I'm having similar problems with our cats and am about to pull the trigger on getting one of these cameras.
Question: What do you do to record the output for review later? Free software? Comes with camera? I don't think these cameras have a built in SD slot, so I'm assuming I'd have to leave my PC up & running during the 'investigation' phase... :)
Click to expand...

Some of the cameras do have a SD card slot and will record to that. Also many of them can be set up to email a sequence of stillshots when motion is detected and I suspect that would be the simplest way to capture images of the culprit.
 
crash7 said:
I'm having similar problems with our cats and am about to pull the trigger on getting one of these cameras.
Question: What do you do to record the output for review later? Free software? Comes with camera? I don't think these cameras have a built in SD slot, so I'm assuming I'd have to leave my PC up & running during the 'investigation' phase... :)
Click to expand...

The FOSCAM camera did come with software, and can email pictures (or upload them via FTP) when it sees motion. However, what I used was the Vitamin D software somebody else in this thread mentioned (see www.vitamindinc.com). Free for single camera, and will record however many days / GB you want to allow it to record. The REALLY cool part, however, was that when I came back this morning, Vitamin-D had automatically detected any clips with movement in them (cat entering the room) and allowed me to jump to and view those segments (and anything before or after it) automatically--I didn't have to find those segments myself by viewing or fast-forwarding through hours of footage. Vitamin D automatically draws a green bounding box showing what it sees as movement in the frame, and why it tagged it for review.

See here:

attachment.php
 

Attachments

  • ScreenShot404.png
    ScreenShot404.png
    402.7 KB · Views: 101
Very nice. Like "Ghost Hunters". I just placed an order for a camera. Hopefully I can figure out the port-forwarding on my U-Verse router. I'm a computer programmer, but networking stuff has always baffled me.
 
crash7 said:
Very nice. Like "Ghost Hunters". I just placed an order for a camera. Hopefully I can figure out the port-forwarding on my U-Verse router. I'm a computer programmer, but networking stuff has always baffled me.
Click to expand...

If you have trouble, stay tuned (subscribe) to this thread or PM me.

I'll set up outside access on my UVerse gateway and show you what it looks like.
 
Big point in uverse's favor is your ip address is fixed in the vast majority of installations saving you the tango with dyndns. If it is the only device you are trying to share access to, then DMZ is (used to be) the checkbox to apply and then enter the internal IP address.
 
Mike,
We are looking for something wireless to put outside the main door at church. The present camera is wired and that entrance will be closed off for construction starting in April. It would be outside but under a porch. Any suggestions?
 
tmyers said:
Mike,
We are looking for something wireless to put outside the main door at church. The present camera is wired and that entrance will be closed off for construction starting in April. It would be outside but under a porch. Any suggestions?
Click to expand...

If you don't need pan & tilt, and the area is lighted you can use the Foscam FI8909W-NA
http://foscam.us/products/foscam-fi8909w-white-na-slim-mini-wireless-ip-camera.html

I have one on my front door. It has a narrow field of view but it covers the entrance well.

Check Amazon for better prices.
 
Last edited:
tmyers said:
Mike,
We are looking for something wireless to put outside the main door at church. The present camera is wired and that entrance will be closed off for construction starting in April. It would be outside but under a porch. Any suggestions?
Click to expand...

How "wireless" do you need it to be? Will there be a wired power source for the camera?
 
masloki said:
Big point in uverse's favor is your ip address is fixed in the vast majority of installations saving you the tango with dyndns. If it is the only device you are trying to share access to, then DMZ is (used to be) the checkbox to apply and then enter the internal IP address.
Click to expand...

I was wondering how static the IP of the *camera* would be. Once the router handed out an IP, I think there's a droplist in the U-Verse "IP Address Allocation" page for each wireless device where you can set *that* device to a fixed internal IP. I'm assuming that would allow that device to keep the same IP even if the DHCP decided to randomly hand out new addresses. I dunno.

The camera is scheduled to get here later this week. I'll be very curious how you set yours up!
 
crash7 said:
I was wondering how static the IP of the *camera* would be. Once the router handed out an IP, I think there's a droplist in the U-Verse "IP Address Allocation" page for each wireless device where you can set *that* device to a fixed internal IP. I'm assuming that would allow that device to keep the same IP even if the DHCP decided to randomly hand out new addresses. I dunno.

The camera is scheduled to get here later this week. I'll be very curious how you set yours up!
Click to expand...

Okay, I have encountered easier things in life, but it wasn't too bad. Foscam software took a dump and couldn't load the cameras, so I found it via the status list in my router. Once you have the IP, point your browser at it and start configuring. I got it on the wifi and changed the port so it wouldn't knock my webserver offline (that would be annoying, and as promised with uverse, it is up on the internet. Just a quick tweak for port forwarding on the router and it is just fine.

So, if you have uverse, and nothing else that needs to be a server to the internet, go to 192.168.1.254, click Settings -> firewall> blah, blah, DMZ. Enter the cameras ip address, click servers, webserver, click add, click save, and the whatever else comes after that and you should be good to go. This presume my uverse and yours are close enough, so good luck!

All I cn say is the Pan, Tilt, Zoom with infrared is pretty cool. A little peace of mind when we are away from home for vacation and stuff like that.
 
masloki said:
Okay, I have encountered easier things in life, but it wasn't too bad. Foscam software took a dump and couldn't load the cameras, so I found it via the status list in my router. Once you have the IP, point your browser at it and start configuring. I got it on the wifi and changed the port so it wouldn't knock my webserver offline (that would be annoying, and as promised with uverse, it is up on the internet. Just a quick tweak for port forwarding on the router and it is just fine.

So, if you have uverse, and nothing else that needs to be a server to the internet, go to 192.168.1.254, click Settings -> firewall> blah, blah, DMZ. Enter the cameras ip address, click servers, webserver, click add, click save, and the whatever else comes after that and you should be good to go. This presume my uverse and yours are close enough, so good luck!

All I cn say is the Pan, Tilt, Zoom with infrared is pretty cool. A little peace of mind when we are away from home for vacation and stuff like that.
Click to expand...

Excellent! I don't have anything running on this pc, so I should be able to pick any port I want. I think my gateway is a 3800 something. I'll let u know how it goes.
 
crash7 said:
Excellent! I don't have anything running on this pc, so I should be able to pick any port I want. I think my gateway is a 3800 something. I'll let u know how it goes.
Click to expand...

Oh, I forgot to ask if you did anything to ensure the camera kept a static ip? If the camera re-boots (power outage, moved it somewhere else) I'd be worried that the U-Verse router would assign it a different IP and that would kill the port forwarding.
 
crash7 said:
Oh, I forgot to ask if you did anything to ensure the camera kept a static ip? If the camera re-boots (power outage, moved it somewhere else) I'd be worried that the U-Verse router would assign it a different IP and that would kill the port forwarding.
Click to expand...

Can you just assign the camera a static IP within the DHCP subnet and then on the router just exclude a certain address range for DHCP?

For example if my router internal network address is 192.168.0.1 and the default DHCP range is 192.168.0.2-255 change that to 192.168.0.2-200. Then make the camera 192.168.0.201 or similar up to .255. I do statics for all my printers, cameras, etc. Avoids IP problems.
 
Alexb2000 said:
Can you just assign the camera a static IP within the DHCP subnet and then on the router just exclude a certain address range for DHCP?

For example if my router internal network address is 192.168.0.1 and the default DHCP range is 192.168.0.2-255 change that to 192.168.0.2-200. Then make the camera 192.168.0.201 or similar up to .255. I do statics for all my printers, cameras, etc. Avoids IP problems.
Click to expand...

I'm at work now, but I don't think the U-Verse router has a way to limit the range. I do remember a screen where I can (for each device) either tell it use the pool or use a "Fixed" IP, which I think is still in the range of the pool. If so, maybe the DHCP server looks for this fixed ones first and ignores them when handing out new IPs.

I got the camera today and set it up over lunch. After some issues with the ActiveX control not having a valid certificate, I got it up and running. I setup port forwarding and was able to see it from a machine outside of my LAN. Great! The camera was setup to use DHCP and during one of the reboots (from changing settings) my router handed it a new IP. Crap. I changed the camera to turn off the "Obtain IP from DHCP server" and manually typed in the one it had last received. I did *NOT* change anything in the router regarding the pool/Fixed IP stuff I mentioned earlier. I'm curious what it will do when I unplug it to move it to it's more permanent home.
 
crash7 said:
I was wondering how static the IP of the *camera* would be. Once the router handed out an IP, I think there's a droplist in the U-Verse "IP Address Allocation" page for each wireless device where you can set *that* device to a fixed internal IP. I'm assuming that would allow that device to keep the same IP even if the DHCP decided to randomly hand out new addresses. I dunno.
Click to expand...

I just gave my cameras fixed IP addresses in a block out of the DHCP assigned range. You just need to supply the IP address of the default gateway (192.168.1.1), also as the DNS server.

With the Camera tool you can assign the initial IP address without the camera even needing DHCP.
 
Anyone knows of IP cameras that have automatic gain control. The foscams dont seem to do that.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top