Pikey car thieves!!! CCTV Question

[b0redom]

Hi,
My car was broken into outside my house a few weeks ago. We thought it was an isolated incident, but next door's car was broken into last night. I'm interested in getting some sort of CCTV setup. Can anyone recommend something?

Cost really isn't an issue as it'll be shared by all 4 houses in our cul-de-sac. I was also planning on pairing it up with a PIR floodlight.

Cheers....

[5cupa]

all i know is you have to be careful with the law about using CCTV as mostly it wont be able to be used in court.

[Sinizter]

Even if it is on your own property to cover your own property ? Its not a publicly accessible place such as a shop which might have all kinds of red tape attached.

[b0redom]

Plus it's a detterent. I don't really care if it's usable in court - it'll stop the scrotes doing it in the 1st place.

[dangel]

I seem to remember there's problems if the camera overlooks any property which isn't your own - which may or may not include the public road outside..

[Sinizter]

Originally Posted by dangel

I seem to remember there's problems if the camera overlooks any property which isn't your own - which may or may not include the public road outside..

But if you have permission from property owners whose property it overlooks, it shouldnt cause any problem - which seems to be in this particular case.

I think to get accurate info you'll have to talk to a cop or a lawyer.

[Workaholic]

Apart for the mentioned problems above, make sure you get a recording device which notes down the time and date otherwise that won't be admissable in court!

[Zak33]

Leave a £1 coin taped to the outside of the drivers window

See how many nights it lasts....

once you know the pattern.....start filming.

BUT....leave a note on the inside of the window saying YOU ARE BEING FILMED.

The problem may just go away Let's face it....WHO leaves £1 taped to the outside of a window accidentally?

[SuicidaL]

might find a sawn off more use.........i would have, my van got done outside my house in broad daylight while i was out. all my gear and company gear went, a lot of it is no use to anybody and is specialized but will cost a bomb to replace.

[b0redom]

Anyway - back to the point - can anyone recommend anything?

[Workaholic]

A few questions, you mentioned that the system is to be shared between 4 houses?
With this in mind you *could*

* Get a few wireless cameras, and a couple of recievers (one for each house) as long as they are on the same frequency
* Run a set of cables accross the house from each camera to each house (loss of signal and visible!)
* Agree which house is to pay for the electrcity etc and buy a networkable DVR with all cameras fitting into it (this is to be stored in one of the 4 houses)

With option 3, it'd be like uni - who made what calls (when working out bills etc) but if everyone has internet access, you could broadcast the video output or even over a wireless network (assumming you all have say draft N routers/cards or the MIMO ones if range permits etc!)

The cameras I can't recommend till you show me say a diagram of how the houses are placed, and where you want the cameras placed etc.

[Kumagoro]

scan had some cheap ones on today only recently, which were wireless and had infra red lighting
for in the dark. about £30 a cam I think.

[rox0r]

I can give you a fair bit of advice on this subject, I did a lot of looking into CCTV for our property.

First off the legislations and such. There's very little that actually governs the use of CCTV in domestic situations. Contrary to common belief you do not need to display a sign that says CCTV is in use, that's only for commercial usage. With regards to overlooking a neighbour's property, this is permissable to a degree. By the book it goes as long as the camera's focus is primarily on whatever it is protecting then it is permissable for some areas of surrounding properties and boundaries to be captured. For our system I set up the motion detection to end at our boundaries so that it won't record if the neighbours put the rubbish out etc.

Strictly speaking you're only allowed to record your own property as primary focus so if the camera is to point out onto a road or public highway, you may need to get the Police in to advise on whether your setup is legal. Nothing worse than submitting footage of your car getting broken into only to find you've actually broken the law yourself.

There are rules about how many external cameras you can have and how close they are. I forget the exact rules but iirc you can't have any two external cameras closer than 10m apart and you can't have more than three cameras total. They also need to be above a certain height which I think is 2.5m (I'd need to check) Interestingly, there are absolutely no rules or regulations concerning internally mounted cameras facing out of a window.

Now, CCTV is all well and good but to have it achieve anything it needs to be useful to the Police/courts. Just having time and datestamp doesn't mean it qualifies as submissable evidence. What matters to the authorities is whether they can make a 100% identification from the footage provided. This means that it needs to be an almost crystal clear face shot of the target. Interestingly, around 85% of CCTV footage submitted for forensic analasys is rejected on the grounds of poor quality.

A lot depends on what you want from the system. If you just want a visible deterrant then get a decent looking fake. If you want something that you can use to actually base a conviction on, you need to spend thousands...and I DO mean thousands. My own system isn't going to be usable for locking down a conviction, it's more there to give me an overview of which of the neighbours' kids is pratting around with my car or jumping on my garage roof. I spent a couple of hundred on it and I'm pleased with what I've got. I know full well if something serious happens to the car the footage wouldn't be worth a button to the Police but at least the deterrant is there and I have visibility.

A lot of CCTV fitters are absolute cowboys, they'll sell you a system for a grand that wouldn't even capture a mugshot properly if you stood three feet away from it. Either that or they mount them in such positions that the resulting footage is no use at all. Great, you got a shot from above the car of someone breaking into it but what did you actually get? A shot of some pikey's cap or at best a greasy mullet. Position is important and needs to take into account factors like natural sunlight.

Oh, and whatever you do DON'T buy wireless cameras they aren't worth a toss and there's not one of them out there that's been able to capture court-grade footage yet. Get a decent wired camera with a minimum 420 TV lines resolution and low-light capability. IR illuminators are good if you have to but it's best to couple a decent colour camera with a PIR floodlight for night use.

What you use to record is important too. For my home project I used a USB2 DVR 4 port capture card and I'm quite pleased with it. I use a program called Cam Wizard to set up the individual cameras and their diffrerent recording criteria. This setup won't give amazing results but it records the kind of footage I can stick on a DVD and show the neighbours' what their offspring get up to when their back is turned. For serious work you need a dedicated standalone DVR unit, the good ones cost thousands but you can get decent ones for £4-500.

For your circumstances, I would strongly advise you get a reputable CCTV specialist in to give a quote and discuss your needs. As I've already implied above, you can spend a fair amount of money yourself only to find that the Police won't/can't use the resulting footage.

[Sinizter]

Ive just been asked to set up a two or three camera system in a cafe with access to live feeds over the internet.

Ill have to re-read this whole thread for any suggestions when I have a little more time .

Only need to store footage for about a week and only during working hours I think. And the guy isnt concerned if the HDD fails or some such as the stored weeks stuff is lost.