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[sashasmommy]

My dog has serious issues and does a lot of damage to my house and to herself while I'm at work.  I want to install cameras in different parts of the house to record her antics to try to figure out when she does things, and possibly figure out what sets her off.  Is there any cheap way to do this, possibly use my laptop to record it? Doesn't have to be video, could also be photos taken every couple minutes or something like that...
thanks...

[Tuicemen]

There are many ways you can do this with you can do this as cheep as a wired cam plugged into a VCR or get as advanced as Active Home Pro with all plugins so you can email the pics to work and log on to turn a Wave file on that tells her to settle down. There is a lot of info on this board which requires a lot of reading You decide which way you wish to go!

[WhiteWolf]

The cheapest way I can think of is to talk to your friends. Many would let you borrow a VCR, Video camera, or both. Run the cameras to the VCRs to get the most recording time. Be sure to keep all of the equipment away from where the dog might damage it.  When your experiment is done, share the results with your friends. They'll probably get a good laugh. Who knows, you might win $10,000 at Americas Funniest Video. Then you can buy all the cameras, recorders, and X10 equipment you need.

[sashasmommy]

I had tried that at one point, but the video camera kept going into sleep mode because it wasn't recording, it was just feeding the VCR. So it would run for about 5 minutes and then shut itself off.  I went out and bought a cheap web cam yesterday and set it up with my laptop, pointed at the room she does the most damage in.  I have it set up to send an image to the web every 10 seconds, so I can monitor it during the day and it also keeps all the images stored so I can see them when I get home.  If this works, I will probably just get a couple more web cams and hook them up like that. Hopefully she doesn't bump it during the day and set it off course.  Thanks for your help...


>>>The cheapest way I can think of is to talk to your friends. Many would let you borrow a VCR, Video camera, or both. Run the cameras to the VCRs to get the most recording time. Be sure to keep all of the equipment away from where the dog might damage it.  When your experiment is done, share the results with your friends. They'll probably get a good laugh. Who knows, you might win $10,000 at Americas Funniest Video. Then you can buy all the cameras, recorders, and X10 equipment you need.

[jawaid]

This can be done by using motion sensors, cameras, video receiver, and a VCR commander. You can also get the snapshots to your laptop but then you need extra items and the quality of the picture through the USB interface gets degraded.  How many cameras are you thinking of? You can get the black and white cameras fairly cheap. You also have some choices in color cameras. This sounds like a fun project.

[sashasmommy]

I am looking at having three cameras, one pointed at the bedroom where she is most of the time, one pointed into the family room where she does most of the damage, and one pointed out a window so I can see what's going on outside in case there's something outside that sets her off.  So, I need to be able to know what time things happened, so I can see if she freaks out, then I can look on the outside camera's images and see if there was something going on out there at the same time.

I think I am now looking for wireless cameras because it's too far for the USB cable from my computer to the window.  I found some software that supposedly will work with wireless cameras.  Any suggestions would be appreciated.

I used my webcam setup today and it worked like a charm until 3:09 pm when the program locked up.  It had written 3007 images to the hard drive, and there was plenty of space left, so I'm not sure what caused it to lock up.  She, of course, didn't do any damage today, so she was in all of 20 seconds worth of frames, LOL. 



<<<This can be done by using motion sensors, cameras, video receiver, and a VCR commander. You can also get the snapshots to your laptop but then you need extra items and the quality of the picture through the USB interface gets degraded.  How many cameras are you thinking of? You can get the black and white cameras fairly cheap. You also have some choices in color cameras. This sounds like a fun project.

[jawaid]

I will suggest that you use the wide-eye cameras. You will need a video receiver (VR36A) and I will also recommend that you get a VCR commander in the beginning. Also get 4 or 5 of the battery-powered motion sensors. It will also help to get a RR501 transceiver. Search the eBay for these items.

I have 2 clusters of cameras set up and I save the snapshots when motion is detected. I am able to capture the motion about 50% of the times because there is a substantial latency before the snapshot is triggered. With the VCR you will get better quality picture and hopefully be able to capture the image when the dog moves across the motion sensors. It will take several trials of different positions of teh cameras, sensors, and the video receiver before you get something which works well.