Catch Vandals in the Act with a Surveillance Camera

Is your home a target for vandalism or pranks from neighborhood kids? Identifying the culprit and getting irrefutable evidence of the wrongdoing is easier and less expensive than you think. And these steps can be done by any do-it-yourselfer, without the aid of an electrician or security installation company.

Start With a Camera 
Having an outdoor camera to watch your property is like having a full-time security guard on duty. With only a single camera or two, you can tell who's driving up the driveway or see who's knocking at the front door. And if you're away, you'll be able to know if someone was in your back yard retrieving that soccer ball that was accidentally kicked over the fence, or if someone decided to take a dip in your pool. 

Choosing a Camera 
The most common question we get about cameras is "which one should be used for a particular situation." While the choice between black & white or color cameras may seem obvious, in many cases, a black & white model will work better than its color counterpart, especially when used in low-lighting or outdoor applications. To put it another way, a $200 black & white camera used for low-light surveillance can have the same performance as a color camera costing $1,000. For more details on how to choose cameras, click here.

Customers often ask us what the camera will pick up and how detailed the image will be. There will always be a trade-off here. To cover the maximum area, you'll need a wide-angle lens. Unfortunately, a wide-angle lens will not always help in identifying that stranger who thought your garden was a public flower shop. You can choose a camera with a more powerful zoom, but it will probably have a much narrower field of view.

To see the dozens of cameras Vigilance and Security has to offer, click here.

Record the Evidence
Once the camera is in place, you could leave your television or monitor on that channel full time, (which could explain the phrase "watching the grass grow"). Or, you could hook it up to a VCR. Your existing VCR can only partially do the job. With a standard T-120 tape, six hours is the longest one cassette will record. Using longer tapes like T-160, T-180, or T-200 tapes - all of which are hard to find and break easily inside the VCR - will only provide a few more hours of recording time. While that may be enough for an overnighter or while you're away at work, it is not going to last if you're away for longer periods of time.

A Time Lapse VCR is a special VCR that can record for much longer periods of time. These VCRs are rated by the number of hours they can record. Typically, they fall into two classes; models that will record for a day or two and those that record up to 960 hours (40 days) on a standard video cassette. Time lapse VCRs record longer by slowing the tape down to the point where it is only records a frame every few seconds. In the chart below you can see how a VCR can be programmed to record for up to 40 days, or 960 hours, by recording one frame every eight seconds. If you only need coverage for a weekend get-away, setting the VCR to the 36-hour mode would deliver nearly live action at three frames per minute. 

What Kind of Picture Do Time-Lapse VCRs Record?  
Actually, it's a pretty good one and you have most likely seen an example on TV. The footage of Princess Diana and Dodi Fayed waiting at the rear of the Ritz Hotel in Paris the night their car crashed is the most famous example of a time-lapse recorded camera.

One of the problems with leaving a VCR on and recording all the time is that someone has to review a lot of tape to see what happened while they were away from home. A time lapse VCR can be set up to trigger and record at real-time speeds when a contact sensor trips. It can be programmed to change recording speeds from time-lapse mode to real-time OR from standby (where the recorder is on but not recording) to real time mode when a sensor is tripped. The amount of time the VCR records at real-time speed when tripped is programmable. Most folks set it up to record for two minutes following a sensor trip. The products below are just a few of the sensors that can automatically start a time lapse VCR's recording function.

Opening of a door
Opening of a window 
Motion inside a home 
Vehicles approaching the home
Someone standing at your front door 
Someone opening your gate, garage, or outbuilding
Movement outside the property
Rain Sensor
Glass breaking
Water Level

Another option to use when recording activity is a Digital Video Recorder (DVR) . A DVR is approximately the same size as a VCR, but that's where the similarities end. The video of a DVR is digitally recorded to an internal hard drive, instead of tape. This allows continuous recording for days or weeks at a time. When the hard drive is full, the oldest video is deleted so that the system always has the latest video stored for immediate playback. If the video needs to be saved, it can be easily be burned to a CD drive.

Similar to Time Lapse VCR's, DVR's can record video with motion/event detection, which only records when any motion in the cameras range is sensed. This saves memory and makes playback much less taxing since only video with action is viewed; no need to fast forward through tedious hours of no activity.