Topic: Home Security.

[Ken (OP)]

When someone robs your stuff it just pisses you right on off! 

So...it has been my habit to leave our garage doors open during the day because from the street you can not see into the garage bays and know what's inside. Like many folks we have accumulated lots of stuff over the years, so a thief would be able to score an OK haul from us were they to have access through those doors that I leave open.

Kay would always grip at me about closing them, but I would always say, "Don't worry, it'll be OK." Needless to say it will be some time before I live that one down. 
A couple of weeks back Kay wanted to use her fairly new weed string trimmer which was a really nice battery operated model, EGO Power+ ST1500-S. When she went to get the trimmer she could not find it, so she asked me if it had been moved and wanted me to find the darn thing and it was not there of course. Also missing was my gas trimmer, an Echo similar to this model, Echo SRM-2620 ProXtreme Trimmer .
The Ego electric is about $150 for just the trimmer with no battery or charger and the Echo cost me about $350 4-5 years ago. 

We think that we may know who took them, but how do you prove that something is yours when you name isn't marked on it? One kind of funny part, the battery was not on the Ego, so when the asshole took it to the pawn shop he would have been lucky to get $10 for it.

So, the doors will stay closed now unless I'm actually in the garage and we now have a shiny new security camera system, ZOSI C301 Wire Free Cameras Security System Outdoor 4Channel NVR + a WD Purple 1TB Surveillance Hard Drive. It's a nice system and it is taxing my mental prowess because it is a technology that is totally new to me. It's now set to show on my cell phone and so when Kay and I were out for some errands today I got to play with it a bit. 

Here's a couple of pics of my desktop. The system dose not come with a monitor, so I used one of my old Dell monitors(17in?) for the display and it looks good. It is setup to show four cameras, but you can set it to show one at a time full screen... looks better than I had thought that it would.







Ps: This Damn garage door mistake is gonna cost me close to $600! $400+ for the security system and $150+ for a new Ego trimmer. (I'm not gonna replace the gas trimmer)

 

[Ken (OP)]

BTW... my DT wallpaper is bringing back some memories. 

[Lesmond]

Looks like a good system Ken

I have had one on the front of our house a couple of years now, and is also connected to the internet you can view it Here I have this one connected to an old laptop, which records and saves 24/7



I have one in the back yard too pointed at me work shop, but that one can only be viewed from my cell

[Ken (OP)]

Looks like a good setup Les. I'm still trying to learn how to us mine, but it's starting to come together.

[Lesmond]

I you look at the saved recordings Here you may even see me

[Ken (OP)]

I watched a couple of minutes but didn't see anyone come into frame.

[Lesmond]

if you click on the main screen it opens the recordings, each one is about 3 mins long, Heres me going out

[Ken (OP)]

For some reason, it's not wanting to stream for me so I'm downloading it to my desktop.

[Skhilled]

You really don't want to see him, Ken. LMAO

Sorry all of this happened to you. But the new security system looks pretty cool!

[Ken (OP)]

Starting to learn how to do a better job now of setting it up, got most of the details of the various settings screens worked out.

There is one very important point that I would have liked to know before buying this system and that has to do with the battery recharge life and the effect of live-streaming your cameras. They advertise that the battery life between recharges will last up to 180 days and that might be true if you have the system set to very strict controls so that the cameras only rarely go live and for only a few seconds. If you wish, as I do, to have your system sending a live feed to your monitor then your batteries will drain their charge in less than 48 hours!

[Skhilled]

Ah! Now that I think about it, the remote cameras have to have batteries unless they are wired and need to recharged. Never thought about it before.

[Lesmond]

You really don't want to see him, Ken. LMAO

Sure dont, I'm an ugly SOAB lol

My camera is wired to the mains, and because its just outside the window, it wasn't hard to do, so no batteries to worry about.

[Ken (OP)]

With these cameras, you can use the USB charging cable to keep power to them full time, so I've just ordered USB Cable's and USB Wall Charging Blocks.

... shoulda ordered wired camera's.   

[Lesmond]

This is my camera, the casing is steel and can be moved remotely.

[Ken (OP)]

That sounds like a good system Les. 

[Ken (OP)]

WOW! ...just WOW! 

You remember that old saying, "Life imitates art"?
Take a look at what was showing on my security monitor this AM. And, yes, I do know that Smiles images are not art, but still... this looks like art to me! 

The one camera looks to the East, so as the Sun comes up it gives off rays and streaks of light through the trees and this morning it was showing me the nice Smiles that you can see in these two screen shots. I didn't go out to make sure, but my thought that this image was caused by the light reflecting through a damp spider web.

Good stuff. 

 

[Lesmond]

Looks very good Ken, nice clean views too.

I use this software for my Camera, its free https://www.contaware.com/ this has a built in website and can save all videos to your harddrive, also motion detection.

[Ken (OP)]

That sounds interesting Les, I'll give it a good look over later. 

[Ken (OP)]

I thought that an update might be in order because we are having some issues with the system.

Some weeks back the cameras (4) in our system began to randomly go into hibernation and it was difficult to get them to come back on and display on the monitor. Then, about five days ago, all four cameras went into hibernation and so far nothing helps in my attempts to wake them up and give a display on the monitor.

I've just fired off a cry for help email to Zosi tech-support to see if they can help me sort out this mess. 

[Scrubmeister]

Ken -So sorry to read about all this. As if you don't have other things to do. Hopefully they can get you back up and running soon.

We have a few game trail cams around property. Resolution is decent and don't require outside power source.

[Skhilled]

Nice images! LOL Makes me want to update my Nikon camera and go out on the hiking trails.