Home Surveillance

How to Choose the Right Grandstream IP Camera For A Full VoIP Solution
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Join Grandstream on May 28th for this to view Grandstream’s updated IP Surveillance line and learn how their security solution can fit your needs.

By now you’ve probably seen plenty regarding Grandstream. Not only are they an evergreen presence in voice over IP endpoints, but they’ve also made quite a splash in the video over IP as well.

From humble beginnings, with their GXV3615 indoor cube IP camera, Grandstream has made their presence known with their award winning GXV3672 outdoor day/night IP Camera and more recent outdoor day/night vari-focal lens GXV3674_HD_VF. The quality is great, they are surprisingly sturdy, and the price is right.

gxv3672

The best part is that Grandstream IP cameras are compatible with Grandstream video phones. That means that on that gorgeous …

Bigger (Resolution) Means Better (Quality)
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Higher Megapixels are all the rage in IP cameras. Who can blame it? In a world of HDTV, higher resolution is a seductive quality. Details that have been missed for decades are now clearly defined, for better or for worse. When converting this over to surveillance, that paradigm is exactly what someone is looking for in their security system.

Several manufacturers have been quick to respond with higher resolution cameras, but strangely, the larger name brands such as Axis, SONY, Panasonic, and MOBOTIX were slow to respond. When speaking with the engineers at these companies, one comes to discover that higher resolution is not a simple cut-and-dry process.

The technology behind pixels is actually quite interesting. In simplest terms, think of pixels as units …

Coming Soon: AXIS M1004-W
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AXIS recently announced that they are currently in the works for releasing a new affordable wireless camera, and it’s looking better than anything before!

As a leader in the IP surveillance industry, AXIS is known for their top line cameras, which unfortunately also tend to correlate with high prices. In efforts to reach out and provide for small retail, offices, and home users, AXIS is set to release the AXIS M1004-W, a small and cost effective IP camera, complete with 720p HD resolution!

This new addition to the AXIS M10 Series is going to be an excellent step up allowing budget conscious buyers to reap the benefits of:

  • 1280×800 pixel resolution/progressive scan/HDTV color fidelity
  • 16:9 widescreen and AXIS Corridor Format
  • Input/output ports
  • Support for Wi-Fi

    • …

Video Surveillance with Grandstream’s GXV3175 Video Phone and GXV3615 IP Camera
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Grandstream Video Phone_Camera

Note: This post is brought to us by Courtney Hamp, VoIP Supply’s Technical Support Specialist. Courtney has great VoIP project ideas when he’s not busy helping others, troubleshooting, or designing a communication solution. In this example he has outlined the steps to view a video surveillance feed right from a desktop Grandstream video phone.  No need for an additional monitor or browser tab – just glance at your phone for a quick visual update

Grandstream brings some flair to the desk again with the Grandstream GXV3175, their 7 inch touchscreen IP Multimedia Phone. With several built-in web apps and a 1.3 megapixel camera for video conferencing, it is a great fit for the knowledge worker or executive in your organization.

However, it …

TripWire: The Wired Network
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CCTV started out as a strictly wired system.  The cameras were connected to a monitor station by expensive coaxial cable. However that system was solid. Even today coaxial cable is still being laid because, the truth is, it’s reliable at 1-10 Gbps.  Reliable, but outdated.  It was made for the technology at the time, and with that comes it limitations such as QoS, installation costs, scalability issues, and the list goes on.

Coaxial Cable

As the technology improved and networks began to carry more data, people moved on to Twisted Pair Cable.  Not that twisted pair was a new concept, it was invented by Alexander Graham Bell, but the application fits today’s needs. Today there are different categories, primarily Cat(egory)3 through Cat7.  Cat3 (10BASE-T) technically …

MOBOTIX National Partner Conference East 2013
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This week, VoIP Supply, an Advanced Mobotix Partner–the highest level partnership available–attended the MOBOTIX NPC in Fort Lauderdale, FL for 2 days of sun (we’re in Buffalo, so Florida was very much appreciated), food, and a whole lot of MOBOTIX goodness!

About 150 business professionals from around the States, Canada and Mexico gathered to meet and greet the MOBOTIX leadership team including the General Manager of the Americas – Steve Gorski, Director of Training -Jens Wirok, and the Chief Executive Officer USA -Dr. Mangus Ekerot.

The hot topic at hand was the newly released MOBOTIX S14 Flexmount, a sleek and stylish IP camera unlike anything else available to the public.  The S14 can connect 1 or 2 MOBOTIX hemispheric lens units with an integrated microphone …

Affordable Do-It-Yourself Home Surveillance
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Entry level IP cameras are dropping in price and are easier to install than you think.  Unlike webcams, IP cameras are standalone devices the don’t need a continuously running computer to allow them to operate.  Plus, you can access images from your IP camera anywhere, including mobile phones.

Nik Rawlinson of CNET writes “How to set up a cheap home security system using Dynamic DNS” and outlines, in great detail, the steps you’ll need to follow:

  1. Site your IP camera
  2. Sign up to free Dynamic DNS forwarding
  3. Set up your router

That’s all you need to start monitoring your cats from work.

Home IP Camera Suggestions

Here’s a few affordable indoor IP cameras that are great for home, office, or vacation home …

Google+ Home Surveillance
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If you’re fabulous enough to have received an intive to the exclusive Google+, the latest social media splash, you might also like to know that their Hangouts feature offers an easy way to set up simple home surveillance monitoring.

Google+ Hangouts offers face-to-face video chats with several of your friends at the same time.  But what if you were just using two of your own personal accounts with one of the account’s webcam trained on an area of interest? 

That’s what a Lifehacker reader did and explained the process and results of using Google+ Hangouts with a webcam to keep watch over your house:

You can use Google Hangouts as an on demand remote camera viewer. First, create a second Google Account, and put …

How To Repurpose Webcams into Surveillance Systems
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If you’re looking for a simple and cost-effective (read: Free) way to keep an eye on all of your stuff using computers and webcams that are lazily laying around the house doing nothing, then check out the Windows based iSpy security software.

Free and Open Source

iSpy is a free, open source, camera security software that can be used with your own computers, webcams, microphones and even IP cameras. Besides costing you nothing, iSpy software has the same functionality as  high-level IP camera software systems:

  • Event Management: Set up alerts and scheduling and get instant, mobile notification when motion or sound is detected.
  • Recording and Viewing: Continuous, triggered, or scheduled recordings. View recordings locally or remotely (Searching recorded video via different search

    • …

Surveillance On Demand – Camera Emails Pictures When Asked
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There’s a DIY surveillance camera project outlined at Making of the Autonomous Surveillance Camera that aside from acutally working, can email you photos of the room it’s watching when you ask it to.

Here’s how it works:

It uses cellular network for communication. The device checks pre-defined email mailbox once an hour. If a new email is received the camera takes a picture, saves it on a SD-card and emails the image to its owner.

This produces still images on a time delay but, it can provide you a little peace of mind if you need to check on your home. You can build your very own camera with:

  1. A modem
  2. JPEG camera
  3. SD memory card
  4. Micro-controller and integrated circuit

Watch the video to see …