Home CCTV advice please

Lizbetty

Hi everyone!

I hope that someone can help me out as I'm currently a bit flummoxed about the whole CCTV thing!

We realised yesterday that we have had a few things nicked from our front garden. Daft things like the yard brush and other garden tools which are really old, not worth anything, but obviously were irresistible to someone. :mad: I must admit to becoming complacent about leaving stuff around in the front garden as live on a cul de sac and have an awkward gate, but I just would not have thought things like that would be pinched. We have the kids toys (old toddler bikes and ride on things, etc) in the garden too so it's lucky they haven't nicked those too. We haven't anywhere else to put em though! We've got a burglar alarm it's mainly the garden we want to protect.

So now we're looking at CCTV primarily as a deterrent but we want one that records when it spots something moving just in case. We have an (ahem) unusual neighbour who has been nasty in the past, and I really wouldn't put it past him...but obviously you can't assume it's someone without the evidence.

We are on a tight budget but as neither of us are technologically minded as such, I'm pretty clueless what to go for as we don't want to have to trawl through hours of video tape or have to keep a telly just for recording what's going on, I have heard about ones which are linked to your pc but do I hellas like understand how that would work!

Ideally we'd want one which would record when it senses motion, onto some sort of media that's maybe part of it so we don't have to have loads of wires. But then I have a feeling that might be costly, so all advice appreciated!

It's a horrible feeling to know someone has been lurking around. If we could get a dog, I would love to get one of those with huge jaws to catch the bugg ers...

Thanks in advance for any advice,
Best wishes
Lucy

hewhoisnotintheknow

go into maplins just to have a look, then take it from there, also dont leave stuff you dont want nicking out the front

ormus

the cheap cctv are ok for daytime use but pretty useless at night.
also even if you call the police to view an actual theft, they dont take much notice of it anyways.
then they tell you it cant be used as eveidence!

Taniab_2

We have a pc run cctv. It was a nightmare my OH sorting and he knows about these things. I know the pc software is from a company called Milestone and software for a 1 camera system I believe is free. The camera was about £500 i think. The one we have though needs a pc all of it's own to run properly.

I can ask OH questions if you would like me too.
PS I only ever browse this foram as I don't usually have any useful things to post

Igol

ormus wrote: »

the cheap cctv are ok for daytime use but pretty useless at night.
also even if you call the police to view an actual theft, they dont take much notice of it anyways.
then they tell you it cant be used as eveidence!

I'm glad I dont live where you do.
Of course you can use it as evidence and they should view it as well. Obviously if its on 24 hours a day for a week and you've been on holiday for a week I could understand them saying that trawling through 7 days footage isnt an option. If your presenting decent footage of the miscreant in action any decent Bobby would sieze it.