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Welcome to the world of internet security cameras - where security is only the start of what you can do. Internet companies and a few forward thinking industries have been using IP-based ‘webcams' for security and monitoring purposes for years now, but it hadn't caught on with the private business sector. Dial-up access was too slow and unreliable to allow easy, regular access for real time monitoring of internet security camera installations.
All that has changed with the increased availability of DSL and cable broadband internet access. Couple the new speed with streaming video technology for PDAs, cell phones and other wireless devices, and you have the perfect portable security solution for your home or business. Portable, that is, in terms of being able to view your site from anywhere that has internet access and a device to access it with.
The basic components of a system using internet security cameras for security and monitoring are:
Depending on the specific needs of your site security, setting up internet security cameras can be as simple as placing your cameras where you want them, plugging them into the computer, and turning the computer on. You'll set a few configurable options in a control panel - and your internet security cameras are set up to record and broadcast what they see to you - wherever you are.
The software that controls internet security cameras can schedule the cameras to turn on and off, tell them how often and when to pan an area (sweep side to side), tilt or zoom. The higher end applications allow you to set motion sensor alarms, trigger a camera to track particular types of movements and behaviors, and send you an email or phone page with a snapshot of the event that triggered the alarm.
Once the software and the internet security cameras are set up, you'll be able to log in from any web browser and view the site through any or all of the cameras. Internet security cameras with IP based technology are being used in new and surprising ways. The construction industry, usually very slow to adopt new technology, has embraced internet security cameras as an excellent way of keeping a project manager on top of site issues when he can't be on site. The more enterprising and PR-minded even feature ‘construction-cams' using IP based internet security cameras to let the public ‘peek' at the big machines at work.
Internet security cameras have implications for law enforcement as well. An experimental program in Dallas brought together a partnership of downtown businesses, a security firm and police in a unique monitoring program. The program uses 16 cameras mounted on buildings around a downtown square that all feed into a central PC. The purpose, explains a Dallas police official, is as much ‘history' as it is monitoring. When an event happens, the records from the cameras will allow police and other forensics experts to reconstruct the sequence of events. In the long run, those records will do far more than identify wrongdoers - they could serve as the basis for a whole new way of dealing with the public and crowd control.