Monitor Your Apartment With a Webcam While on Vacation

Are you planning to be away from your residence for a while? Need some budget monitoring from a distance? Try this.


Obtain video capture software. There are many different offerings, each with pros and cons. Try looking up for some easy to use, practical video capture software, that comes complete with a review. If all else fails, just use Windows Movie Maker. Use the software's ReadMe or Install Wizard to install the program. This is only necessary if you plan to record the footage. Set up your camera. You will need to keep the camera near a computer. If you can, use a high-memory laptop or similar small size computer. You want to be able to hide it. You will need to have your computer near wherever your camera is. Hiding the camera will give intruders a sense of security, as they will think the house is not monitored. This will lead to a better capture of their features. You need to make sure the camera can see some crucial parts of the house, and as much of it as possible. Remember that having a web cam next to a computer is not unusual, and can make for fairly good cover. Set up an account. You will need to have an account on a website with web cam capabilities. Once you've set it up you're ready to start. Watching from a distance. While on holiday, login using a different account, and make a connection with the account that your home camera is connected to. If you're using the right kind of site, the web cam should be playing you images from your own home. Whenever you check in, take a screen shot and compare them. If anything has moved you will be able to see.

Choose chat room sites that allow you to be logged in indefinetly while the account is inactive. Also make sure you can access the web cam without the permission of the other account. As insecure as this, people won't be able to glean much info from it, so it should be OK.

This will not work if you use one of the more common Instant Messageing sites. These have systems to stop users keeping inactive accounts logged in, so as to save their own processor. Choose one of the websites that seem a little bit 'dodgier'.