[hicksjt]

I am interested a simple home surveillance connection. It’s my understanding that a capture card can be installed on a computer to act a digital video recorder. I would like to connect this card with a wireless or cable connected web camera that is going to be placed roughly 25 feet away overlooking a room. Could the setup as described be done? I would like to hear from those who have done something similar. Any feedback would be greatly appreciated.

[johnpost]

you are correct that using a capture card would allow your
computer to work as a video recorder. how well that works depends
on what your computer is and if it will be dedicated to
that task or doing other things.

at 25 feet either wireless or cable would work.

there are piles of options for both capture cards
and surveillance systems. if you don't have a
capture card you might find a package for
what you want with camera and card.

shop around alot. decide on if you
want to buy local, mail or web.

this is a popular type application and
so there will be lots of options. that
also means there will be lots of junk
systems, either don't work well or
are overpriced.

try some electronics stores just
to get a real life look at systems.

[JohnWill]

You can pick up a wireless Ethernet camera and control if locally or from around the world.

[PCG342]

What does a scanner see?

Or... Big Brother is watching YOU.

[gotrootdude]

If your using the PC for other purposes, then I'd highly suggest either getting a dedicated PC, or buying a extended recording motion activated VCR.

DVR software can really tie up your system's resources, not to mention the disk space required for storing video. You could save diskspace by transcoding, but then you lose resources for doing other things. You could save disk space with motion detection, but software motion detection really hogs a cpu.

[kiwiguy]

I have a camera covering the yard, it feeds a video sender unit and is therefore able to be viewed on any TV in the house, recorded on a DVD recorder or fed (from a TV) into a video capture card on the PC.

Cheap, effective.