Webcams with no phone line

Fascadale

Fascadale

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I want to put a couple of webcams into our club's boatyard for the benefit of members and so that we can record the images in an effort to bolster yard security.

I have in mind the sort of webcam image that refreshes every 30 secs or so and that can be put onto the club website.

BT quoted me £99 to put in a new line but now they say they want almost £1000 because they need to put a pole in. We were going to have broadband, BT hub, and an IP address.

Is there another way of doing this without surrendering to BT ?

Can it be done by mobile broadband?
 
Could be done with mobile broadband. The mobile provider may get a bit sniffy and point the their "fair use" policy. "Unlimited broadband" seldom means unlimited.

<edit> what about directional wifi antenna to local(ish) cooperative resident who does have a land line. Like you pay their broadband charges if they don't mind hosting one end of the wifi link</edit>
 
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shmoo said:
unlimited.

<edit> what about directional wifi antenna to local(ish) cooperative resident who does have a land line. Like you pay their broadband charges if they don't mind hosting one end of the wifi link</edit>
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Would this have to be line of sight?

The clubhouse is about 500m from the yard, and I think one of the windows is just visible from the portacabins in the yard
 
The gadget show did a project were they took photos every few minutes from a phone they then sent it to a photo hosting site (http://www.flickr.com) as a text message. The phone company had an unlimited text service. So was relatively cheap to run. I do not know how many photos you could send every few second? but someone out in netland would know how to set it up.
 
Fascadale said:
Would this have to be line of sight?
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Probably be best.

Could you borrow some kit: a couple of 802.11g access points and a couple of lappys and try it out? You may get that far without directional antennas, which would mean it would definitely work with them.
 
shmoo said:
Probably be best.

Could you borrow some kit: a couple of 802.11g access points and a couple of lappys and try it out? You may get that far without directional antennas, which would mean it would definitely work with them.
Click to expand...

Sorry to sound so stupid but what is a "802.11g access point"?

The lappys will be easy

Thanks
 
Its just a wireless link

All it is is a wireless link protocol . You will need two set up as a BRIDGE . One connects to PC other connects to ROUTER at the other end . It can be made into a dedicated link that will not let anyone HOP on it and use your bandwidth up . Pick a decent brand with external ariel and then if it doesn't work you can add ariels etc . We use the same system with Electronic CAsh Registers in a network when cabling is not an option . Another option maybe a HOMEPLUG but it will only work if you are both on the same phase of power supply . Depending on location a long wire will give better performance upto 1km is possible . Hope that helps PM me if you need any more help
 
shmoo said:
Could be done with mobile broadband. The mobile provider may get a bit sniffy and point the their "fair use" policy. "Unlimited broadband" seldom means unlimited.
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If you actually uploaded a 640x480 jpg (~150kB) every thirty seconds you'd use 430MB per day. On the other hand, it's a dead cert that only a tiny, tiny proportion of these would ever actually be looked at - why upload 2,880 images of which perhaps a dozen would be viewed? Instead I'd use an IP webcam (which serves up the images on demand as a web server) and simply hotlink to that as required from your club page.
 
Are you sure you have to pay for the BT Pole. We had 4 put up to deliver a telephone and they simply did it as it is our "right" to have a phone service, and this was their own words. Not only that but they have to go through the planning permission process for poles which is automatically granted after 6 weeks. However this means they exceeded they contracted delivery time for the phone so they then gave us the first 3 months free as compensation! Also this was not a domestic premises but was a clubhouse.

To find out who can offer you an unbundled phone service (ie. not using BT equipment - but in most areas uses BT wires) go to this website

http://www.samknows.com/broadband/exchange_search

and type in a phone number that you know is associated with your local exchange. It will then tell you what and who is available locally. If you don't know a number then the "mapping" facility will let you work out the local excahnge for the location.

Martin
 
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mlines said:
Are you sure you have to pay for the BT Pole. We had 4 put up to deliver a telephone and they simply did it as it is our "right" to have a phone service, and this was their own words. Not only that but they have to go through the planning permission process for poles which is automatically granted after 6 weeks. However this means they exceeded they contracted delivery time for the phone so they then gave us the first 3 months free as compensation! Also this was not a domestic premises but was a clubhouse.

Martin
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To-day BT were insistent that any extra costs incurred were chargeable. They have this insane system where they will not give you a price for installation unless you place an order, with the proviso that there is a fee should you then cancel the order. One of their call centres assured me that they had surveyed the job and the price was £99. He said there were no extra costs. Yet today, BTOpenreach who seem to be the people that put in the wires stated we needed a pole at the cost of £900. To add insult to injury I had to queue on the phone for 90 mins to cancel the order. They don't deserve to be in business in this day and age.
 
I used a WiFi bridge at work to link the Office to the Warehouse - it's only just over 100m - but I bought some kit from www.solwise.co.uk which gives me a solid link that runs IP phones and a dozen computers - no speed issue ...
 
Ubergeekian said:
If you actually uploaded a 640x480 jpg (~150kB) every thirty seconds you'd use 430MB per day. On the other hand, it's a dead cert that only a tiny, tiny proportion of these would ever actually be looked at - why upload 2,880 images of which perhaps a dozen would be viewed? Instead I'd use an IP webcam (which serves up the images on demand as a web server) and simply hotlink to that as required from your club page.
Click to expand...

Because if an incident happened, you'd want the photos even if no-one looked at them in real time. The devices we're talking about don't store the images.
 
AntarcticPilot said:
Because if an incident happened, you'd want the photos even if no-one looked at them in real time. The devices we're talking about don't store the images.
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You can get software that only generates/uploads images if they are different from the previous one. What degree of change "different" means is configurable. Also, some cam software is movement triggered, again with threshold settings to stop cats setting it off.
 
I have an idea

KISS

set up a convex mirror at the bottom of the yard and a decent web cam at the club house. You will have to polish the mirror regularly mind.

I didn't say it was a good idea :(
 
AntarcticPilot said:
Because if an incident happened, you'd want the photos even if no-one looked at them in real time. The devices we're talking about don't store the images.
Click to expand...

Fair point, but in that case it makes much more sense to store them locally than upload them to the web. Which would, after all, required 400MB or additional server space per day for storage. So ... use an IP camera, hotlink to it for the website and download the images to a cheap PC in the clubhouse every 30 seconds.
 
I have a wireless networked high resolution webcam. It has pan and tilt and can be controlled remotely across the web.

The biggest advantage is that it can log snapshots ( motion triggered ) to a USB memory card. I suspect you may run out of memory space in between downloads however.

I'll try connect it to a usb external hard drive ..... you never know. I'll let you know what happens.

With a long range wireless setup you could get the 500m from the clubhouse however.
 
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