INTRUDER ALERT STOP THE HUMANOID Thomas Boutell 9/17 '14

Last night we set off on a mission of mercy. An old friend has a problem: someone keeps entering her apartment, taking shit, and wrecking shit.

The intruder is vindictive. They squeezed an entire tube of expensive eye cream all over her bathroom. They cut off the bottom of her pants. And they stole half her professional wardrobe, something she can't afford.

Our friend is older, so she feels particularly vulnerable.

This person is breaking in during the day, and there is never any sign of forced entry, so I strongly suspect building staff has something to do with it; she lives in a high-rise apartment building with a gorgeous view. Just the sort of place you're happy until some lunatic starts gaslighting you and you start to wonder if you're crazy, amirite.

So despite being a technophobe, she bought some security equipment, and asked us over to help set it up. And I spent three hours wrangling the gear— a security camera and a "cloud DVR"— which almost works at this point.

Everything works, actually, except for uploading the video "to the cloud." Or at least sending her pictures by email when the motion sensor triggers. Or something. Because if the only evidence is in the apartment, I have no confidence we'll catch the bastard.

Unfortunately the cloud bit is sticky. The email feature has no test button and doesn't seem to work. The "cloud push" feature is... what? What the hell is cloud push? The FTP feature is tempting, but I'd have to figure out a way for her to know it was happening and browse the results. The whole setup is a pain in the ass; somebody slapped as little code on top of Linux as they could possibly get away with. Mutter mutter.

Is there a drastically better solution for a simple task like monitoring the front door and capturing incriminating pix of whoever's coming through it?

Alternatively... does anybody know what the hell "cloud push" is?

MORE
9/17 '14 17 Comments
This looks WAY simpler. Anybody tried it? http://www.trendnet.com/products/proddetail.asp?prod=225_TV-IP751WIC
Thomas Boutell
I assume there's no documentation with the stuff you already got? And you've Googled the brand/model?

Drives me ape when people don't properly document their stuff.

There is one other alternate solution which doesn't require off site storage - if you hide the camera so the actor doesn't know they're being recorded. I've seen a number of 'nanny cams' that are designed for this purpose.

I also fear that if you leave the camera out in the open (regardless of what type it is) the actor may do nothing outside of enter the place, see the device, and leave. You could still get them for B&E, but nothing more. If you hide the device and they do damage etc, you have evidence of something more malicious than B&E.

All that said, I'm (obviously) no expert. Has your friend considered talking to a security pro?
Matt Lichtenwalner
Also? Nice graphic. :)
Matt Lichtenwalner
It's a very lame brand, you can't find a manual online at all, they don't document some of the key features they are bragging about like "cloud push."
Thomas Boutell
Yeah. Sadly, there's not much you can do in that scenario other than trial and error testing which is always lots of fun.

I've seen these around, but I have no personal experience with them. Still, they seem to do what you're looking for (at a glance).

https://www.dropcam.com/
Matt Lichtenwalner
They also don't look like they're terribly easy to hide - which I still say is best for 'catching' the actor involved.
Matt Lichtenwalner
It depends on whether the primary intent is to catch them or to give them incentive to go away. We actually looked into a fake camera -- and yes, they sell them -- for a lab just to discourage students from sticking a computer mouse in a pocket or whatever. (That apparently happens about once a semester.)
R. Francis Smith
And to follow myself up: of course, that depends heavily on the perpetrator having a brain and caring about such things, and I'm not sure in this case that's a winner, since it sounds to my mind completely psychotic.
R. Francis Smith
Right, so I'm willing to declare victory either way: they go away, or we catch them and involve the police and they get fired and lose access to the building and, um, hopefully don't stalk our friend afterwards? Eek
Thomas Boutell
If the camera just stops them from coming in anymore, that's pretty good. Although they might switch to bringing a mask or something.
Thomas Boutell
I have no useful advice on this tech question. It just sucks that people would do this. She should get a big dog.
Anne Galvin
Geeez. I feel terrible for your friend. That is beyond creepy.

Our snowcam is pretty easy... on my end anyway. You can set it to auto-snap every x moments. Snowcam is set to snap every 3 minutes, but it could snap a pic every second if you had the storage. (Also: Whee! This is my first OPW interaction! Yay!)
Jill "xtingu" Knapp
Check out the dropcam video sometime. You will plotz. There's an app which lets you browse short videos from all the times it noticed motion. If you want to view other times you can. Everything is in a cloud service you don't have to be a techie to set up. Boom.
Thomas Boutell
Ah - so dropcam worked as a solution, or are you guys still looking?
Matt Lichtenwalner
Waiting to see what our friend decides to do, but the dropcam is our "just return that shit and do this now, seriously" recommendation.
Thomas Boutell
Nice! I was going to say "I'll keep that in mind for if/when I settle back down." and then I realized that even if that's only six months from now, there's likely to be new options which may be an improvement and/or cheaper.

Gotta love the world of tech toys.
Matt Lichtenwalner
W00t! Welcome to OPW. :)
Matt Lichtenwalner