more on Off-the-shelf home remote monitoring system (was Re: Man in Germany Foils Burglary in Brazil) or Kindergarten Cam Redux

Begin forwarded message:

From: Bob Frankston <[email protected]>
Date: December 15, 2006 7:56:46 AM JST
To: [email protected], [email protected]
Subject: RE: Off-the-shelf home remote monitoring system (was Re:  
[IP] Man in Germany Foils Burglary in Brazil) or Kindergarten Cam Redux

This is the same story we saw ten years ago with camera in a  
kindergarten so a parent could view the child from the office. The  
telling fact that this is still new and novel because people didn’t  
understand the real importance of the story – they probably  
considered a tale of how someone managed to do the impossible when  
the real point was that it was straightforward. But that was then,  
today we have a more twisting and winding passages but it is still  
doable off-to-the shelf.

Many webcam companies offer this as a standard feature using their  
web sites to rendezvous in lieu of having stable end point  
identifiers. This is much in the “just works” category – at least in  
terms of connecting to the cameras. The cameras typically have motion  
detection and can even email alerts with images. As you pay more you  
get features such automatic panning and logging and microphones.

While this is all nice it is typically packaged and wrapped into a  
browser control – I do want access to the lower level APIs. But this  
is part of the larger issue of taking back the Edge-to-Edge Internet  
(End-to-End now is interpreted as Womb-to-Tomb) as I explain in  
http://www.frankston.com/?name=OurInternet.

Of course we should also think a little about privacy issues—how good  
are the implementations? Can we assume the images are encrypted?

PS: I note the article says that the camera was connected to the  
Internet. I hope that we’ll soon get past this because how else would  
you connect the camera to anything? Today we still have special  
camera (or video) wires. That does seem strange, having a wire for  
each purpose and special radios for each kind of bit. Very strange  
indeed.



-----Original Message-----
From: David Farber [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: Thursday, December 14, 2006 17:20
To: [email protected]
Subject: Off-the-shelf home remote monitoring system (was Re: [IP]  
Man in Germany Foils Burglary in Brazil)







Begin forwarded message:

From:   Dave Crocker <[email protected]>

Date:    December 15, 2006 7:04:11 AM JST

To:       [email protected]

Cc:       [email protected], Ross Stapleton-Gray <ross@stapleton- 
gray.com>

Subject:            Off-the-shelf home remote monitoring system (was  
Re: [IP]  Man in Germany Foils Burglary in Brazil)







David Farber wrote:

“Businessman Joao Pedro Wettlauser was in Cologne, Germany, on Sunday  
when he received an alert on his phone informing him that someone had  
entered his vacation house in Guaruja, 54 miles southof Sao Paulo,  
police said.



He quickly turned on his laptop and, thanks to security cameras  
connected to the Internet, was able to see a tattooed man stuffing  
goods into trash bags...”





On the one hand, it is clear that all of the pieces of technology and  
software for doing this are readily available.

On the other hand, I find myself unclear what the necessary details  
are, for arranging this sort of set up work in a normal home and with  
normal cell phones, smartphones, laptops, and the like.

As a small example, normal home Internet connections are not very  
workable for the operation of servers, yet this report described  
coming from the Internet and going into the home’s resources.

I therefore suspect it would be of community benefit to have some  
folks suggest the pieces and how to arrange them. This would be for a  
home with typical DSL or Cable Internet attachment, typical Windows  
or Macintosh machines, and a user who has good installation and  
administration skills, but not at the level of programming, or  
otherwise requiring deep expertise.

Or there might already be some citations to such recommendations.

d/



--



Dave Crocker

Brandenburg InternetWorking

bbiw.net






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