video surveillance

You can get cheap PC cards designed for just such a purpose, like this
one:
http://www.jaycar.com.au/productView.asp?ID=QV3080
Probably get them (and the camera's) a lot cheaper on eBay.

Get a big mean dog (preferably two) as well.

Dave.

Why don't you go and whack him with a lump of four by two?
As a first time offender you can say you were provoked, it's your word
against his. Fines for assault are dismally low, maybe about $300 for a
few blows to the head, and your neighbor will know that you're not to be
messed with. It'll put him on the defensive, and the onus on him to
prove his case.

Elmo

All comes down to expectations
  enay will supply a dvr ard to add to your pc , be aware the cheap ones
have only one controller chip and you need one per cam so shop carefully  .
  A cheap card ( under $100 ) will run at best one or two cams

  shop here http://www.veelock.com.au if you want a decent cam or ebay
for anything else
  divide the fps by the number of cams , less than 25fps will "stutter "
to some degree
  expect to pay $150.00 for an auto iris auto focus unit .
  go here  > http://www.jknelectronics.com/lenses.htm

to calculate the lens needed
  the more tvlines eg 480 means better image
  240 lines is a rough and blurred picture

At night or during the day? Or both?

look here: http://www.allthings.com.au/

http://www.swann.com.au/ Available from Dick Smiths, etc.

@lust.ihug.co.nz:


 Also, if you're appropriately inclined, a bit of open source software
called ZoneMinder. Supports a range of generic webcams and works
very very well. Can trigger on movement, record for pre-set periods of
time, present you with a daily summary of actual activity (as opposed
to hours of nothing), email you notifications and/or the actual footage.
It's pretty good. http://www.zoneminder.com /


GB

This mob are completely useless and totally clueless about their own
products..

They make a door cam/intercom with one or two handsets. First they tell
someone that you just buy two of the single handset models and you can
piggy back one onthe other to get the double handset version.

Then they say you can not do that with old models, but have to buy
another new double model, which isn't any good for an external door.

Then they go back to option one, then this , then that.

Frankly they don't have a clue. The dizzy limit was when they came back
telling me that you join two wires here from one handset and the other
two wires there from the other handset. Yes, but what about the other
two wires from each handset.. "Oh, there are four wires on each handset,
we''l get back to you" and I'm still waiting.

I am inclined to agree. Their "Digital Private Eye"
<http://www.swann.com.au/s/products/view/?product34%4 should be
exactly the product that the OP, and anyone else who wishes to
identify vandals, wants. After you find your property has been damaged
you would expect to see the last n minutes of motion triggered action
recorded where n depends on the size of the memory card you purchased.
You would be disappointed. After the memory card is filled, instead of
overwriting the oldest recorded frames, the device just stops
recording!

Much better to use the vivotek free software with a decent dvr card.

Maybe, but the "Digital Private Eye" costs less than two hundred
dollars and does not need to be connected to a computer. It includes
the camera, a motion detector, a memory card and firmware to record
the images. The image is adequate to identify a vandal from a small
population. The population is one person in the case of the OP and
restricted to members and their children for the vandals I wanted to
identify at our tennis club.

Our tennis club does not have a computer and installing one would be
costly and vulnerable to vandalism :( Although the "Digital Private
Eye" needs a computer to read the memory card the computer does not
need to be connected to the camera or even be on-site.

With a few hundred extra firmware instructions the "Digital Private
Eye" could be the ideal, cheap tool to identify vandals in many common
circumstances. I thought that their omission was enough to roughly
agree that "this mob is completely useless".

  providing a very average image at barely usable resolution , seeing
the face and not just a blurred image is generally a good idea
  It includes

  see above


  a used PIII all that is required at less than $50.00 is all it costs ,
a dvr card able to provide good resolution from ebay under $50.00 and
the camera from veetech at maybe $120.00 plus a cable

Although the "Digital Private

You could go to your local video survellience dealership and ask for some
professional advice.  I think the trick is to have a triggering mechanism,
and a large hard drive that can record your neighbor's meanderings.  Maybe
have it set up to scheduled times when you aren't home.

You could probably set up a system like this for about 1000 bucks with a
cheap 800 by 600 video camera, and pc combo.  Platform sdk will allow you do
perform some crafy little diversions into the realm of vid surv software on
a microsft machine, and linux has ton's of free ware.  Java has a ton as
well.

I think the only problem you might run into is switching your feeds if you
need more than one camera ckt.

Marc