Home Security: Video

The home security market is transforming into a video-centric, "U do it," market because of several factors. First, typical home security systems are essentially useless against the majority of break-insthe "grab and runs." Perhaps your living space or that of someone you know has been broken into, despite the "security" stickers on all windows. As local detectives typically explain, thieves can pry open a back window and be in and out within the 90-second delay of the alarm system. This technique now accounts for the majority of all home break-ins.

Current home security systems leave much to be desired. It is expensive to wire every entry and window pane. They are notoriously bothersome to activate and deactivate, especially for those of us who are in and out all day long. They offer zero after-the-fact evidence to help get back your lost goods. Enter wireless video.

If we had just a glimpse of all cars passing by our house around a given time, and a glimpse of a person or two actually near or in the house, we would have a much better chance at both apprehension and conviction. (Often, thieves just ring the front doorbell and patiently wait for no answer; then they scurry around to the rear for their adventure.)

Until recently, video devices for home usage have been expensive, physically large, very low quality, and very difficult to operate (videotape-based, if you can imagine). However, technologies related to Inescapable Data, when combined with an affordable price point, have enabled a quantum leap forward in the effectiveness of living space security systems. These include charge coupled display (CCD) cellsthe electrical component that "sees" the world and that is now prevalent in digital camerascombined with and 802.11b wireless technology.

New video cameras today are wireless and can easily be squirreled away in places that make them difficult to be seen (and without turning the whole process into an expensive wiring project). Once connected to the home wireless network, the possibilities for intelligent surveillance abound. The video data produced by all these cameras can be collected on your computer system. A program that can detect periods of no motion can automatically delete these segments out of the stored video stream so that you can play back only the times when motion was detected, literally saving hours when you want to review what has been recorded. Once stored on your computer system, you could access it anytime while you are away via a PDA or remotely connected laptop. You could also forward the video file to a local police department as evidence, should the need arise. This is all available today.

How inexpensive is it to get started? Prices range from $25 per camera to $150 depending on resolution and size. (You pay more for those that are more discrete and hideable and less for larger or coarser resolution.) These prices are certainly well within reach for the average person, especially given that the cameras now easily interface to your home network and come with simple software. Linksys, one of the premier home wireless providers and a division of networking giant Cisco Systems, is now in the business of retailing wireless IP camerasa statement of where the market is heading. Software ranges from simple still-scene elimination (to reduce disk space usage) to actual analysis of objects and motions (such as pets moving about at floor level). Some "indexing" software is also readily available to enable you to "search for all scenes with a moving object wearing red clothes," for example, although such capabilities are still somewhat limited to higher-end systems. The point is this: Prices, technology, and capabilities have propelled home video surveillance from an avant-garde tool to something as ordinary as a home Tivo or photo printer.

It is possible that, with a proliferation of digitized video-capture devices, we will become a society obsessed with the digital capture of anything in our lives. (The skyrocketing adoption rate of camera phones and now video phones is a testimony to this statement.) We do not necessarily need every room in our homes monitored; an outside view of the house and a kitchen view might suffice. While on vacation or at work (away from the home office), it is comforting to glance at your PDA or a section of your "home" Web page and see that all is well. Have you ever been out at dinner and had a panic vision, for no sane reason, of your house on fire? Comfort returns with a simple discrete glance at your PDA. Certainly "nanny-cams" received notoriety as cases of babysitters mishandling the children in their care were publicized. As a parent, you can now be virtually present while a babysitter watches your children in your home. You could monitor your house-cleaning people. What about your children, who might be home alone after school? With a date? Regardless of whether you will deploy pervasive in-home monitoring yourself, it is more than likely that at least some of the living spaces you visit will. (Still worried about those 1,000 cameras around the DNC now?)

Video camera systems have been available for some time, but it is a rare home that is video-graphed as of yet. Prices have now dropped dramatically, and the simplicity of integration has increased to the point where the Average Joe can set up a wireless monitoring system with a Web-viewable interface and know nothing more about computers and technology than was necessary to get his wireless home computer network functioning in the first place. This is what leads to pervasiveness and then the accompanied utilities. We are likely at the beginning of widespread video deployment of personal video monitoring (to say nothing of commercial and government monitoring systems).