Ok, I am new to this whole idea I have, so I'm just tryng to see if its viable or not. Basically it is a homemade webcam/pc camera surveillance uploaded and viewable on the internet. My main question is what sort of hosting am I looking at? Webspace and bandwidth requirements?

First of all, I had this idea for a long time, but tonight my garage was broken into, and I think its time to put my idea into perspective.

Now, I just wanted to get some opinions on how i might get this started. In particular, how much bandwidth. I figure I will need the following but an not quite sure:

- cheap PC that is purely dedicated to running webcam program (hide the PC)
- good HardDrive (for recording long vid so can backtrack)
- 2 webcams (one for small door and one for the main garage doors car drives through)
- powersource (temporary if the theives or robbers cut power)

Now, I was thinking of a 12 hr recording....and once it reaches 12 hours, it just loops and records over the first stuff so the filesize remains constant. Basically, I want to come home and be able to browse 12 hours back from that moment so if a break in did occur, I can stop the recording and see what happened. Is this going to be way too big of a filesize? I don't know too much, but I figure in a time where 30-40gb harddrives are cheap, why not try to get a long recording.

Has anyone had any experiences setting up a surveillance with webcams/pc's? I figure it might be a lot cheaper than professionally installed cameras and you can find small tiny webcams. I am also concerned about resolution though.

Now, while the recording is being made and stored on the PC, I was thinking of going one step further and uploading it to a website accessable for monitoring wherever I am, as long as I had a connection and a PC. If this runs 24 hours/day, 7 days a week, etc.....what sort of bandwidth requirement is necessary?

If anyone has any opinions, even if its telling me I'm out of my mind for thinking this up, or if this is nothing new and there is a lot of information about this, please let me know.....any kind of info would be appreciated. Thanks.

As long as you are not watching it (if no one breaks in), it shouldn't use any bandwidth :-) heh.

I know of someone doing this same thing with those cheap cameras from x10.com. It works out pretty good for him. Of course there are many other alternatives. One good site to visit would be smarthome.com. The reps are pretty knowledgeable.

BTW: This could also be done with a regular DSL connection.

Even thought I hate promoting them due to the 10 million popups of theres I have to close daily. But x-10 would be your best bet. Get a couple night cameras with motion detection and you should be fine.. There cheap also.. not the best equip but it works..

Thanks for your opinions/comments thus far....I'll check out smarthome.com.

I basically thought of the webcam/pc idea since I can get a long loop (12 hours is ideal for me) and the cheap home video surveillance is only usually 6hrs (on VHS from a VCR)