Continuous monitoring of my home while I am away with my PC/Laptop or Mobile phone?

Question

I want to know what is the cheap & best way to continuously monitor the activities at my home while I am out of the city. I have Laptop as well as a GPRS eabled Mobile Phone. I have a digital camera which I can install at my home. I have also heard of GPS but dont know how to start with. Can anybody provide me a best soultion for this

Answer 1

To have a web cam for direct access, you have to have a permanent IP address which costs money. Lately there have come on the market programs which upload web cam like pictures to a web site run by a company and you can go look at the view with your portable device browser.
esearch "online home monitoring"
http://www.icontrol.com/

Answer 2

Some studies say that using even a handsfree mobile has a detrimental effect on driving roughly equivalent to having drunk enough to be over the legal limit. From experience many of the people I see swerving between lanes and basically driving like idiots are on the phone. The problem with banning mobiles is that you would have ban other things which distract drivers like loud music, backseat drivers, crying babies etc etc. Personally I think it shouldn't be banned but anyone seen to be driving without due care and attention should be fined very heavily.

Answer 3

Based on the level of information in your question, this will be a bit cumbersome for you to set up, but not impossible.

A few basics:

1) Your typical home user has what's called a dynamic Ip address from your Internet provider. That means that your address to the outside world changes frequently.

2) In order to view the video on your phone, you will need some sort of program to broadcast FROM your PC to the world via the Internet

3) You will need to make sure that your phone is able to view the broadcasted signal on your phone (high speed phone connection, current technologies enabled).

So for part one, it is actually quite easy and free (not expensive as another poster suggests). You can get a dynamic DNS address for free from http://www.dyndns.com/services/dns/dyndns/

That will give you an address to the outside world (via the Internet) that stays the same even when your IP address changes (which can happen every few days from your provider).

With some providers, you can even call them up and ask for a static IP address and they might givie it to you for free (usually DSL service allows this, but not often cable). Just tell them you need to install PCAnywhere on your machine and need a static IP address.

For step 2, there are dozens of programs out there that will do the trick. Here is a link to one (I know nothig about it) that seems to fit your needs: http://www.webcamsoft.com/en/ezcast.html

You can also do a serach for Nannycam software.

For step 3, if your phone is running WIndows Mobile software, then it has Windows Media Player 10 or higher on it. Most web cam broadcasting software supports WMV (Windows Media Video) so you will be able to tap into your webcam feed.

The hardest part (I imagine for you) will be putting all the pieces together.

Answer 4

Why would you want too do that are you that paranoid about someone robbing you? Just make it lookg like someone's home and you'll be fine.