I use a Lorex system with 8 cams on my house. Its amazing what you see at night, or atleast decipher. Reality is the quality at night lacks the farther away the bad people are from the cams.

But so far in the 2 years I have had the sys up and running I have captured:

- neighbors pissing on house
- neighbors pissing on my house some more
- neighbors selling dime bags to other neighbors
- neighbor letting dog shit on my yard and not cleaning it up
- stolen crv hitting light post, light post falling crushing crv
- tree branch falling on bro in laws hood putting a hole in it.
- 7 cedar trees being stolen from my yard (only caught the shadow from them moving and the motion lights :( )
- kids attempting to break into our cars
- neighbor after being asked not to piss on our house saying "fuck you" to the cam.
- neighbors drunk friends smashing their car and parking it on the lawn, then took off and swerved all up the road.

lol

During the day the cameras are mint.

I run a 1tb storage system and have my cams run constant record at different start times between 7:00 pm & 9:30 pm until 7 am. everything else is motion detected which also has its limitations.

Dryer vent heat makes the cams go nuts when in infrared mode at night.

Battery back up ( ups ) is a great added bonus. I added 2.

Remote access from other pcs is easy.

Overall the system is cheap china shit and the software is complete fail. The cams I have are about $240 a pop.
I have the system email me when a cam goes offline, this generally happens when the cam tries to figure out if its day or night. The odd one goes mental and flickers, an email gets sent to me. Out of the cameras only 2 flicker during the change over. I would be concerned if all 8 cams went down and I got 8 separate emails.

Most cam systems can be added to a regular home alarm system

The cam you would focus say on the gate can also send you an email on motion and sound an alarm.

Spiders love to create webs on the cams, guessing due to the infrared.

Lowered house insurance.

You will spend the first month watching wtf people are doing on your property.

Fun ideas:
A) Get some electric fence stuff and electrify your fences door handle (I'm assuming it has a metal handle)

B) Run a piece of fishing line from the where on the ground where fence door meets the rest of the fence (the part that is not connected to the fence via door hinges), to where the door meets the fence, to a solid pole about 5-10 meters away. Then, thread the line through a screw hook so it turns around 180 degrees. Tie the line around the trigger of a paintball gun, (needs to me automatic) which will be pointed at the door so it shoots anyone that opens it.

C) Get a airbag off ebay, dig a hole in the pathway of where somebody would walk in order to or after opening your gate. Rig said airbag to go off if stepped on by trespasser. Put airbag in hole, and last cover the hole with grass so it looks like it did.

D) Get a exploding dye pack (the type bank tellers put in money bags when being robbed), and use your imagination to figure out how you'd like to paint this little bastard red. With red dye.

E) All of the above.

Remember, if you hit him with a few paint balls whats he gonna do? Go home and tell mommy and/or daddy that he got paint-balled while breaking into somebodies yard?

lol, do you happen to live near 403 and Dundas?

Is living in a country that makes firearm ownership so difficult really that bad?

Im no help, but Im getting pretty damn sick of vandalism becoming being a cool thing to do.

In for buried airbag w/pin switch trigger on gate and sign reading "Warning: Do not open this gate!"

Many eons ago, I used to work casino surveillance. We used this stuff to catch morons. http://www.homespy.com/powder.htm

I used it at my grandmothers condo when kids were vandalizing ac units.

Shits gone hi tech now. They have nano dust thats trackable by rfid..

Other cool stuff on that site, cams etc..

Assuming you are on a naval base, why not get the SP involved? Stakeout/sting?

Lock.
I'd be more concerned with what might happen to my dogs if this little doof lets 'em out again.
Do the cam too. Why not? If enough in housing complain and you have photos, he'll be having a talk with the base police.

Get this guy to rig up your surveillance system with a 249saw in place.

interested in seeing how that flimsy piece handles the recoil of an actual bullet.

Just call it a 249 or a SAW kthx. :D

I like the airbag idea. Probably a criminal act, but I still like it. :D

Sam- would it be practical to just mount a miniature camcorder somewhere? Ie: does the perp always strike during daylight hours and within a predictable window of +/- an hour or two?

There are soime super-cheap camcorders here: http://www.geeks.com/products_sc.asp?cat=978

find some kind of farm supply, and put up some electric wire around the top of the fence and/or handles of gates

If anyone asks, its to keep the dogs from jumping the fence.. and why is the handle electrified.. oh.. oops

web cams also do motion detection too.. not sure if you are willing to drag out 50' of use extension cable for that though

Find a kid to do some undercover work. Infiltrate the local marijuana trade to start.

I'm really liking the wireless IP camera idea. I've wanted to run power out to that tree anyways to hang a bug zapper, and my wireless router has direct line-of-sight out to the tree through a single-pane window... should be able to connect. Our home desktop stays on 24/7, so should be able to set it up to record to a spare thumbdrive.

I'm liking what I read about Foscam.
http://foscam.us/foscam-fi8904w-wire...-wpa-p-40.html

Seems pretty straightforward... the cam is really all I'll need to buy if I do it this way.

I'm thinking he just strikes randomly as he's walking through the park. Base housing here is pretty awesome. The streets are fairly standard "block" arrangement, but in the very center of the block is a park. Everybody's back gate opens onto a park. Go to Google Earth, find Malibu... travel 20miles up the coast to the base. All the base housing borders up against HWY1... you can see how it's all arranged. Pretty cool for families to have an awesome park literally in your backyard. But there are paths to and from the park via the street so everybody has access. I'm thinking he's just an "opportunity asshole" and does it while he's enroute somewhere.

After this little hoorah is over with, I'll train the camera on the park for vandalism. We've already had some little shit go down, but summer is coming and I won't tolerate MY fucking park getting trashed.

In for justice!

Just make sure you have enough space to store the video.

Hey, it was in my airman's manual... lol

Besides, isnt the 249 being retired soon?