June 1st, 2008 by
Filed under: Cellphones, Digital Cameras
Look, we’re just as down on crazy Japanese stereotypes as the next guy. We watched Lost in Translation. We’re with it. We know it’s not all cosplay and weird game shows (but seriously, that human Tetris one? Awesome) and people dressing up as vending machines (pictured). That said, this story isn’t doing Japan any favors. A homeless woman was recently arrested in Tokyo after living undetected in a man’s closet for a year and sneaking food out of his kitchen. It was the missing food that tipped him off, so he installed some security cameras in his home to transmit images to his phone. Some motion was detected, so he called the police, and soon enough they spotted her in the closet — where she had planted a mattress. Moral of the story? Move to Japan. Better cellphones and bigger closets. You can’t lose.
[Via ixplora]
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Posted in japan, security camera, SecurityCamera, homeless | No Comments »
February 23rd, 2008 by
Filed under: Misc. Gadgets
It’s not the first method we’ve seen for blinding security cameras, but this new DIY / art project from the folks at Oberwelt e.V. looks to be one of the simplest, and one of the few that could conceivably be used on an everyday basis. Dubbed the I-R.A.S.C. (for “infra-redlight against surveillance camera”), the device apparently consists simply of a series of infrared lights connected to a battery, which combine to blot out your face with a slightly unnerving glow. Needless to say, while it appears to hide your identity quite effectively, it doesn’t exactly scream subtlety, so you’d best think of some excuses to explain yourself if you actually plan on trying this thing out in public.
[Via Coolest Gadgets]
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Posted in diy, security camera, SecurityCamera, homebrew, ir | No Comments »
February 8th, 2008 by
Filed under: Digital Cameras, Household
Everybody knows that if you’ve got real criminals to deal worry about, you buy a gun or a katana. That’s why we’re planning on pointing this “witness camera” DIY project at those little household criminals, like Felix. The project involves a few cheap-as-free components like a VGA CMOS color camera, PIR movement sensor, ATmega32 processor and a 1GB SD card. Oddly enough, the box looks like a regular alarm detector, which seems it’d be the first thing a burglar — or a diabolical cat that likes to hold hapless fish ransom for unreasonable quantities of catnip — would try to disable, but we suppose the whole point of DIY is that you can hide the setup in whatever you please.
[Via MAKE]
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Posted in hack, diy, security camera, SecurityCamera, witness camera, WitnessCamera | No Comments »
January 28th, 2008 by
Filed under: Misc. Gadgets
We’re not huge fans of overzealous security camera deployment, but if you’re going to spend taxpayer money deploying nannycams, at least make sure they’re capturing more than one frame every two seconds — the rate at which San Francisco’s $900,000 system is running. A study of the city’s 68 cameras found that the system has only led to one arrest in two and a half years of operation, and the main reason for the failure is uselessly slow video — which is grainy, to boot. Compare that to Chicago’s much-hated (but effective) system, which runs at 30fps, and it’s obvious why the president of San Francisco’s Police Commission said the city was “throwing money away.” There’s no word on how or when the issue might be resolved, but the city is due to review the system and issue a determination soon. Check the read link for a video of the system in (in)action.
[Thanks, Paul B.]
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Posted in cctv, san francisco, SanFrancisco, security camera, SecurityCamera | No Comments »
November 30th, 2007 by
Filed under: Digital Cameras
It looks like those looking to put together a quick and easy surveillance system for spying on their employees could soon find their solution courtesy of NEC, which is set to debut a new security cam that draws all its power from a standard fluorescent light. But that’s not all, the camera also boasts some built-in 802.11b WiFi capabilities to stream all that video (or, more specifically, an image every ten seconds) back to a PC, which can presumably be used to monitor dozens of these little all-seeing wonders. No word on a price or release date, but NEC will apparently have more to say about it at the iExpo2007 conference that gets underway in Tokyo on December 5th.
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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!
Posted in nec, security camera, SecurityCamera, wireless camera, WirelessCamera | No Comments »
October 19th, 2007 by
Filed under: Cellphones, Household
Yeah, yeah, the caption reads “watch over your loved ones wirelessly…” but we know by “watch over” they mean spy. With SingTel’s dubious intentions aside, the Mobile LIVEcam looks to be a reasonably inexpensive and capable — albeit optically challenged — 0.3 megapixel remote camera. For only $240 upfront and about $6 month in service costs you get a 3G SIM card and the camera which can pan, tilt, zoom, and even record video onto a microSD card. If your preferred recording location is a bit dark, the camera features an infrared recording mode to help get the dirtiest of dirt ensure your family’s safety. The LIVEcam is controlled via SMS commands or through a web interface — also accessible by up to 20 others via password control — on your mobile phone, and with a touted 300 hours standby time, should give you enough time to capture the perfect shots. Yep, anti-privacy never looked so fun.
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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!
Posted in webcam, LIVEcam, security camera, SecurityCamera, SingTel | No Comments »
