Tux on Home Security

After a round of breakins, Joe Barr put together Linux, an Open Source software suite called ZoneMinder, and a set of D-Link wireless cameras to better keep an eye on things. He outlined the setup procedure for the rest of us at NewsForge here.

This setup wouldn’t just have to be used at home, either. One could easily use the same setup to monitor a storefront or warehouse. Have an office in a business center? Wireless cameras would allow you to keep an eye on things without making the landlord sweat the installation of long strings of cables.

This would have also been a great benefit to the school I used to work for; wireless cameras would be more mobile than the fixed units we installed, and would have precluded the need for long runs (upwards of 200′ or so in some cases) of coax cable (and their attendant wiring headaches). We did look at other digital solutions, but the proprietary software combined with the hardware would have cost us around $12-15K, well beyond the reach of our budget.