Few Questions Before I Purchase
I have two iMacs, in separate areas of the house.
My goal is to run security cameras while I leave the house, without recording 24/7, if possible.
1. How would I set it to start recording once motion has been triggered, if possible?
2. Both of my computers have login screens. If someone were to activate the login screen, would it begin recording, or would they need to login for the recording to start?
Thank you.
My goal is to run security cameras while I leave the house, without recording 24/7, if possible.
1. How would I set it to start recording once motion has been triggered, if possible?
2. Both of my computers have login screens. If someone were to activate the login screen, would it begin recording, or would they need to login for the recording to start?
Thank you.
Comments
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3. How can I view both camera feeds on one computer?
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You don't specify what cameras you are planning to use, but I'm assuming you want to use the built-in cameras in the iMacs, at least to begin with? In that case the best setup here would be to run RemoteSight on one iMac, which streams video over your local network to SecuritySpy running on the second iMac. SecuritySpy will then be able to record from both cameras, to the hard drive of the second iMac. This is the best setup because you will have your recordings all in one place.
To enable motion-detection recording, you need to enable this feature in the Camera Settings Window, and then set the camera to Active mode. See the Getting Started section of the user manual.
To record, a user has to be logged into the computer and SecuritySpy has to be running. Normally, with "fast user switching" you can have a user running SecuritySpy in the background and then switch back to the login screen (or another user) while recording continues, however this is not possible when using the Mac's built-in camera because OS X blocks access to the camera unless a user is logged in, for security/privacy reasons. If you want the computer to be password-protected while SecuritySpy is running you can enable the screen saver (via the "Desktop & Screen Saver" system preference) and set a password requirement (via the "Security & Privacy" system preference) to deactivate the screensaver.
In any case, at some point you may want to supplement your system with some network cameras as these will give you better quality and flexibility.
Hope this helps! -
Thank you, Ben. This was very helpful.
It sounds like a good idea to get some network cameras.
A few more questions:
- On the localhost page, is this on the web? Can this be viewed by others and/or hacked?
- When setting up motion capture detection, I obviously need to store the video someplace. Where is it usually stored to? Also, can I store it to my Time Capsule or hard drive?' -
Unless you have specifically set up remote viewing to SecuritySpy, which involves setting up your router, then your SecuritySpy system cannot be accessed from the internet.
By default, SecuritySpy captures files to your hard drive in the location ~/Documents/SecuritySpy/Captured files/ (the "~" refers to your home directory). You can change this to a different drive, including a mounted network drive, using the "Capture destination" setting in the Setup section of the Camera Settings window.
