What would be your idea of the perfect camera surveillance setup you could imagine?  Maybe you haven't give much consideration to such a system, and perhaps your wondering what would be my interest in setting up such a thing.  Have no fear, I'm not some kind of wierdo looking to spy on my neighbours or perfect strangers.  At least that's not my intent.  I have however given some thought to what I think would be a really cool camera surveillance system to create, and what where I would use it.

Now, some of this technology is available today, and some of it isn't.  As well, some of this setup will require a little DIY sort of installation.  You see, I wasn't planning on setting up a system at my home, or at my office, but instead at my boat.  You see, I keep my 30 foot sailboat at a marina that is about an hour from my home.  So, for most of the boating season, by boat sits in a basin with about 50 other boats with nobody using it.  Generally the marina is used most heavily on the weekend, so during the week there aren't very many people to watch the boats.

There are lots of boaters, that worry about their boats constantly while they're sitting there unprotected.  Setting up a security camera, video recording device, and some sort of internet connection, on my boat, should allow me and others to check on our boat 7 days a week, 24 hours a day.  Plus, it would be sort of fun in a geeky way to setup just such a technical security.

One of the cool features I'd like to integrate into this project, is to tie the surveillance cameras into the electronics network on the boat.  There is a network of electronics on the boat, that include GPS, chart plotting, wind indicators, and water temperature sensors.  This equipment is already connect to each other, and I think it would be cool to integrated it into the security system as well.  It doesn't use a typical IP network protocol, as most of the equipment is by Raymarine, and uses a protocol knows as SeaTalk.  It's proprietary to RayMarine.  But, where there's a will, there's a way. 

There are also other sensors on the boat, that monitor battery power and bildge water detectors.  Those would also be cool to tie into the system.

I'd also like to incorporate some of the more advanced PTZ camera security features that are available.  Motion detection would be pretty cool.  So, if the boat started moving around a lot, then it could trigger the camera, or possibly alerts.  Motion security sensors would also be kind of cool for picking up people that were coming near the boat.  Having the camera pan, tilt or zoom towards the source of motion would be slick.

Audio receiving and transmitting from the cameras would be a cool feature as well.  Imagine watching your boat / car / home from a web interface off site, and initiating a conversation with someone that's getting too close to or messing with your gear.  "Hey you, Mr Burglar, get away from my boat.  Go steal my neighbors boat, it's much nicer than mine."  That would totally freak people out don't you think.

Of course, the system would have to send me email alerts, or SMS text messages when it detected someone in the vicinity of my stuff.  I do have better things to do all day, than to monitor my high-tech-make-James-Bond-jealous camera surveillance system.  Like dreaming up the next features to add to my security setup.