68 November 2014
HOW IT WORKS
Video monitoring is also known
as video surveillance. You’ve
already experienced it yourself as
you have passed one of the millions
of closed circuit surveillance
cameras mounted everywhere
these days. Someone may be
watching a monitor, but more likely
the camera feed is being recorded
for future viewing. Such cameras
are usually connected by coax or
twisted pair cable to the
surveillance center, but more and
more wireless links are being used.
Many are now using the Internet to
monitor things remotely. You can
do that, too. What used to be
expensive and tricky is now
common place and affordable.
Remote home monitoring can be
achieved with a low cost camera and
a remote viewing device like a
smartphone, tablet, or laptop. The
camera links to your home Wi-Fi
router and connects it to the Internet
by way of your cable TV or DSL
connection. Then, using an app, the
smartphone miraculously connects to
your home router via your cellular
carrier and Internet provider, and
voila’! You can see what your camera
is seeing. Figure 1 shows my iPhone
looking at the camera feed outside
my home.
HOW TO DO IT
My experience is with the D-Link
DCS-825L baby camera (Figure 2). It
is sold as a baby monitor, but you
ideo has gotten so
good and so cheap,
everyone is using it.
People are regularly
posting their cell phone
videos on YouTube and
sending them as texts
and emails. Others are
taking action videos in
HD using one of the
small popular video
cams like the GoPro.
And who isn’t
streaming Netflix
videos these days?
There is one more
growing video trend:
video monitoring. It is
now easy to do and
very economical.
Thanks to the Internet
of Things (IoT)
movement, you can do
this yourself affordably.
Video Monitoring Over the Internet
Affordable remote viewing with your smartphone.
V
; BY LOU FRENZEL W5LEF OPEN COMMUNICATION
THE LATEST IN NETWORKING AND WIRELESS TECHNOLOGIES
; FIGURE 1. With the iPhone
or Android app, you can see
what the camera sees from
anywhere there is a cellular or
Wi-Fi connection. This is me
monitoring the front porch on
an iPhone5.
