I would love to hear some recommendations for video surveillance systems or single camera.
Recently had someone I know vandalise some of my property but was not able to catch them in the act. Don't really want a massive setup with cables. Would prefer a camera that I could leave sitting in a front window that will record to a SD card or to a HD. Ideally would like it to work at night and 20m distance would be nice.
Would you prefer to catch them in the act, or just prevent them from doing any more damage? If the second, stick a fake camera up in plain sight. One of those darkened half globe things will do.
Have a look at the Logitech Alert cameras. Very easy to set up, runs Ethernet over power lines, with the camera powered by the EoP adaptor. It records to microSD. When you switch your computer on and run the program, footage will be transferred to the computer.
20m night vision might be pushing it though. You can add an IR floodlight to help it though.
The 750n have pretty wide angle (compared to some other brands/models)
Yup, they look like 2.8mm lenses (1/3" equiv).
You won't be able to ID people from 20m, but at least you can see what's going on.
Lighting will have to be external as infra red lighting doesn't pass through glass.
IR passes through untinted glass - if you look at any night vision CCTV camera, the LEDs are all behind glass. A remote control can also control a bluray player that's behind a glass door. Tinting will reduce the range.
Having it shine through the same glass pane is asking for glare though. If the window has more than one pane of glass (like [+]), the IR spot/floodlight can point out through a different one. Otherwise it would have to be external.
Make sure the camera's LEDs can be disabled though, and that the camera supports night vision. The camera's IR-cut filter has to be moved out of the way for IR to work.
Some dlink network cameras have motion detection and send an email with pictures of the event.
d-link and logitech are generally expensive for what you get.
The first thing you need to ask yourself is if you want to be able to identify them with their face, this will generally exclude a lot of cameras as the picture quality is low.
Yeah, I would only consider the Logitech system if wiring was a problem. That's the main thing it has going for it - PoE EoP adaptors. Apart from that they're just OK in terms of quality as the resolution is quite low for a 2.8mm equiv. They're super-easy to set up though.
I think wifi should only be a last resort as they're the easiest to interfere with, or access points might need rebooting, or something.
If running CAT5/6 isn't an issue, I'd look into Hikvision IP cameras. Excellent bang-for-buck, and you can choose a 12mm lens to zoom in to the action. They can also run with EoP (Homeplug) adaptors if you power the camera separately with a 12V adaptor.
If ID'ing is necessary, everything becomes a lot more critical as you have to take into account lighting, exposure settings, focal lengths, minimum shutter speeds, pixels per meter, camera height, etc..
PoE etc isn't hard to get with other products however.
WIFI works fine, even my cheap $50 Kogan cameras haven't missed a beat, and I use these outdoors on 2.4ghz.
If ID'ing is necessary the average person will need a lot of assistance, the average camera, even if its 1080p will have trouble with it.
PoE isn't hard to get, but EoP PoE adaptors like the one that comes with the Logitech isn't easily available. It's a Homeplug power-over-Ethernet adaptor that also supplies PoE to the remote camera.
Of course you could just use a PoE injector or run a separate 12V cable to it, but that's no longer a neat out-of-the-box solution which seems to be what the OP is after.
1080p with the correct lens to suit the area will be more than enough to ID people. Analog CCTV cameras have been doing it for a long time, after all.
I've got wifi Axis and cheapo cameras which work fine for what they are, but you can't really get good quality cameras with wifi. Constantly streaming video over wifi will also take up your wifi network bandwidth. I run a separate AP just for the cameras.
My point is the average 1080p camera is blurry, does poorly in low lighting etc.
You have to know which 1080p cameras actually produce good images.
If you have an old Android phone laying about, that could be the answer. Lots of motion detect apps in the android market.