{"id":170,"date":"2013-01-23T03:45:03","date_gmt":"2013-01-23T03:45:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lviv.treffle.com\/journal\/?p=170"},"modified":"2013-01-23T04:02:52","modified_gmt":"2013-01-23T04:02:52","slug":"review-home-surveillance-software","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lviv.treffle.com\/journal\/?p=170","title":{"rendered":"Review: home surveillance software!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><meta http-equiv=\"Content-Type\" content=\"text\/html; charset=UTF-8\" \/><meta http-equiv=\"Content-Style-Type\" content=\"text\/css\" \/><meta name=\"Generator\" content=\"Cocoa HTML Writer\" \/><meta name=\"CocoaVersion\" content=\"1038.25\" \/><\/p>\n<style type=\"text\/css\"><!--\np.p1 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica}\np.p2 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica; min-height: 14.0px}\n--><\/style>\n<p><em>Chers Lecteurs<\/em>, I just had to come back to tell you about an awesome discovery. And yes, I will finish the Hong Kong story one day too. But first, this review.<\/p>\n<p>I think I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve settled on my home surveillance software and it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s called Xeoma. As part of my prepping, I had been thinking about setting up a surveillance system for quite a while; recently I decided to just start somewhere and build one up. So I got started.<\/p>\n<p>Where to start?<\/p>\n<p>I had an USB webcam lying around, so I mounted it in an inconspicuous spot where it covered the front of the house pretty well. So far so good, but what next? I needed some software. I figured I&#8217;d need to:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>capture video when something\/someone is detected approaching the house<\/li>\n<li>record video files locally and send them offsite<\/li>\n<li>forward a live stream so I can view it remotely<\/li>\n<li>trigger on motion detection to reduce the data avalanche<\/li>\n<li>manage multiple cameras with separate configuration and policy settings<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6and I wanted to do all this on a Macintosh. I looked around for a solution, first trying a few free webcam apps &#8212; that was fun at first but didn&#8217;t come close to addressing my laundry list. Next I looked at SecuritySpy, which seemed excellent and professional\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 but ouch, what a price tag: hundreds of dollars for a minimal system. (And it has some really obnoxious features in the trial version!)<\/p>\n<p>Next I looked at a few other free or demo webcam apps, but again found them lacking.<\/p>\n<p>Then I found Xeoma. Wow, those clever Russians! This software is reasonably priced ($20 and up) and seems to address all my needs:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>monitor multiple cameras<\/li>\n<li>motion detection with various configuration and masking options<\/li>\n<li>send to various destinations including files, FTP servers, webservers, etc.<\/li>\n<li>alarms, app launch, and various other filters and features<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><meta http-equiv=\"Content-Type\" content=\"text\/html;charset=UTF-8\" \/><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-thumbnail wp-image-171\" alt=\"xeoma_graph\" src=\"https:\/\/www.lviv.treffle.com\/journal\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/01\/xeoma_graph-150x150.png\" width=\"150\" height=\"150\" \/><\/p>\n<p>The drag-and-drop filter graph that configures your system is very intuitive and easy to use. For example, this graph routes a single camera to a motion detector, then on to the preview\/archive module (the top path) and also through a timestamp filter and to a file output module. The raw camera output (not filtered by the motion detector) is also output using the web server module. The whole setup took less than a minute to do.<\/p>\n<p>Sadly, the user interface and documentation is a bit challenged for English clarity. (Like the control labeled &#8220;file storage time&#8221;\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 is this how often to store files? How long to keep them? When they are updated? It is not clear.) But these problems are very minor, and overall I had no problem figuring it out.<\/p>\n<p>I have ordered an infrared camera, and am looking forward to building out my Xeoma-based home security system. If you want to check out Xeoma yourself, download the free trial version (Win, Mac, or Linux) at:<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/felenasoft.com\/xeoma\/en\/download\/\">http:\/\/felenasoft.com\/xeoma\/en\/download\/<\/a><\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m going to \u00c2\u00a0get a bunch of cheap USB and IP cameras, and this software is going to let me set up a really decent system for super cheap!\u00c2\u00a0I love this thing. Earlier today I came home, went into the study, and then watched myself come home! Good fun. Now, back to playing with my Xeoma system.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Chers Lecteurs, I just had to come back to tell you about an awesome discovery. And yes, I will finish the Hong Kong story one day too. But first, this review. I think I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve settled on my home surveillance software and it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s called Xeoma. As part of my prepping, I had been thinking about setting [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-170","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lviv.treffle.com\/journal\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/170","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lviv.treffle.com\/journal\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lviv.treffle.com\/journal\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lviv.treffle.com\/journal\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lviv.treffle.com\/journal\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=170"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lviv.treffle.com\/journal\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/170\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lviv.treffle.com\/journal\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=170"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lviv.treffle.com\/journal\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=170"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lviv.treffle.com\/journal\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=170"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}