You know those wireless IP cameras? I bet they could be put to some good urbex uses if you can find them cheap enough.

The correct situation though would probably be rare. You would need:
-A location you want to monitor
-Be willing to potentially loose a working camera.
-Unsecure wireless in the area or your own nearby wireless network
-Electricity and a good hiding place with a good view of the area

If you hide that thing well enough, you could watch the watchers. That would be awesome for learning:

-When security patrols
-How active the site really is
-What urbexer really pooped on the model
-How many crackheads really live there
-Free crackhead pr0n
-purposely setting off an alarm to see the response, etc, etc.


We all know what it's like at these locations when we're there, but I wonder what really happens when we're not?

I had thought of setting one up at the Don Valley Brickworks awhile ago. I was looking at putting one up with a built in battery and try to affix a solar panel to it. Only reason you'd want to stay "off the grid" is so that if it is found, and somehow gets traced back to you, they can't nail you with theft (stealing hydro).

The biggest hurdle in this location is the availability of a way to transmit the data back (no un-secured wifi).

One idea I also had was a camera with a built in recorder on say an SD card. Pop in a 2 gig card and you could record weeks of video (assuming it only activated upon detecting motion). However I don't know if such a beast exists, and if it did, it'd likely be expensive!

I'd be okay with loosing a 50 dollar camera, but I'd be a bit pissed off if it was 250...

All good thoughts. As for the recording only when there is movement, that has to be possible on at least some average consumer models. My POS webcam from 1995 can. If it only recorded motion, you could set the quality a little higher higher too.



Hah, it'd be great to get text messaged pics/video on activity it picks any up. Especially if you're in the site. It's be cool to know if someone else is there besides you at the same time in the bldg.