Video recording outside the home

June 3, 2018 10:25 PM

I need to start recording street activity outside of my home. How do I do this?

For reasons, I need to set up a video camera to record activity during the day and night outside my home. I'd prefer not to have it wired and would like for it only to save one days worth of recordings at a time, but have the ability to download the video as needed. How do I do this?

Specifics: I could either attach it to my house or set it up from a window inside pointing out. I have access to wifi and would prefer to not have anything outside be wired. If it has batteries, a long battery-life would be preferred as I just don't have time to change batteries. I don't think a motion detector video would work because it would be on all the time due to the amount of activity on the street. I'm not willing to sink a whole lot of money into this. Is this possible?

posted by Toddles to Technology (5 answers total)

If you want it recording continuously, you need something that's A/C powered, which from the sound of things means inside. There's any number of budget webcams that will work for that. You probably want something that saves locally to a microSD card but has a web interface to view and download the files.
posted by Candleman at 10:56 PM on June 3, 2018

If you have a tablet or spare cell phone the app ManyThing can do this.
posted by jbenben at 11:01 PM on June 3, 2018

One of these with a microSD card to store locally, and record in Standard Definition. You should be able to get more than a day with a 32GB microSD card. There's a way to toggle between motion recording and continuous recording in the setup app. Yes, you'd have it inside, but I have one and it works well for a similar application.
posted by deezil at 4:27 AM on June 4, 2018 [1 favorite]

But beware of privacy issues on some cams, such as the Wyze one linked to. Read the 1-star reviews on Amazon, here, which talk about the cam sending data to unknown IP addresses, and the smart-phone app requiring excessive permissions to access data on your phone.
posted by at at 8:38 AM on June 4, 2018

Note that not all memory cards are rated for continuous duty in a video camera. Transcend High Endurance is one that is, there are a few others. These are more expensive than regular duty cards of the same size.
posted by a halcyon day at 9:40 PM on June 4, 2018