Gadgetory

whenever you're away from home on vacation or traveling for work you might be a little worried or at least curious about what's going on while you're away or maybe you want to keep an eye on your office area or even monitor your child while you're in another room all of these problems can be solved with a little video surveillance companies will charge you hundreds if not thousands of dollars to set this up but if you're looking for a quick and dirty solution I've got you covered I'm Sharon Vaknin for cnet with a guy to turning any webcam into a video surveillance camera that you can monitor with your tablet or smartphone to show you how all of this works I'm going to use my laptop to monitor my desk area because i'm pretty sure someone's been swiping gum off my desk when i'm not around to get started you'll need to install a piece of software on any computer you want to use as a camera and an app on your tablet or smartphone head to your computer and download icam source it's free and you can grab it from skj mcom once its installed start the program and select your webcam from the drop-down list next to video source now before you hit start create a login username and password use one that you'll remember but make sure it's secure enough so that no one especially friends and family can crack it when you're done click start you'll likely be prompted to let icam through your firewall click allow access to continue now repeat this installation for every webcam you want to use for surveillance if you want to add additional cameras or want to use something a little more discreet than a computer consider purchasing IP cameras there's standalone cameras that can connect to your network and stream the surveillance setup instructions for using one with I cam are available on the website but for my purpose using my work computer's webcam is good enough now grab your phone or tablet and install the I cam app on your device that's how we'll monitor my computer's webcam there are apps available for Android and iPhone so just search for I cam in your App Store when you launch the app for the first time it'll ask you if you want to receive push modifications that's up to you but I'm enabling it so when I came to text motion I'll get a push notification almost immediately now enter your login hit done and you can start monitoring right away all right now that it's all set up let's put it to work I'm going to put my laptop back up my desk and see what happens while i'm away maybe I'll finally identify the perp you owes me a pack or two of gum alright with I came running at my desk and the app on my iPad I'll wait to see if it detects any motion all right I got an alert so we'll open up the app and there she is looks like Karina I will be having a little discussion later today now a couple of things for this whole setup to work the computers you'll be using for surveillance need to stay on and connected to the Internet and since the stills I can records when it detects motion are kept on the computer that sees them you won't be able to access those images while you're away to get around this consider putting the icam source motion events folder in your dropbox so you can access them anywhere if you have any questions hit me up on Twitter and subscribe to my facebook page for more tips like this for cnet I'm Sharon Vaknin