Turn Your Home Computer Into a Surveillance System

A great way to protect your home is to install security cameras. However, a multi camera surveillance system with recording, night vision and professional installation can easily run upwards of a thousand dollars or more. A relatively inexpensive option is to use your home or spare computer as the center point of your home based surveillance system.

Computer

If your home computer was purchased within the last 5 years or so, then most likely it is a good candidate. A Multi Channel Digital Video Recorder (DVR) PCI Card is the major component that you would need to add to your computer. The minimum specs for a candidate computer would be 500mb of RAM (memory), 60 GB or more of hard drive space (recorded video storage), 1 GHz processor, video card (with 32mb or more video memory) and an available PCI slot.

DVR PCI Card

A DVR PCI card can be purchased through most online consumer electronics retailers like Amazon, Newegg, Tiger Direct or even eBay. Which card you choose depends on the features and functions your willing to pay for.