Burgler Caught with Webcam and Windows Software   2/17/2005 - 2,202 views, 2 Comments

Duncan Grisby, a British software engineer, had thought the webcam-based security system up three years ago…just before his house was in fact burgled. Unfortunately, at that time he had not actually set the system up.

But this time, when Benjamin Park came a’burgling, Grisby’s system was ready.

Grisby says that he used a regular webcam, some free software, and a bit of extra programming to set up his system, but, he adds, “There are lots of products for Windows that you can use to do this.”

Basically the way it works is this: the webcam is set to turn itself on when it detects motion, and to record whatever is in its line of vision (lots of webcams and software now support motion detection). In addition, however, the reason that Park was caught even though he stole the computer with the webcam still attached, was because Grisby had set his system up to email the pictures to an offsite email address! Brilliant!

The British police thought so too, saying that “When the break-in was discovered Mr Grisby simply gave us the email address and we were able to watch several minutes of footage and say, `That’s Ben Park’. Mr Grisby is an extremely bright man. He’d set this up because he’d been burgled some years ago and the quality was superb.” (Want to know how to do this yourself? Leo Notenboom, of Ask-Leo.com, has instructions for creating your own webcam motion detector!)

Added Detective Sargeant Page “The webcam made our job really easy. It was a pleasure to show him the pictures and see his expression when we interviewed him.”

Aunty bets that it was!

Unfortunately, Mr. Grisby is still out several thousand dollars worth of property with which Park had made off.