Darkwoods Media & More!!

I got a pleasant surprise this afternoon when Tim contacted me about the progress of the Darkwoods Media project. It's alive!! Yes folks, Http://www.darkwoodsmedia.com is the place to take a peek. Kudos to Tim for his hard work!

Let me draw your attention to the phrase or term "360 x 24".
It's easy to understand if you grasp the concept. 360 degrees x 24 hours.
And where this applies is video footage and audio recording. Advances in recording technology makes it really cheap to get a multi-channel DVR going and this could end up being the eyes needed to keep a lookout when human eyes just aren't around.
It's hard to grasp the concept of having to sit down and review hours of video that may show absolutely nothing so a DVR that has a motion sensing capability would be a great benefit, however, we fall into the same problem that we often see with trail cameras. The trigger time.
And so we keep this in the back of our mind when setting up a monitored perimeter. Just one more thing to consider.

A "monitored perimeter" you ask? Well, yes, but probably not to the extent of what you might think. It's simply a way of describing an area that has most, if not all of the entry and exit points monitored to the extent that it would be very hard to bypass the setup without detection. And so we are looking at a very good chance of catching something - anything - that approaches and this is what we are kicking ourselves about with regards to the "breather" audio that was recorded during one of our Still River trips. A quick recap, the three of us that were on this trip took off for just over an hour down the road to check out another trail and we setup a call-blast that went off every 30 seconds. We setup a recorder to see if we could get a response and we heard something that came into the area, apparently breathing and walking around the camp. Creepy!!!

Anyways going back to the "monitored perimeter" thing...Can you imagine having a video surveillance perimeter with audio capabilities setup to monitor all point of your camp? North, West, East & South. Or take it one step further. I call it the "Escher" setup.

M.C. Escher was an artist who created some thrilling and stimulating pieces of work that challenged logic and the human eye. They were puzzles in some respects...can you see the beginning or is the beginning the end? The art that never stops. Google Escher and take a peek. Look at "Drawing Hands" or check out some of his waterfall pieces. Wonderful. So what has this got to do with video surveillance ? Well going back to the "Escher" setup...it's the way that one thing leads to another...to another...to another...back to the beginning - oh wait? There really is no beginning.

Yes, that's right. Take a box. Say a trailer. Mount a camera on each corner of the trailer, each camera is pointed to the next. Wide angle camera's are probably best but you can make due...

Pictured below, each arrow is a camera. Can you tell the start or the finish? No - it's a circle. It covers all ground around the perimeter.
Looks kinda neat eh? If you look at some industrial facilities you will notice that the cameras are setup this way so that everything is covered in a full continuous rotation, 360 degrees. And of course, say for whatever reason a camera gets knocked out of commission, the reason for it will be recorded by the other cameras. Nothing will be out of view.

It would also be neat to take a telescoping pole and erect it on top or very close to the trailer with a wide-angled camera looking down and capturing everything. Now we really have the entire camp covered. The pole mounted camera is not a necessity but would be nice. In reality, we really only need 4 cams around the camp to keep an eye on everything. Fed into a DVR, we are good to go. How many people actually do this? What if we made a "imaginary" trailer - but say it was the entire camp. All the cameras were arranged in the Escher format. Would this work? Yeah quite possibly but it falls back to camera resolution, quality, IR projection range (for night video) and sound recording capabilities to cover the area.

So thinking about it, a small investment and a smart setup might lead to a better chance of capturing something. And even if you don't, the effort made will help to put your mind at ease that you are point in the right direction, trying to secure the audio and video of your camp. I mean, wouldn't you want to know what's "lingering around" out there?

Have a good one!!!!