Conventional closed circuit television systems (CCTV) tend to have quite large and obvious cameras attached permanently to buildings. These cameras require both power and signal cables, therefore are harder to relocate if in the wrong place. The images are recorded on tape or some form of digital media such as the hard drive on a local computer.

Consider these two scenarios for a moment.

Scenario 1
It's 3 am in the morning and the location is a car park outside a country golf club. Two thieves get out of their car dressed in black and wearing gloves. There's nobody around for miles, therefore they take their time raiding the golf pro’s shop. The CCTV system is working and recording images on the tape. However, the thieves already know the position of the cameras having visited the pro shop weeks ago, so the first thing they do after breaking in is to cut the camera wires. By 3.30 am they are packed up and gone with a five figure sum of golf gear.

The Greenkeeper arrives at 6.30 am and raises the alarm. By then the thieves have had 3 hours to escape. Police arrive and go through the CCTV tapes which takes another hour as the tapes have not been indexed properly. They eventually get 10 seconds of poor quality images from the tapes then nothing, as the thieves ripped the cameras out.

Scenario 2
It’s 3 am in the morning again, and the location is the same remote car park outside the golf club. Two thieves get out of their car dressed in black and wearing gloves. Small wireless cameras mounted in a dummy bird boxes detect unusual movement, and sensors are picking up body heat. The FoneCam system automatically starts taking digital photographs every 5 seconds and at the same time the system sends an SMS text message to the golf club pro’s mobile phone to say something is wrong at the shop. The Pro picks up his mobile phone from his bedside,  logs on to the FoneCam system and views the images (taken only 2 minutes ago) on his phone. The images of the thieves car and the two offenders are displayed on his mobile phone and he alerts the police with their descriptions.

Additional hidden cameras in and around the shop continue to capture digital images from different angles which are later used to help convict the raiders. This time, the police are alerted to the raid within 5 minutes of the thieves arriving at the club, and within 30 minutes they track them down and make an arrest.

Now you might be thinking, yeah right, too good to be true, but click on Introduction to read on.