My car was splattered with paint and scratched outside my parents house, and now the head has been ripped off the Tigger cuddly toy wired onto the front of the work van, wiper blades messed up and various other things have been happening.
They want to get a CCTV camera to try and catch the little *******(insert your chosen word here)
Can anyone recommend one that will film 24 hours a day, it needs to have a good vision length and be small and relatively inexpensive?
I have looked at the one in Argos for £39.99 but havent a clue where to start.
Thank you :)
Lea :)

I don't have a camera recommendation but I do think your parents should talk to their local Crime Prevention team and to their Neighbourhood Watch coordinators if they have one. If they don't have NW perhaps they could look at starting one.

Hopefully this wil get them some good advice about how to tackle the problem as well as getting some information about the types of camera (and footage) that might be most useful

Thank you.
The pcso.s spoke to us about it and suggested getting a camera so they can have proof.
Lea :-)

Sorry to hear that Lea - I know what it feels like - when we built our new house we decided to put cameras up and my husband did a lot of research into them.  Our parking area is out of sight of the windows of the house and I never really thought that we would get trouble - thought I would be spotting folks that let their dogs run on to our front and do their business!  However within a couple of weeks moving in we had an idiot throw stones at our window and pick up a traffic cone and throw it on my car.  He then tried to bounce the other car to set off the alarm and tried to break down our fence before throwing a few more things around.  Meg went mad at this noise but by the time I got downstairs the guy had gone.  We could see what he was wearing and what he was doing.  Luckily he had already tried to park his 'friend's' car on our drive - which he couldn't do because a flower pot was in the way (he tipped it) so he ended up 'hiding' the car next door.  In the morning our neighbours blocked the car in so the owner had to come to apologise.  He was at this 'friends' (some friend) party and they had taken his car as a joke.  As we had already phoned the police in the night we were able to tell them where to go.  The policeman told the culprit that he had been on cctv and he admitted it.  So if you are relying on just cctv then it may not be good enough - just a deterrent maybe.  I was able to see exactly what had happened though and the connection between the culprit and the car.  Oh by the way - this was about 3 o'clock in the morning.

Just to add that we had a local company come and look at our system - it is 3 years old now and he was going to come back to tell us how we could upgrade it.  He never has come back so I suspect that it can't be done.  Don't know that for a fact though - we just haven't chased him up - not a very good way to run a business - we have lost confidence in him now.

Thank you Ceejay, shows it can help.
Just want to catch them.
No closer to finding a system!!
LEa :)

No help but oh dear! How horrible! Especially knowing how spotless your car is kept! :(

Have a look for a system on ebay
My daughter bought one for about100 pounds it included twp cameras and works really well via a small tv

You need one which records either 24hrs or has a sensor which triggers recording, this needs to be down to a computer which you can easily access and download onto a disc.
Also having infer red night mode also helps.

Do you have a Maplins near you? They are good for advice.
The positioning of the cameras is paramount.

We have been after getting something sorted and went to Maplins and they were next to useless ! They didn't listen to what we wanted or gave and constructive advice. They just seemed to want to seek some old stock off so we walked out.

I then contacted a local security company and they have me this quote. It is to full install inside wiring and all connections to a server we would provide and all outside wiring as well. This would be for 4 camera set up :shock: we nearly fell over when we got the quote !

Equipment:
A 4-way DVR unit. 500GB
Two fixed external bullet type cameras with IRs
One PSU for the cameras.
One 17" LCD Monitor.

Cost = £2,477.00 plus VAT (Includes NSI Certificate of Compliance).

I'll ask hubby what system we have at home, I can't get hold of him til after 4pm today but it was nowhere near that quote.  It is also a nightvision camera .... sorry to be a bit vague at the moment but I'll post back once I know the name

I would be tempted to have a look at horsey/farm type suppliers - they tend to do foaling cams and the like

You won't need a monitor if you already have a pc screen. The rest I'd agree with, however I'm sure you'd find cheaper if you got all items and had an electrician set it up. Worth pricing it all up separately

You will if where you want to see and monitor is not going to be where your PC screen is located which is the case for us :-)

Hi again,

ours is called a Y-Cam, detects any movement and will start recording to a SD card or a network drive, but can be set up to record to Cloud storage. 

I've got one of these from Maplin and it's excellent, great night vision, it can record directly onto a memory card slotted in the side of the screen, and if you plug the screen into your internet modem, you can view live images on your mobile phone

http://www.maplin.co.uk/digital-wireless-camera-and-touch-screen-network-dvr-with-smartphone-viewing-629999