At the heart of a webcam surveillance system is a special software that uses webcam as its eyes. It's the brain of the webcam security system much like the control panel to conventional security system. These softwares can record the video from the webcams into the computer disk for later viewing by the user. One of the system's main advantage is that user can connect to the webcam at home from a remote location through the internet or a local area network (LAN). Parents can check on their kids from the office to see whether the nanny is treating the kids nicely.

More advanced software has a built in motion detector. The images from the webcam are analyzed using special algorithm that is able to tell from the image whether there's any movement within the field of view of the webcam. Softwares with motion detection capability offer the feature to only record the video when motion is detected. This can significantly reduce the amount of disk space used and also enable the user to view the video of the event directly rather than browsing through the hours of video to see if anything happened when the user is not around. What is important is the video recording of events and not when there's nothing happening.

Depending on the software's capability, some can even give you a call to inform you that motion is detected or send an email to you with the image attached.

The quality of webcams used plays an important role with softwares that has motion detection capability. A below average webcam will produce poor quality images and will significantly affect the capability of the software. Even so, false alarms are not as critical as false alarms caused by conventional security system. The worst that can happen is you getting a lot of phone calls from home but with conventional system, you can get fined by the authority for being a nuisance to your neighbors. Bare in mind constant phone calls from home can be very irritating when it's caused by false alarms. So, it's advisable to get a good webcam.

A very important factor you should take into consideration before buying one is the sensor type of the webcam. There are 2 types of sensor, charged coupled device (CCD) and complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS). If you intent to use the webcam in poorly illuminated room, go for CCD sensors.

CCD vs CMOS

To help you choose a good surveillance software, check out the review of the softwares by following the link below or download the free webcam surveillance software from the download section.

Review of web surveillance softwares.

Webcams resources:
Jr.com
Bizrate.com
walmart.com