Web-Linked Cameras Let Parents Play Big Brother

TAIPEI (Reuters) - Big Brother is getting a whole lot of little siblings.

New surveillance cameras allow anyone with a broadband Internet connection to keep a 24-hour watch on nearly anything from anywhere.

Want to monitor your house from the office? Connect one of the cameras to an Ethernet or wireless computer network at home, then navigate your browser to a Web site linked to an Internet address assigned to the camera.

These Internet protocol (IP) cameras, made by companies including Cisco Systems Inc's Linksys unit and Sweden's Axis Communications, function as stand-alone servers that stream video over the Web.

In Europe alone, IP cameras are expected to account for about 20 percent of a surveillance market forecast to be worth 376.5 million euros ($460 million) in annual sales by 2008, up from less than five percent today, according to IMS Research.

"It's going to be one of the biggest trends in the surveillance market over the next few years without a doubt," said Simon Harris, a senior IMS analyst. "The companies that don't have good product offerings for (Internet) network surveillance are going to lose market share."

In a sign of the market's growth, the organizers of last week's Computex computer trade show in Taipei set up a security pavilion for the first time, populated by about 25 vendors.

Systems ran the range from simple configurations allowing parents to check on their children, to 16-camera networks providing multi-point remote surveillance of office buildings.

Extra bells and whistles included cameras controlled via the Internet to scan a room, systems that trigger remote alarms when motion is detected, and ones whose views are accessible over cellphones and wireless personal digital assistants (PDAs).

Such systems offer the advantage of relative affordability, since they use existing broadband infrastructure. Off-the-shelf software-equipped cameras cost just US$200-$300 apiece, said vendors at Computex, most of them smaller firms. More consumer oriented models, such as the Linksys model, can cost even less.

Broadband-based systems are also more easily integrated with related systems that regulate functions such as access control, said Jill Chu, a sales specialist with G-Star Communications Inc.

A drawback is the complexity of setting up systems, said Jin Whan, a product engineer at 3JTech Co Ltd.
"The configuration is the hard part, but once you get that figured out the operation is easy," he said at Computex.

For that reason, most of 3JTech's biggest customers so far have been specialty security companies, such as Napco Security Systems Inc, a supplier to Tyco International Ltd's ADT Security Systems Inc.

"Sales are picking up gradually," Whan said. "There's more and more people asking for IP cameras. The technology is getting more accepted because people are moving to the Internet more." (US$1=0.8188 euro)