My dad is looking at getting a IP camera for his shop, and to hook up the camera to the network at the shop into his network with broadband (256/64), and then i started thinking (bad idea ) that could it be possible to record the video captured onto a network storage disk here at home on my network so that i could use the disk too (i have a 128k ISDN connection), or failing that....a NAS at the shop...it wouldn't have to be a live stream of video, just a photo every 30 seconds or so....so that he could go back and see the previous month or so for security purposes....would this be possible? i doubt that it is possible....but i just thought i would see if anyone here knew if it would work...

It depends on the setup. Some cameras will allow you to save images.
For others, you'd need a PC to fetch the images and then save them.
Either way, you're probably better off to have the NAS where the camera is... A photo every 30 seconds, all day, is a lot of photos to be sending over a small DSL/ISDN connection. And you've got to consider whether the traffic would be counting to any usage limits.
I'd look into getting an IP camera that can save to a network drive.
A friend of mine has a similar setup, except the used a proper security camera connected to a capture card in an old PC. That machine is now a dedicated camera recording box. The software allows them to skip through the day (it records the date/time to go along with the images) and can be set o only record when there is motion etc...

yea....i think it would be best to do it with the NAS at the shop too...and just log into the NAS somehow from home to retrive the images. BTW....would you happen to know the name of the software that adds the date and time?

Not off hand, but I think it was from the company that made the capture card. It was one of those PCI dealies with about 4 composite video inputs. They're only made by a handful of companies...
Let me know if you can't find it... I'll see if I can find out from my friend in the mean time.

Swan is the only one i know of

do you mean the software or the camera?

I've seen Swann hardware, so I assume they make (or at least licence) the software.
(http://www.swann.com.au)

spilla,

You might want to look into a piece of software called SecuritySpy, which is an OS X application for control, viewing and recording of all types of security cameras, ranging from locally connected iSight cameras right through to network IP cameras.

I have a proof of concept solution which I am currently building into production for my shop / office - basically a number of wired IP cameras (you can use the wireless types also, but as it's easier to run Cat5 than 240v, Power over Ethernet is my preferred option to drive the cameras) that live on a dedicated IP subnet shared with one interface on an XServe. The SecuritySpy software on the XServe coordinates all of the cameras and provides the following:

*Motion-activated recording on all cameras out-of-hours (stored to the XServe's HDDs)
*Time lapse recording on selected cameras during work hours (stored to the XServe's HDDs)
*Web access to view live camera footage (restricted to VPN connections, but that's another issue)
*Email notification of motion activations out of hours
*A cool dashboard widget that lets you view life footage (ie for monitoring the front door if we are working in the back office and no other staff are around)

The software will also FTP images to a server if required, so if you don't pay to transfer data from the shop to your home you could set that up also.

Note - I'm not affiliated with the SecuritySpy software in any way, just a fan of the product.

James

i would love to use that solution james, but it may be a little out of the budget....(only about $400)....and also....i think that dad has going to forget about it until i get back from the US....so maybe by then his budget may have increased....