iSpy

Surveillance equipment is quite expensive, but you can't risk leaving your home, shop or storage space without some form of security. An excellent solution to this predicament is iSpy, an open-source surveillance application with many useful features. You can improvise your own security system, complete with motion detection and alerts, without spending a fortune and without relying on professionals to set everything up.

iSpy is an open-source project, and you can use the application for free. There is also a paid subscription-based service, which gives you even more advantages. It's a lightweight installation, so you don't have to wait too long to download it and set it up on your system. Furthermore, the software doesn't require any special tools or services to run, and you don't need powerful hardware to use it.

The program has a lot to offer in terms of functionality, and the best part is that it's quite easy to master, despite the large number of options you have to go through. The main window is kept neat and tidy, so beginners won't be scared away when they run the software for the first time. It presents your camera feeds on the upper half, while the lower half is where you will find recordings, as well as a series of options for enabling alerts, recording, scheduling tasks and more.

iSpy supports a wide range of input devices, from webcams to professional surveillance cameras and microphones. If they are properly connected, the software will recognize them automatically, and you will be able to add their feeds without any effort. Once you add a feed, iSpy will bring up its options panel, on which you can decide how the camera should be used and how the program should react to different events. It is also possible to add video files as separate inputs, which is useful if you need to analyze footage that was recorded by another system.

Of course, one of the software's main strengths lies in its motion detection capabilities, for which you get to play around with many useful options. For example, you can have iSpy monitor the entire video feed, but you can also set it to watch for motion in a particular region. It is also possible to set a sensitivity level, to avoid triggering an alarm when the light changes or a leaf is blown through the scene.

Speaking of alarms, the software doesn't leave much to be desired when it comes to reacting to motion. You can add one or more actions to a list, which will be executed automatically if the application detects movement in the video feed. You can set it to play sounds, send messages over the network or by mail, send SMS messages, upload snapshots to an address of your choice and more.

Obviously, you can also set the software to record as well, and you can find an entire tab dedicated to this operation. Depending on your settings, the program will record immediately after it detects motion or when an alert is triggered, which is a good way to avoid recording irrelevant footage. You can also make various quality and calibration settings, pick between different encoders, and set the program to record in time-lapse mode.

You can have one or more camera feeds on the main interface, and you can even have picture-in-picture footage, to keep an eye on everything that's worth monitoring. If anything starts moving in one of the live feeds, the program will start capturing the footage right away. As previously mentioned, the recordings are displayed on the main window, so you can play them back at a moment's notice. To make things even more convenient, the software marks the timeline segments with different colors, to help you spot the ones where someone was moving in front of the camera. This means that you don't have to go through all the footage from start to finish.

There are many advantages iSpy has to offer, including the possibility of uploading recorded footage to YouTube or other online services. You can also monitor your live feeds and make adjustments from an online account, on a web browser. You can be away, in another country, and you will still have access to your security system and react to any alerts.

With everything it has to offer, iSpy is certainly hard to pass up if you're looking for an adequate surveillance system.