MonitorCam

MonitorCam is a motion-detection application for Windows computers. At first sight, it looks like any web-cam monitoring suite, but it is the depth of its settings that sets it apart from the competition.

First, I should tell you what MonitorCam does: it can use a regular web camera to detect motion. Thus, you can use it for surveillance, and since it uses regular PC equipment, it becomes a cheap solution. Most other monitoring applications that I have tried allow you to record motion events, but they are limited to recording a series of images, and not video. MonitorCam has its own encoding solution that gives you the option of recording .AVI video when there is motion detected by your webcam. Of course, you can also choose to get snapshots of the motion events instead of video.

Other than the ability to record actual video footage, MonitorCam has other interesting features. The application can upload both video and images to an FTP server or copy the files to a particular folder on your hard drive. MonitorCam can also alert you by sending you an e-mail. And for those who don't want the application to be seen (covert surveillance), it can be launched automatically on startup minimized to the tray.