Ever since I installed the Leviton Structured Media Center, I've been on the lookout for gadgets to fill it up with. Then one day, a few weeks ago, I got an email advertisement from Harbor Freight that had a security camera with "Night Vision" on sale for $29.00. The gears in my head started to turn. How about a baby monitor that I could watch from any TV in the house?
I order a lot of things online, so I get pretty many emails from online retailers who want me to return and spend more money. I like Harbor Freight because there's a local store so I don't have to pay for shipping (although I make up for it with taxes and gas since it's 20 miles away). Anyway, the camera that they advertised looked pretty cool to me, and the price seemed worth the trip.
Before buying any more equipment, I just wanted to make sure that this camera was going to give me a good enough picture. The picture to the right shows how I mounted the camera to the base of Kaylee's Winne the Pooh mobile. Using the 80' cable that came with the camera, I hooked up the output to the TV in our bedroom. The picture looked fine.
Fortunately my Structured Media Center was directly below Kaylee's room, so I was able to easily route the camera's cable down through the wall, into the Structured Media Center. In the picture below, you can see a large collection of cable in the middle left. This is the cable from the camera.
The next step was to get this onto every TV in the house. This requires a few more pieces of hardware. Specifically, an RF Modulator, and a Notch Filter.
The Notch Filter is placed on the main cable line coming into the house. You can see it to the left as the big silver cylinder connected to the splitter which is connected to the black cable coming in from the top left. The Notch Filter serves two purposes.
First, it "Notches" out channels 75-85, meaning that it removes any signal already present. This leaves it clear for you to broadcast your own signal. Interestingly, our cable company doesn't use channels 79-89, specifically saving them for people to connect security cameras.
The second purpose of the Notch Filter is to prevent the new signal (the one from the camera) from getting out to the outside world. We wouldn't want anyone out there watching Kaylee without our consent.
The RF Modulator takes the video signal coming from the camera, and broadcasts it to any channel you want. In the picture to the left, the RF Modulator is towards the lower right, just above the green power strip.
The output of the RF Modulator gets combined with the Filtered signal coming into the house via a splitter used in reverse. Notice this at the bottom end of the Notch Filter. The combined signal then feeds out to the entire house, and Walla! We have a Kaylee Cam. We can monitor Kaylee from an TV in the house.
The first picture at the top of this page was a screen shot taken from the TV tuner built into one of my computers. In fact I have the Kaylee Cam on even as I write this because today happens to be my day to babysit. Luckily for me she's taking a nice long nap...
