Turn Any Web Cam Into a Security Camera with Vitamin D

If you've been thinking about setting up a web surveillance camera but were put off by the expense or hassle, Vitamin D makes it easy to turn your web or networked camera into an easy-to-use monitoring tool.

One of the downsides to many camera monitoring applications available in the same price range as Vitamin D—free!—is that their detection algorithms are too primitive and overly sensitive. You don't need a notification image sent to your cellphone every time the wind blows or a squirrel runs across your front lawn.

Vitamin D allows you to specify the size of objects that will trigger events and set up detection windows to only monitor activity in specified areas of the video frame. Using a simple wizard-style selection process, you can give a set of instructions to Vitamin D, like wanting a door to be monitored for people leaving, or a parking lot to be monitored for vehicles arriving.

Vitamin D supports email and cellphone notifications and has a "highlights reel" function to allow you to quickly review the activity triggers from the day. Vitamin D is free and available for Windows and Mac operating systems. Have a favorite tool for monitoring activity with your web cam? Let's hear about it in the comments.