iSpy

iSpy is an open-source video recording utility able to capture video content to Flash files. Thanks to its movement detection feature and email notifications, you can use it as your personal surveillance tool.

It boasts a clean interface that allows users to set up the monitoring process by connecting multiple cameras and microphones. iSpy provides support for multiple webcams, which can be synchronized to record in the same time.

A new camera can be configured in terms of video source, name, timestamp, and mask image. Plus, you can specify the maximum frame rate and pair a microphone with the selected camera for recording videos with sound.

The application comes packed with different built-in motion detectors (e.g. two frames, custom frames), and gives you the possibility to set the minimum and maximum trigger level for motion detection, as well as adjust the levels for saturation and luminance and select the colors to ignore or track during the recoding process. This feature proves to be very useful, as you can monitor objects of a specific color, or detect smoke or fire.

Other important options allow users to track objects by counting the number of detected items in the scene, set alarms, keep edges, apply noise filters, monitor specific areas of the camera by drawing rectangles, as well as schedule tasks.

You can activate alarms and make the program play a WAV file or open a file, and send SMS or MMS to the specified phone number, messages on Twitter, as well as email alerts. The program offers support for PTZ cameras, and enables users to upload the recordings to FTP servers or publish them on YouTube.

Of course, the quality of the generated videos pretty much depends on the webcam used, so some images may not be very accurate with low-quality devices.

All is all, iSpy provides a complete suite of tools for helping you carry out the monitoring process efficiently.