LONDON: A burglar alarm is a powerful deterrent, but if a criminal isn’t scared off then you need as much information as possible to help catch them.
Now an app is helping police solve break-ins in both the UK and US by transforming disused phones into DIY CCTV cameras.
The software is free providing only one camera is used, but it does require homeowners to have two iPhones – one to record any action and one to monitor the house remotely.
Users receive a notification, including a live video feed if the app detects any movement in their home.
“We analyse all the pixels in the image every half a second and work out if anything has changed (to detect motion),” a spokesman from the app tod MailOnline. It’s done using a grid so that users can select which areas of the scene they want the motion detection to be active for.”
The app, called Manything, recently caught its third criminal, who was in the act of burgling a flat in the south of England.
An iPhone running the Manything app automatically filmed him rifling through the property, enabling the police to use the video to track down and convict the thief.
The flat owner said, “It started after my neighbours had suffered a spate of thefts from their flats. The police checked the CCTV in the streets and while they spotted someone acting strangely, he knew where the cameras were and between hiding his face and the poor quality of the footage, the police were unable to identify him.
After doing some research I put the Manything app onto my spare iPhone and turned it on every time I left my flat. About 10 days after the first thefts, I was in town when I received a motion alert on my phone.
I looked at the livestream footage and spotted someone I didn’t know in my room. I left straight away and in the 10 minutes it took to get back, someone else had called the police and we all arrived at the same time.
Unfortunately the burglar had fled before we got back. From the recorded footage the police were able to see exactly what he had picked up and so knew where his fingerprints would be – something that the forensics team were very happy with.
Because of the quality of the video and the fact the thief was unaware he was being filmed, the police were also able to ID him in a matter of hours. The case has now been heard and the thief locked away. Due to the evidence from the video clip, he was advised to plead guilty, which was great as we didn’t have to go to court.”
