I could use anyone's experience or opinions on this one. My condo complex is looking into purchasing an inexpensive video security suite to monitor the front gate of the complex.
From time to time we get people who "Brute Force" their way through the gate with their car.... breaking the gate. Of course, the cost of repair inevitably comes out of our pockets to repair/replace it. We are looking for something that can accomplish the following:

Has some sort of low false-positive motion detector such as a laser trip wire. If a car, bike, person, dog, hooligan....etc breaks the path of the beam, it flips the video on for (X) amount of seconds. A regular motion detector wouldn't be suitable for outdoor use and would most likely would be set off by everything.... including blowing leaves.

Once the video is triggered, it could take low-medium resolution video or snapshots which could be stored on a hard drivedrive somewhere.

I suppose the only hardware that would need to be purchased would be the one or two video cameras (preferably night vision/low light enabled), whatever software would need to be loaded and something that would act as the "tripwire".

Saw a great tutorial here in AO called "Motion Detection With a Web Cam" from 2003 Article Here

Also saw a thread here called 'Security Cameras' also from 2003 Article Here which had some good info.

I've searched google and found a couple packages... most seem kind of cheesy.... like
something you might find while watching the Home Shopping Network at 3am after 15 beers.

Any input or related experience on this is greatly appreciated!

-E