Change of Plans

Today didn’t go according to plans.

It all started yesterday morning when I went to capture my morning sunrise photo from the security cams at the cabin.

But, instead of being able to do that, I discovered my computers there could no longer be accessed remotely. I checked the status of my Starlink, and it was still up, so power was still working and the cabin hadn’t burned down overnight. The camera system there exports any clips containing motion to a synchronised folder, so I get offsite copies of all motion events. (which, honestly, are mostly wind, snow, and spider related) There was nothing there since about 3am, but the crawlspace temperature monitoring had been active up until around 6:30am. The camera system also has a log file. When I checked that, I got a bit more curious.

So, there had been a motion event at 6:26. The entry regarding “Export” was something I didn’t understand, but whatever was exported (if anything) never made it to my offsite location, even though the log file still managed to sync 3 minutes later. You can see, though, that the camera stopped responding very shortly after the motion event. I arranged with my Dad to drive out on Sunday to check out whatever went wrong. But, by late afternoon Friday, plans changed. Dad got a call from the RCMP that our cabin had been broken into. So, we drove out this morning to inspect.

As I already suspected, the camera was no longer functional. The roadside door had been bludgeoned. Before going inside, we did a quick walkaround and took some photos. They had also broken in the door to the shed.

Inside, they had opened cabinet doors and drawers, but very little was actually missing, and they didn’t make a terrible mess. My computers were all still there. So why had they gone offline?

They ripped the power cord out of the back of the PoE switch and stole the adaptor and the UPS that powered it.

Unfortunately, this switch not only powered the cameras, it connected the camera computer to the rest of the network. (I will be fixing this oversight.) So, any footage up until the switch was so unceremoniously powered down was probably still there.

And it was!

The last moment of the Roadside camera.

We have more, and it has been provided to the cops. I have little faith, though, that we’ll get any of our stuff back.