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Silviron said:
I'd just get a black & white fairly high res security type video camera and a long recording video tape recorder.
Put a thousand dollar Canon digital SLR out there and you aren't going to have a camera long. Someone will steal it.
The security video cameras can be secured well and aren't worth stealing.
Plus you don't have to mess with kludging up some kind of controller.
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This is not a half-bad idea if you don't mind fast-forwarding the tape to get the info. In fact, you can get surveilance type cameras that use a "c-mount" lens. This means that you can buy a $200 camera, and then get a zoom lens so that you can zoom in to around two feet high (license plate height). With the bad resolution of most typical time lapse VCRs, you will need all the zoom that you can get. A security VCR will be around $400 to $800.
One more option. Get a video capture card and a security camera. Just make sure that the cam is NTSC compatible (in the security biz, they call it something else). I believe that they make software which will capture any video that changes. It will not store hours upon hours of the exact same scene, but will only record if it sees something moving. The frame grabber can be one of those TV cards that you can get at any computer store for $50. If you already have the computer lying around, the software should be under $100, and the camera under $200. I don't know how much the zoom lens would go for, though. This also assumes that there is a building nearby where the computer can be stashed.
Let us know what you decide on!