Some two legged criminal critters are leaving their tracks in the snow around a cabin at night and I am wondering what people would recommend for surveillance in this situation:

The cabin belongs to a family member who seldom uses it except on ski trips, etc. It is about 550 feet away from my home as the crow flies and about 100 feet lower in elevation. I have no trees to block the view, but I can only see the very top of the cabin from my upstairs. The cabin has power but no internet. If I walk out to the edge of my property I can look down and get a clear view of everything around the cabin including the driveway into it.

I am thinking of two possible systems: 1) A motion detecting camera at the cabin, preferably run off the power at the cabin, or 2) put some type of camera at the edge of my property looking down on the cabin which would record the scene. I have internet at my home coming from a fiber feed into a Linksys WRT54GS wireless capable router. I don't use the wireless capabilities as I have all the PC's in the house hooked to the router through CAT5 cables.

Ideally it would be nice to have a wireless camera in the cabin that I could feed into my network, but the distance is probably too great. The second choice would be to put power out to a small platform at the overlook and run a camera feed back to my network from an internet capable camera. Eventually I would like to get something like the Dakota Alert system installed to warn me when vehicles pull into the cabin driveway.

I am looking for the cheapest solution and plan to put a lot of sweat equity into it. Hopefully this introduction to the problem will allow someone with more experience to comment on any possibilities I have overlooked.

Thanks

Are they just wandering past the building, or do the tracks show someone getting close to it, as though they were "trying" potential points of entry?

I'm a big fan of trail cams for surveillance applications, because until recently, cellular-capable cams were upwards of $2,000 each.
If the computer wireless setup worked, that would give you real-time monitoring, and not result in you leaving telltale footprints in the snow when checking the cam(s).

Combining a cam that has long battery life with the MURS Alert™ setup could work pretty well. The M538-BS base has an alert icon on the display, in case you weren't home or otherwise missed it when one or more of the MATs activated. Then you could go check the cam(s) if there had been some activity. Just make sure the distance and terrain in your situation will allow for reliable reception of the signals from the MATs.

Otherwise, put up at least one ScoutGuard SG580M, and get cellular notification about intruders.

RR_Security, You couldn't have said it better. That Murs 538-BS is one kickass alert system with plenty of power for almost any application. In my previous post I said my driveway was 500 ft. and it had no problem alerting me anywhere I put it inside the house no matter how many walls were blocking it. Some people brag it has went a mile or 2 for them. Checkout my link on the Driveway Security post and it will tell you a good place you can get one of them. It's well worth the extra $50 over the cheaper models that advertise 600-1000 feet that are lucky to get out 200 feet when you get done trying to adjust the cheap antennas on them. The extra 50 is well worth the MURS system and you won't be sorry. It would make my day to be Bob and have some intruders go mess around by the cabin and hear "Alert Zone One" on my MURS and go greet the sobs with my 2 friends Smith & Wesson. Stealth makes a pretty decent cam I use for critters that takes fairly nice IR videos at night and color vids at day. It even has sound to go with it. You can set the vid clips for a couple minutes or more. I think it is the Sniper IR model. It runs 120-150 depending on sale. So with that camera and MURS 538-BS Alert System I think you would have a mighty fine setup for around $300.

M538-BS Two-Way MURS works great I use one inside my storage shed if anyone enters I get the alert inside my house its about 200 ft from my house. I also use cell trail cameras I have caught several trespassers that triggered them.

code1,
I don't mean to brag it up too much but that is one really impressive unit. I recently had one at "The Shack" called The Reporter. That thing cost almost $100 and that was a total piece of junk that could barely make it 200 feet only if you had both antennas adjusted just right and didn't bump them! I can't believe this MURS 538-BS is only $50 more. It would take me a couple pages to go over all the cool things it has and does. The big thing is the range. The reviews from other people say up to 2 miles. The transmitter is rated at 1 Watt which is extremely powerful for that kind of unit and it is VHF so that means it will transmit much further than UHF. Plus it has a large heavy duty metal antenna on it. I would think it would reachout a mile in almost anykind of poor terrain. The transmitter has 5 frequencies you can change it to if you get more than one of them. You can program them in a scanner and monitor it as well. I would think this might have some use in hunting. Here is a list of the frequencies if you want to put them in your scanner. Channel 1 is the main channel that your transmitter comes programmed from the factory. To change it to the others you have to go inside the transmitter and look at your manual.
Channel 1= 151.820
Channel 2= 151.880
Channel 3= 151.940
Channel 4= 154.570
Channel 5= 154.600

Oh, I like your deer picture! Those critters get kinda big down yonder!!