Inexpensive Home Wireless Camera Systems?

Does anybody have some sort of inexpensive wireless camera home security system setup they can recommend? I'm looking for something that runs through a PC where you can login remotely to check from time to time. It would need to be motion activated and record. A bonus would be if you could set one of the cameras at least to text you or something if it was activated - like for a camera in the house.

I tried the VUE camera system from Costco:
http://www.costco.com/Browse/Product...=1&topnav=&s=1

But didn't like it. The picture quality was poor, and it seemed like the wireless signal caused some interference with my wii/xbox. Also I didn't like the fact you had to login to a 3rd party website to view your cameras.

There was another one from Costco I got for less than $300 which was perfect except the cameras were wired, and I don't want to run wires all over the place.

The one I'm considering now is this from Amazon:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00...A2D1V6DCJZXWSE

This one seems like a great outdoor camera and from reading the reviews, it seems you can add additional cameras of different types, which is nice since some others are cheaper - for example a basic indoor camera.

Any suggestions? Again, I'd want something for probably less than $300, including at least 2 or 3 cameras.

I don't know anything specific about these security cameras. But my job is developing compressed video network boxes that are generally used for traffic monitoring. If you plan to ship compressed full motion video with multiple cameras over a home wireless network you will want the video to be H.264 (also called AVC). Anything else like MJPEG will be too high a bitrate for good video quality, but ok for still frame. MPEG-4 would be the second best option.

You could do something like this?.......

http://www.officedepot.com/a/product...rders-_-329874

and use this kit with them-

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00...31NWSF6KH9G34A

the beautiful thing in using power over ethernet is that you just run a cat5 or cat6 cable to the camera locations, and the kit comes with a switch and the pwr adapters. then you can just port forward the ip address in your router and just access the cameras on any laptop with the giving ip address. its very cool.
forgot the switch-http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000FIVDIA/ref=pd_lpo_k2_dp_sr_3?pf_rd_p=486539851&pf_rd_s=lpo-top-stripe-1&pf_rd_t=201&pf_rd_i=B000063UZW&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_r=053JTK5METQ81YNHQ5PQ
forgot to add the switch----http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000FIVDIA/ref=pd_lpo_k2_dp_sr_3?pf_rd_p=486539851&pf_rd_s=lpo-top-stripe-1&pf_rd_t=201&pf_rd_i=B000063UZW&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_r=053JTK5METQ81YNHQ5PQ

sams club has some deals
http://www.samsclub.com/sams/shop/ca...navAction=push

http://www.samsclub.com/sams/shop/pr...navAction=push

While on monoprice.com before, i saw they had security camera related stuff, so you might be able to save some money there

Any chance you can go wired? It will cut your price and give you better quality video. Also I would think that accessing your video remotely would require either a third party site, getting a fixed IP, or running something like NoIP. There are a lot of low cost products like this producing good compressed video...

http://www.compusa.com/applications/...&Sku=N247-1016

Thanks for all the suggestions. I'll look into everything here and see what works best for me. I really want something simple and easy to use and be able to access it from the internet anytime.

Keep us posted on what you go with, how much it cost and set-up... I'm thinking about putting one of these on the porch at a buddy's lake place to check water conditions from work in the afternoon to determine if its worth the trip or if its blown out.

I haven't gotten anything yet but am leaning towards John's suggestion. I had ordered some stuff from Amazon and went ahead and got the camera I had 1st posted about. The problem is, even though it's wireless, it still has a power plug that has to be plugged in which does me no good. Running a power plug to the camera is worse than the thin wire that would run to the main system on the wired camera. For the one like John suggested at Compusa, it's a great system with a DVR that records and that you can easily access anywhere etc., so I may try that next.

Also, the one that John has a link to is a Night Owl. Many of the ones I see are Q-See, which seem okay, but the reviews are mixed about how easy they are to setup and how poor customer service is, otherwise I'd probably go with that since Costco sells it. I'll let you know what I end up with, but it won't be until after x-mas now.