Re: Video surveillance systems
- From: Will Honea <whonea@xxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sat, 22 Mar 2008 15:26:00 -0600
shimp wrote:
Will Honea wrote:
I need to set up a video surveillance system and could use some input on
hardware/software that will run on preferably openSUSE 10.3. I'm a total
novice at this and the small church I'm trying to set up is (typically)
poor as the proverbial mouse, so cost is a major factor. The goal is to
record vandalism rather than provide full security service.
1. Assuming 4 cameras, what hardware (besides the video system) will I
need? Looking at several video systems, I see that TV, VCD, and DVR
outputs are common and most contain control panels that will format the
output to
generate a usable signal. What would be a good ballpark for a computer
to manage the video?
2. What do I need to look for in order to determine whether appropriate
software exists?
If anyone has experience with this I would welcome any and all comments -
from "forget it" to links to products.
So it sounds like you want to go digital, as opposed to analog. It also
sounds like you want to record, and not just sit in front of a monitor
and watch.
I have played with this on the low end of things.. not sure about whats
commercially available for Linux. d3data is a big player at the high
end, but they run only on Windows I think.
Check out motion. And zoneminder. I've used motion quite a bit. I used
to use it with analog cameras that were fed to a PCI capture card.
Lately I just use cheap usb webcams. The image quality is about the
same, or better. The downside is usb cables can only stretch about 6
feet or so, while analog video cables can go a lot farther. Setting up
motion is nontrivial, but it works well once its setup. Beware: on suse
10.3 some kind of dependency hell is going on with ffmpeg which it uses
to generate videos. If you get motion from the build service it is built
without ffmpeg support. If you try to build it yourself you'll have to
find the right ffmpeg.
As far as PC horsepower, if you are recording and serving 4 video
streams simultaneously, people will say you need as much horsepower as
you can afford. But you can get a dual core 2GHz (or greater) for a
couple hundred $$ today. I think that would be adequate, esp with
hardware mpg encoding.
Another option is to go with these standalone network security cameras.
You can get wired or wireless. And you can get them with HD quality
video. I think this would be the easiest to setup. I'm planning to go
this route. The only reason I'm doing it the way I do now is because I
had PCs and webcams lying around.
Or if you really want to go the painless route, you should look at a
standalone surveillance DVR. It will simply record video for you. The
reason for using Linux is you can customize the system to do anything
you can think of. If you are a total novice, I think setting up a Linux
surveillance system will cost you many man hours.
Good advice. The reason for digital is primarily cost vs. function. Going
digital will allow remote monitoring if needed and save someone (me) a lot
of trips at ungodly hours <g>. A couple of wireless setups I'm looking at
include motion detection hardware as well as on-demand IR illumination
sources (although these have limited useful range). It appears that all
the ingredients are there at reasonable prices if I can find the pieces to
tie it together. The remote access is especially attractive in that the
buildings already have commercial alarm systems that would benefit from
some quick false alarm determination. The primary concern is not intrusion
per se but identifying vandals as an added layer.
--
Will Honea
--
Posted via a free Usenet account from http://www.teranews.com
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