With the continuing annoyance from motion, my manager's asked me to go
looking again for a video surveillance appliance: basically, a
motion-detecting DVR and cameras. The big thing, of course, is a) price
(this is a US federal gov't agency, and being civilian, money is *tight*,
don't give me the libertarian/GOP line about how freely we spend,
thankyouverymuch), b) it has to be on the network, and c) we need to be
able to d/l to a server, and rm after we do that... and we want to script
or cron job that.
Right now, I'm looking into Zmodo, R-Tech and CIB security. Anyone have a)
opinions on the quality of the hardware from any of those manufacturers
(yeah, I know, they're just branded hardware), and/or whether we can do
the ssh or telnet in to do what we need?
*Extremely* frustrating, since they're all running embedded Linux, that so
many say IE and Active X....
mark
On Fri, Jan 31, 2014 at 9:52 AM, <m.roth at 5-cent.us> wrote:> With the continuing annoyance from motion, my manager's asked me to go > looking again for a video surveillance appliance: basically, a > motion-detecting DVR and cameras. The big thing, of course, is a) price > (this is a US federal gov't agency, and being civilian, money is *tight*, > don't give me the libertarian/GOP line about how freely we spend, > thankyouverymuch), b) it has to be on the network, and c) we need to be > able to d/l to a server, and rm after we do that... and we want to script > or cron job that. > > Right now, I'm looking into Zmodo, R-Tech and CIB security. Anyone have a) > opinions on the quality of the hardware from any of those manufacturers > (yeah, I know, they're just branded hardware), and/or whether we can do > the ssh or telnet in to do what we need? > > *Extremely* frustrating, since they're all running embedded Linux, that so > many say IE and Active X....I don't have specific recommendations for you, but here is some general info that you might find useful, as I've been looking into this myself. Obviously, there exist IP cameras, but, as you've noticed, you have to be careful that it supports an open standard, and not IE/ActiveX exclusively. Another approach is to just get an analog camera, along with a capture device. The capture devices come in USB or PCI(e) flavors (possibly more), and range in price from super cheap (10 USD) to crazy expensive. Just from reading about this stuff, it appears there's a tradeoff, the cheap hardware may require some wrestling to work reliably, and then may randomly die at some point. With a little research you can probably find a good balance. I've done a little searching on eBay, and it looks like there is no shortage of capture devices to be had there for cheap as well, if buying used is an option. As always, it depends on your application, but with an analog camera, you move the "smarts" to your PC or server. Consider if you have many cameras, do you want to have that many more "servers" to manage, or would you rather have one server with many purpose-built devices attached? Take a look at the ZoneMinder software package. It's the free/open source way to build a surveillance appliance. Again, I haven't used it. I currently have a Speco D4RS device (came with the house I just moved into), which is an off-the-shelf surveillance appliance. The viewer is IE-only, and the standalone apps are Windows-only (though they do have Android apps, so some quasi-Linux support)... it's half-way decent, although I've only just started playing with it in earnest. But I'm looking to ZoneMinder as a possible replacement, partially to get onto an open platform, but also to hopefully consolidate a standalone device into my existing home server. As for the cameras themselves, I don't know what model I have, and wasn't supplied documentation. My dad's been interested in getting some camera surveillance going at his house. But we both get discouraged when looking for cameras because there seems to be a million makes and models, but most are probably just re-branded OEM versions. The specs always seems to be unclear or inconsistent, and except for the crazy-expensive ones, they always seem to have lousy user reviews. So we always get discouraged trying to wade through the mess and give up. -Matt
On 1/31/2014 7:52 AM, m.roth at 5-cent.us wrote:> With the continuing annoyance from motion, my manager's asked me to go > looking again for a video surveillance appliance: basically, a > motion-detecting DVR and cameras. The big thing, of course, is a) price > (this is a US federal gov't agency, and being civilian, money is*tight*, > don't give me the libertarian/GOP line about how freely we spend, > thankyouverymuch), b) it has to be on the network, and c) we need to be > able to d/l to a server, and rm after we do that... and we want to script > or cron job that.I just setup a Ubiquiti AirCam for fun at home. these are $99 per outdoor grade camera, use power-over-ethernet so there's JUST a single cat5 wire to run, and the DVR is a PC running their free AirVIsion software, so you don't need any expensive box.... you can hook up as many cameras to AirVIsion as you like, place them on a map or floor plan, and set the boxes and sensitivity for motion detect on each one. the one I got is NOT a tilt-pan camera, but they also have a ceiling cam. it works pretty good, my dog sets it off all the time, leaving a trail of 10-15 second mp4 files ;) the motion files are saved in a tree by year/month/day, and are timestamped TS (transport stream) mpeg-4 h.264 format, playable by most anything that understands .ts, including VLC. it can send email or other sorts of alerts on specific events. they have AirVision packages for Windows, Mac, and various flavors of Debian/Ubuntu. the UI is web based and works from a variety of clients, including android tablets. -- john r pierce 37N 122W somewhere on the middle of the left coast
On 31/01/2014 15:52, m.roth at 5-cent.us wrote:> With the continuing annoyance from motion, my manager's asked me to go > looking again for a video surveillance appliance: basically, a > motion-detecting DVR and cameras. The big thing, of course, is a) price > (this is a US federal gov't agency, and being civilian, money is *tight*, > don't give me the libertarian/GOP line about how freely we spend, > thankyouverymuch), b) it has to be on the network, and c) we need to be > able to d/l to a server, and rm after we do that... and we want to script > or cron job that.Looking down the thread, probably not what you want to hear since it runs on Windows, and it's not an "appliance", more DIY, however http://www.ispyconnect.com/ Is "free" and works really well. Feature list is everything you'd expect from a surveillance system. We use cheap (<?40) IP camera's like http://www.amazon.co.uk/Wireless-camera-Pan-Tilt-2-ways/dp/B00432J56G/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1391252923&sr=8-2 in our DC. However, with this, the chose is yours since the list of supported cameras is as long as your arm. We have this running on a very old core duo 2 PC, with 2 GB of ram (Win 7) ; with 8 cameras and motion detect running. Works a treat, and has done for 2 yrs+ Only downside is you need a subscription if you want to monitor outside your LAN, but I don't see that requirement from you. D