[Amicus]

I'm wanting to setup a security system for outside that would consist of 2 night vision cameras. Instead of paying for something expensive like: http://bssc.sel.sony.com/Professional/webapp/ModelInfo?m=10001&sm=20038&p=0&sp=0&id=69379, I'm wondering how easily I could create such a system with *BSD. I know of many companies around here that setup CCTV over IP systems and charge out the nose. I'm trying to get past that and do it all myself.
Basically, I would have a computer that just sits there and "records" input from the cameras. According to that sony link, the 160GB hard drive will hold 1343 hours at high quality 1pic/sec. That's a little over 55 days and sounds good to me. I'm hoping to get somewhere around 55 days.. 50 would be fine, 60 would be fine...

Just curious if anyone here has any experience/insight on systems that they may have used/setup in the past or have seen working.

Thanks
-Amicus

[frisco]

A couple Brooktree cards and camserv or some other image capturing program should be able to handle what you want. One of my images pulled via camserv off a brooktree card weighs in at 24509B for 640x480. Changes in detail may raise/lower this amount, but even if your images average 35KB you should be able to fit over 50 days' worth on a 160GB disk.

[Loop]

Changes in detail may raise/lower this amount, but even if your images average 35KB you should be able to fit over 50 days' worth on a 160GB disk.

And if you wanted to get REAL tricky you could have kinda like a round-robin database, only storing n days of images :)

[Amicus]

Thanks for the reply frisco. Right now I'm looking for a suitable card with a brooktree chipset. It seems like most of the capture cards today are Conexant chipsets that they refer to as "BT878/9"...sounds like a brooktree to me :P

I'm thinking that cron calling a script will be very helpful as well. It will allow me to split the daytime images/captures from the nighttime images/captures. Also at night I'm planning to use motion sensor mode and see how well that works. I know alarms and such can be created for motion so I'll have it email my cell phone when motion is detected and check the snapshots from home/remote. This will hopefully minimize the amount of video/snapshot parsing that I have to do.

I have a similar set of scripts that are run from time to time (one checks whether or not pppoe needs to be reset because sometimes it's flaky) and they will text message/email my cell phone with information when an event occurs. :icon_smil

[Amicus]

bktr0 at pci0 dev 13 function 0 "Brooktree BT878" rev 0x11: irq 9
bktr0: Card has no configuration EEPROM. Cannot determine card make.
bktr0: Pinnacle/Miro TV, Temic NTSC tuner.

I'm now playing with videod and watching playstation output via webpage/jpeg captures. Let the games begin...