[ Date Index ] [ Thread Index ] [ <= Previous by date / thread ] [ Next by date / thread => ]
On 28/06/10 11:31, Neil Stone wrote:
All, I am considering getting CCTV installed around the perimeter of my home (issues with neighbors, lower insurance bills etc). Has anyone got any advice or experience on doing this with Linux as a backend ? I await replies with baited breath..
Funnily enough Gordon asked the same thing the other day.I've not looked into the legal requirements (signage etc) as far as hardware and software goes, Linux should do the job perfectly.
A while back I setup 'Motion' on Linux for a web cam project I was working on for a radio station I used to work at. First of all I used a basic USB webcam on a P3 1GHz machine. Motion would detect motion events (basically changes between frames) and then trigger an action, that could have been an e-mail or a script.
It was also possible to have it upload an image to a web site (or save it somewhere so it was accessible via FTP/HTTP etc.
I seem to remember that it was possible to get a 4 port PCI capture card which had a standard BTTV chipset which was supported by Linux (BT878 I believe) although looking on eBay it seems they've now been superceeded with MPEG4 capture cards. Cheapest one I found was about 50 quid from China.
As far as cameras go, Maplins have them for around 30 quid upwards.I guess you could do it with a reasonable spec machine (P4 upwards maybe) with a couple of analogue TV tuner cards if you keep the resolution low, depends if you want to capture video too.
This is the card I found on eBay, looks like it'll need a Celeron Dual Core or higher though, and I'm not sure if something like Motion will be able to work with MPEG4 streams: http://tinyurl.com/2dcmcsj
You might also want to have a look at the Motion web site here (link goes to the 'Working Devices' page on the wiki:
http://www.lavrsen.dk/twiki/bin/view/Motion/WorkingDevices Hope this helps. Rob -- The Mailing List for the Devon & Cornwall LUG http://mailman.dclug.org.uk/listinfo/list FAQ: http://www.dcglug.org.uk/linux_adm/list-faq.html