CCTV On Computer.

Here is the Email apart from Links.

be aware that IR "nightvision" is utterly useless (unless you've got a bucketload of IR source). Also do you want to be changing the battery pack 3-4 times a week? On each camera...

The battery pack one doesn't look like it's weatherproof either. (I showed him batt pack camera no link )

With just 2 cameras, 160gig is fine, you could record at 4-8fps per camera and have plenty of storage. I'm recording 6 cameras onat a 300gig and i get 30 days of recording. (cards will always advertise their TOTAL recording ability, 25fps, 50fps, 100fps, etc, but then you have to share it out over the number of channels and it's not as shiney as it would first seem)

I use a 25fps card £25, and a 50fps card £40.

I'll say it again, IR lighting is CRAP unless you have a dedicated source. Street lighting/motion lights are you cheapest option for nighttime viewing.
 
ZTV Colour Wireless High Resolution Day/Night CCTV Camera With Receiver (906D) £84.95 (inc VAT ) thats what im going for :) I THINK........
 
I've got some software to do that already, however I'll play about with both and see how they fair.

Now... to find a tiny silent PC to run them off... hmmmm.
 
Hi,

To the OP it depends how crazy you want to go with CCTV. Any device that captures images and has a video output could in theory be used e.g. camcorder, normal digital camera, cctv camera, webcam etc. If you don't need to record anything just hook their video output to a monitor / screen and you have instant CCTV.

Just make sure you don't spend too much until your are sure what you want. I have just tested our normal digital camera (8 megapixels , normal / digital zoom) and the output quality is great when put straight into a TV. This is useful as test to see what picture quality, optical / digital zoom you need. Fixed lens camera's tend to be useless as you can't zoom them in to get a really sharp picture.

If you want to place the camera outside then it needs to be water and weather proof or well protected.

For night vision you need a proper night vision camera which had enough power and range at night.

To record just put the video output into a DVR, capture card or network Video server device.

Good luck.

;)
 
Sorry to hijack this thread - but can anyone recommend decent CCTV software for using with a 4 channel DVR PCI card?

The software that comes with my card is rubbish ... when the drive is full it just stops recording instead of deleting/overwriting older data ...
 
It really depends what you want to do and how much you want to pay. The newest software now comes with face recognition and allows you to track people from camera to camera automatically and other usefull stuff.

It you put it into a search engine you will get loads of review etc to look at. Some of it is only designed to work with specific manufacturers cards so be abit carefull if you got a cheap card of a certain popular auction website.

Most of it comes with a free trial period so you can at least try a few for free.

;)
 
OoOverclockaoO said:
Sorry to hijack this thread - but can anyone recommend decent CCTV software for using with a 4 channel DVR PCI card?

The software that comes with my card is rubbish ... when the drive is full it just stops recording instead of deleting/overwriting older data ...
Click to expand...

If it's the card i think it is, you need to setup the self-housekeeping options.
 
OoOverclockaoO said:
I did get one from eBay, not too cheap compared to others - cost around £60!

How do I know which software will work with my card, trial and error?
Click to expand...


With the ones off ebay that is the only way. Most of the cheap ones come with the old kodicom software which is OK and does over write old data. The only trouble is the older versions of it don't export in a high enough resolution but they are fine for view stuff and have a quite a few usefull features.
 
Got Wave-P software to work with this DVR, seems better and works remotely too !

Still this keep each camera file to max of 500mb, which doesn't seem like much :p

Unfortunately, the web interface doesn't work too well
 
I have just ordered a dedicated video server device. According to the info they emailed me it and the manual I downloaded it takes 4 video and 4 sound inputs and let you view them via a web browser. It also FTP's snapshots when motion is detected and lets you record MPEG4 video files. Seems OK for the price and the supplier says it works at 20FPS on each channel at maximum resolution (720*480) with all four channels going at once. I will setup it up to viewed over the web once it gets going.
 
Bloody spiderweb shows up on one of the cameras overnight and keeps triggering the motion sensor and sending me e-mails :p

cctvspiderweblh1.jpg
 
wonder_lander said:
See my birdcam thread for an alternaitve use of a CCTV camera!

I was impressed with the quality of a £10 camera from HK!
Click to expand...

I got a £20 colour, wireless, waterproof camera off the bay. Picture quality for CCTV is decent enough, works fine at nighttime (black and white pic) with tiny infa-red leds.

Ive got it connected to my computer just using a £20 'easy cap' device also off the bay.
Im running the i-catcher software which is very good, lets you do all sorts and remotley view the camera from any other PC or even my nokia n95 8gb :)
 
Sent video server back and got a geovision DVR card. It works really well and the software is really good as well. The web server works well over the internet and give access to almost all the normaly functions. The recording and viewing picture quality are also very good.

;)
 
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