Wireless CCTV System

carragreat · 3 Feb 2008 at 13:26

Hi All!

For my new build I am looking to incorporate a surveillance system.

What I had in mind was designating 1 hdd solely to this purpose which would be somehow linked to a preferably wireless (or wired) camera whereby when motion was detected the image and sound data received by the camera would be saved to the hdd even with no system/pc turned off. Anyone have any ideas or product suggestions then that would be great.

Thanks

#Chri5# · 3 Feb 2008 at 13:50

What's your budget?

Mobitix cameras are easy to set to record to a NAS type device (just type in the IP address and folder name of the NAS box) but are professional quality.

decto · 3 Feb 2008 at 13:59

Hi,

I have a Geovision 250 card which supports 4 CCTV cameras and 1 audio channel.

There are a range of Geovision cards from 2 channels to 16 but I find the 250 4 channel about the best value. Depending where you shop it costs around £100 perhaps a little more. Avoid auction sites as a most of the cards advertised are fakes and don't work properly.

It's not cheap but the software which is what you pay for is excellent. I have mine setup on a central server. I can login and view video live video from any pc in the house and it even comes with supporting apps for a pocket pc, my hp2210 works fine. I can also view the video accross the internet if I so desired.

Personally I'd use a dedicated server as it is a little resource hungry. to run on your main PC as it used the CPU for real time mpeg 4 compresion. You should be able to setup a basic P4 2Ghz or greater or AMD equivalent for quite cheaply.

Geovision claim that their cards don't support VIA chipsets as the cards use an intel timer circuit which conflicts. SIS, AMD intel are fine. Reading around the GV250 cards don't have this timer and mine works just fine on an A8V-VM SE socket 939 board.

Advantages

Connectivity... view from wherever
Mpeg 4 compression = small files
Max file length can be set in minutes. I use 5 minute blocks.
Motion activation from the picture with ability to block out areas where you don't want motion to be detected.
Can be set to record from before the motion is detected. eg. it remebers the last second or so before the motion and records these.

Running three cameras with motion detection and a 2 week storage life I've yet to exceed 15GB of hdd space.

You'll also need to budget £70 - 100 for a decent CCD camera otherwise you'll get poor pictures especially at night.

Regards

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Roadshowuk · 3 Feb 2008 at 14:55

Last months PC Pro has an article on setting up your own cctv. Be worth a read if you can still find it in your newsagent.

carragreat · 5 Feb 2008 at 14:56

nice 1 guys. some very very useful and helpful advice

Any ccd cameras you would recommend mate?

Thanks

decto · 5 Feb 2008 at 20:48

carragreat said:
nice 1 guys. some very very useful and helpful advice

Any ccd cameras you would recommend mate?

Thanks

Nothing I can post a link to.

In general the Sony 1/3" CCD's are fine, usually made in China anyway. It's worth googling for a cctv supplier and giving them a call. Prices only differ a little from auction sites and you'll get some good advice particularly on which lens is fitted the the camera. The lens affects magnification and so the field of view so you use a wide angle camera to view a carpark but need a much tighter focus if you wanted to see clearly who drove through the barrier.

It also depends on whether you need IR lighting in darkness or want to conceal the camera and use a seperate IF flood light etc. It's worth noting the IR lighting usually reverts the camera to black and white and if you buy a long range IR camera then the IR reflection will often white out a close subject.

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