Big system, 24-48 IP cams, Hardware Suggestions please

[quietas]

The company I am working for is remodeling and consolidating our other locations in town into a single full service one stop shop. I'll been needing regulatory guidelines from our accreditation company, but I am expecting somewhere between 24 and 48 cameras. We have 32 in play now, but the floorplan is going to be different with the remodeling of the building.

Currently I am using standard cameras with BT878 based cards from BlueCherry.com. I've got 4 ZM systems running at the moment; 16, 8, 8, and 6 cameras respectively. They are 2 year old Intel Core2 Duo's, 2.4ghz, with 8gb RAM and a couple 1tb drives in an LVM mirror with Ubuntu 8.04. Keeping the system at a fairly low usage we've been recording during the day and motion detect at night and this has worked well.

I'd like to get 1024x768 out of the image if possible, more is better. I need enough detail to see if someone has a credit card or a dollar bill from 20ft. We're dealing with a pharmacy and being able to see the color and shape of a pill would be awesome if that is actually possible.

With out remodel we want to take the opportunity to upgrade the image quality as well as upgrading the hardware to provide a bit better survivability. I'm planning a 3ware or Intel raid card, probably RAID 10, with 10x1tb drives. Dual processor, no brand preference. 16gb or more of RAM I'd guess due to the number of cameras.

Could I get a rough recommendation on a 24 and 48 IP camera systems? Also what is the camera to use right now with the best bang for the buck?

Thanks in advance.

[kross]

I can't offer specific hardware advice, but what I will say, is that going from a BT878 analog capture card to IP cameras will increase the CPU required on the server(s). This is because of the extra overhead of decompressing the compressed video from the IP camera (usually either MJPEG or h.264). Using the turbo jpeg libraries (there's a separate thread for it somewhere on this site) helps a lot.

As for which IP cameras to get, I'm a fan of Vivotek IP cameras. I think they offer great bang for the buck. I have the IP8332. 1280x800 resolution, day/night with infrared, IR-cut filter for night mode, weatherproof housing, PoE, mounting bracket. $330 at buy.com.

Hope this helps!
-- Kevin

[Flasheart]

Hi.

Hardware specs have been mentioned a few times already, always hard to quantify but trawl the forums a little too. Memory is actually going to be less than you think, and probably CPU more - but don't forget to look at I/O and bandwidth limits with these larger resolutions too.

As for image quality. What you request should be possible with 1024x800, or better 1280x1024. You will probably want to buy one and test a live site before going much further just to check your scenario. I would recommend Axis megapixel cams for this.

Image quality at that res is going to depend a lot on light, but in a pharmacy that's probably going to be quite light enough already. Ensure your tests are as real life as you can base it, with movement included and on an overcast day if you can.

Once you have that first cam you then also plug it into a vanilla zm system, get running as you like, then do tests on cpu, i/o and bandwidth to get a base figure per camera. This will help as a guide for a 24/48 cam system. It will also allow you to create a business case to present to your employers with some pictures.

[quietas]

Good idea on the test camera. I'll do that with with one of my existing systems to see how the load increases versus the existing analog cameras. Currently a Core2 Q8400 handles the load of 16 analog cameras at 2.5fps quite easily even at modect recording at night.

I'll have to look into the cameras here shortly as well. I know some have built in motion detection now, has ZM integrated an ability to use that yet?

[mastertheknife]

If you are using motion detection, check out my patch:
http://www.zoneminder.com/forums/viewto ... =9&t=17652

mastertheknife

[kingofkya]

Also note that Axis cameras can trigger ZM with out the server doing any work.

http://www.zoneminder.com/wiki/index.ph ... nDetection

[quietas]

Nice, I have never seen that wiki entry. I'll have to see if this works with my old ancient Axis. That is if I can get it to show up on a freaking IP address and keep it.

[kingofkya]

IF you use wireshark you will see its dhcp request and ip across the network.

http://www.wireshark.org/

Complete Overkill but it works.