The Daunting world of surveillance software!

[niels007]

Hey all,

This isn't the ideal place to ask my question, sorry for that, but I'm going to ask anyway!

There are hundreds of different free / cheap camera monitoring programs around, most being poor to terrible. It seems that everybody and his dog is writing windows based 'webcam' programs these days. It is frustrating to try a dozen or so programs and still not get where you want!

Linux seems to have less software available for it, but most of the software is actually pretty well developed, and its users / programmers just seem to have that natural edge of being more clever. This is no compliment, it just makes sense when the 'masses' aren't involved Sofar http://www.pysoft.com/ active webcam is fairly good at doing what needs to be done, but it is slightly cumbersome and a fair investment at over $100.

Lets get to the point! Two friends of mine own bars, and they want to install camera surveillance systems that they don't need to look after. The demands:

- simultanious (real-time) recording from up to 4 (static) cameras
- selectable framerate and resolution (depending on hardware of course) for each cam. (512x384ish, 10fps ish)
- saving per camera in chunks of selectable size (or duration)
- overwrite old files when harddisk is full
- direct view and remote view (via internet from any pc in the world)

So basically I want to make a half decent PC with enough power to do the above, and do it for ages without having to worry about it. Should a customer report a theft or should a fight break out, I want to be able to burn the video files on a DVD and view them preferably with a standard windows player or with a special easy to burn along with the video executable.

In a quick glance, ZoneMinder seems to be capable of this. I however only saw Linux once, and am a bit daunted by it.

So, is ZoneMinder ideal for this? And if not, what tips can you experts give me on affordable solid software (windows or linux) that does the job?

Sorry for being off topic!

Niels Heusinkveld

[zoneminder]

Hi Niels,

I'll give you a quick, but biased answer. Technically ZM can do all of those things, with the excpetion of DVD writing which it doesn't do itself as such. You can use an authoring application to copy anything you need as evidence off. I'll leave it to others to tell you whether they think it's easy to use and suitable for your friends application as I only develop it, I know others here are using it in similar circumstances as you.

One caveat I would say is that although it is designed to be relatively easy to use, you will need to invest some time up front getting it configured for your needs. For that, and any more advanced use, you would also benefit from reading the documentation, having a play and getting an appreciation for how ZM does things as it may be different from other solutions you are already familiar with. If you get stuck there are plenty of people here who can help, a number who have been in the same boat as you regarding previous Linux experience. However it's free (though donations for commercial use especially are always appreciated), and with Ross Melin's LiveCD or Cordel's RPMs you should be able to get something going pretty quickly. If you don't like it you can just chuck it away and move on so there's no real risk involved at all!

Cheers

Phil

[cordel]

Hi Niels,
One thing that you might want to note is that you can recieve the images as an mpeg on a remote machine. I just takes a few clicks to make it happen. It is work in progress. IMHO even if I had to pay $150 for this software... I like better than anything I found that cost four times that price and would be worth it. The cheapest M$ software I found that I liked was around $900. I also work with some pretty high end systems (sorry I can't ellaberate or I'd have to shoot ya) that only record mpeg while yes it can produce "better" compresion, JPeg has a better picture. I my self don't have much in the way of pocket change to puchace a nice capture card, So I'd have to leave it to others to say what it will do with a quality card. ZM is well on it's way to being compeditive. Better yet the people behind it are passionate about putting it together.
If you would like to try it out and want it now I would suggest trying out hte live CD. Another option is a Fedoa Core 3 based Distro that I'm wrapping up. I can give you a login to download if you decide you want to try it but be forwarned that I have no upstream bandwidth and the few people whom have downloaded it took up to 10 hours. If you have any questions please feel free to ask. We can and will do what ever we can (I've been known to call folks on the phone to help them out).
Cheers,
Cordel

[fernando]

ofcource zm is "free" but if you want to offer profeccional level security systems you have to offer another system.
zm cant compete with some card that delivers 32 channels 480fps recording.
zm can do many many things iam following zm from 0.9.10 "two years" and is on a great develop.
so on any moment zm will reach some of the commecial products.
the only problem is the hardware. zm some times need many resources.

i dont know if you will see the day that zm use 32 cameras at 480fps based on phillips chipsets on a p4 with 512 ram
but can do many things for you.