please help me with my plan

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Hi guys

I've tried to search through the site/forum and learned a bit about the ZM, however i still have questions

I want to deploy a survaillence system to monitor activity in a startup (pizza eatery) so my plan, abstractly put, is to have about 4 cameras (i plan to use d-link DCS900 for well illuminated places and DCS950 for not so well illuminated) all hooked up to a router and have a local linux box with big HDD running 24/7 to save the video stream from all the cameras as it builds up. And once in a while to be able to download those archived video streams from home computer, to analyse the activity in the pizza place. Also i'd like to be able to stream the 'real-time' video stream from all cameras to the remote machine, in case i want to monitor the current status at the place.

Now the million dollar question is would ZM allow me do this? and how hard would it be to set it up to do so?
I am quite literate in basic networks and linux

AFAIK, ZM extracts pics from cameras, analyses them to detect motion, and possibly creates mpeg videostreams. How those streams are partitioned is beyond me for now. I am willing to experiment, but first i want to get all advice from you guys i can.

What kind of system and network components will i need to run my plan reasonably well with the best resolution/fps possible

I need to come up with a well defined plan by this weekend.
Please advise

Thank you
Alex

[SyRenity]

Hello Alex.

As far as I know, D-LINK DCS-950 is a MPEG-4 camera, rather then MJPEG which is currently the only streaming format supported by the ZM. You can consider using one of the Vivotek cameras (http://www.vivotek.com/) or Pixord (http://www.pixord.com/) - I recall that they have a low light MJPEG cameras.

Other then that, ZM can satisfy all of your needs - it's that great .

Best Regards.

[ma77hias]

ZM can definitly do this.

Couple of comments from my experience:
1. Drop the D-Link Cams buy AXIS cams
I have only had problems with the DCS900, Buy the AXIS 206 instead.
2. Using Network Cameras results in quite an heavy load on the CPU but 4 Cameras should do OK. I think using a capture card lowers your CPU load.
3. I am running 5 DCS900 (not happy with them) at 640x480 and 3fps on an Pentium IV 2.8 HT with 1GB of RAM. With all cameras on motiondetect I get an average CPU load of 4 and all the RAM including some swap beeing used.
4. Installation of ZM is not to difficult especially if you stick to a mainstream Linux distribution, like Fedora Core 3, Debian, Mandrake. This forum provides a lot of expert support on getting your system running.
5. ZM offers FTP upload to images and events to a remote machine, or if you have some experience with Linux you can also build your own mechanism.

My suggested component list, from my experience (now this is definitly arguable)
Pentium IV 3.0 / 3.2 at least 1GB RAM, 120 - 200 GB HDD (depending on how long you want to store the data and if you want to record continously)
AXIS 205/206 cameras or look into using a capture card.

Don't forget that if you want to look at your cameras live, your Internet connection at the restaurant also needs to offer some upload bandwith (mine offers theoretical 384 kBit/s upload, which is OK)

I hope this helps your decision

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Thanks for the replies guys

So if i plan to go beyond 4 cameras i should get not network cameras but video cameras with capture card/cards (as i imagin 5+ cameras would require more than one card)
What budget solution with capture cards would you recommend and would work the best with ZM in terms of performance?

Is AXIS 2100 camera good for my application?

Thanks
Alex

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So does the fact that AXIS 205/206 supports mjpeg format, help ZM in utilizing and requiring less resources due to camera performing the compression, or am i confused?

Thanks
Alex