ZoneMinder Forums

Hi! I am interested in building a small energy efficient home system, probably running on an atom dual core, with 2-3 cameras. However I've never worked with video capture let alone on Linux. (though I've worked with Linux in other fields for years) I haven't purchased any hardware yet.

My goals are energy efficiency, and low cost. I was hoping somebody could recommend an affordable video capture card known to work. But also, is my choice of an atom dual-core appropriate? If can get away running it on a (1.6 Ghtz) single core, that would be super energy efficient, or if I have to use my AMD Quad core I'd like to know.

Anyway, thanks in advance.
Luke

Hey Luke,

I am just setting up my first system also.

No need for the Quad Core that is for sure. I am not sure on the 1.6Ghz... you might be able to run 1 camera off of it. I myself have a 3Ghz P4 /w Hyperthreading but dont have my camera yet. The more cameras you run the more processor you are going to need. I am pretty sure an atom dual core will work just fine.

Edit: Quote from http://www.zoneminder.com/wiki/index.ph ... umentation
"In terms of computer hardware, there are no hard and fast requirements. You may get a system that works with one or two cameras going on an old P200 but you will be able to support more cameras, at a higher frame rate, with faster machines with more RAM. More guidance is available on the web forums."

As for cameras there are a lot of selections. Since I am toying right now I just picked up a cheapo that was on the list of known working.

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

Here is the camera I picked up.. well ok the 201 is on the list I hope the 200 has the same results.

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications ... CatId=1931

Good luck with the endevor and I am sure someone with more knowledge will touch up with more info and correct my mistakes.

Josh

What you are going to need is dependent on how many fps you want to server to process, and if you want motion detection, and a few other options. On an Atom I would suspect that you could likely process about 15 FPS with all the bells an whistles going (this is a SWAG) would be my guess. I only have a couple Atom machines here and unfortunatly they are both dedicated to other services so till I get a spare I can't bench mark these.

I would think that for the average setup, you could get away with three or four cams at 3 to 5 fps each on an atom so long as there is nothing else running on the system.

Also see this post where I described basically the same thing with a bit more detail:
http://www.zoneminder.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=14034

quirk wrote:Hey Luke,

I am just setting up my first system also.

No need for the Quad Core that is for sure. I am not sure on the 1.6Ghz... you might be able to run 1 camera off of it.
...
Here is the camera I picked up.. well ok the 201 is on the list I hope the 200 has the same results
...

Josh

Yeah, wouldn't it be nice? There are some cheap atom barebones kits that use like 30 watts. It would be nice to get some security without seeing it on the power bill...

So that camera looks like it runs on ethernet, while the ones I have been looking at plug into a video capture card. Does anybody know if zoneminder can support the use of both? The CCTV cameras seem kind of silly, when I only want to record motion detected events. IT seems like a camera that does its own hardware level motion detection could be a lot more energy efficient then streaming it to a video card and making a CPU do it.

Thanks all for your replies.

You can with Axis cams use their internal motion detection. There is a post in the contrib's and Feature request sections of the forum and also in the wiki.

Yes ZM does handle both Capture card and IP cams at the same time.