ZoneMinder Forums

I a trying to find out what platform would be best to integrate cameras and i/o sensors.
I am trying to build an alarm system to monitor my house and a 50'x 50' garage 30" from my house.

I would like to be able to get pictures email to me when an alarm event is trigger by both a camera movement detection but also from other sensors.
Having a video stream would be nice but I don't need live realtime monitoring on 16 cameras. Probably 4 to 8 cameras taking pictures when an event is triggered, and one video stream at a time will suffice.

I have seen many dvr cards have several i/o conections, and I also know I can interface the serial port with some basic electronics for i/o.
how developed is zoneminder for i/o from other sensors?
I am also unsure if i should go with ip or analog cameras, or build a few routers with usb cameras as I have read in this forum.
I have a logitech 9000 and the quality is awesome, I wonder if less cameras with higher resolution is the way to go.
I am trying to do this on a budget so the cheaper the better, I have many pc's laying around.


i am looking at zoneminder, ircas and linuxMCE, any advice greatly appreciated; i don't want to reinvent the wheel.
I have basic skills in electronics, networking, building pc and basic programing of microcontrolers in basic, quite comfortable with wiring installations.
thanks

I have some experiences with ZM and PIC throught serial port connection and perl programed. Also you can do some O/I via php.

Is not so dificult to program a PIC chip + some perl script to do I/O actions.

If you are a spanish speaker I recomend you this w.site:

http://www.forosdeelectronica.com/


J.

muchas gracias,
is there any functionality already built in zoneminder to be used as an alarm system?
or you have to write everything from scratch?
thanks

everything by your self and depends what you are looking for.