3-5 Axis 210 IP Cams > Eth Switch > Raspberry Pi3. Possible?

[777funk]

I'd like to setup a system that can be run on a 12V battery. That got me to thinking... I can rig up a PoE switch to power the Axis cameras on 12V easy enough... I can get a DC to DC converter or even a USB car adapter for 5V to run the Pi. All too easy so far.

What I don't know much if anything about is if there's a way to run multiple IP cameras into the Pi. I would like to be able to connect 3-5 of the mentioned cameras to the Pi then have that accessible in my local home network. I'd like to record to the Pi3's storage and possibly backup to my Xubuntu machine.

Is this practical? Again sorry for my Pi ignorance here.

[bbunge]

Keep the resolution and frame rate low and it should work for you. I have an Axis 200+ that bangs along at the amazing frame rate of 1 FPS and never misses a beat! Your cameras can do 30 FPS but you do not need that rate...

[777funk]

Thanks! I'd like to run 3-5 FPS on each of the cameras and at full resolution. I don't think that's a very high res camera. I appreciate the reply!

[knight-of-ni]

With modern h.264 cameras, the issue is usually cpu resources because transcoding h.264 is expensive.
However, your older Axis 210's are mjpeg cameras, which means the cameras will use little of your cpu resources.
However, this is at the expense of network bandwidth, and since you mentioned a Raspberry Pi, disk i/o is a concern. You will likely need to look into recording to something other than the local sd card.

So yeah, if you keep the framerate low and use a wired network connection, you've got a reasonable chance of making that work.

[flyvert]

I have 3 cameras hooked to a RPi2 (two of them with motion detection enabled) and it seem to run fine on the CPU budget of a RPi2; total average load is roughly 25% when no streaming (active viewing) is taking place.

At 640x360 and 3 fps each zmc (image capturing process) eat 15-20% of CPU (since RPi2 is quad core the %-age can be somewhat cut by 3/4). If my initial problems with "grey capture" (viewtopic.php?f=34&t=24412) could be abated with reducing compression in the cameras I will probably purchase and hook up a fourth camera soon...

After crashing two SD cards (from I assume frequent MySQL accesses, not with ZoneMinder though) I've stopped using SD as persistent storage in any of my several constantly running RPi:s. As USB power is not one of Raspberry PIs strenghts, feeding a mechanical disk from a RPi is not such a good idea, if even possible. In one of my RPis I manage to run a SSD disk on a tight ampere budget, the one running ZoneMinder I've rigged with an external mechanical 2.5" USB disk having an external +5V input connector (the additional power I steal from a nearby and always powered USB port).

Adding the external disk to /etc/fstab is also a bit risky as the boot sequence will suspend itself (requiring some keystrokes on a locally connected keyboard [which I do not have]) if the external disk is not mountable, etc. I have therefore made an ugly hack into the /etc/rc.local of my ZoneMinder PI that should detect this and stop MySQL and ZoneMinder from starting (and sending me a message)

Code: Select all

# Mount video disk
mount /dev/sda1 /var/cache/zoneminder

if [ ! -d /var/cache/zoneminder/mysql ]; then
  echo "Failed mounting /dev/sda1, better stop MySQL and ZoneMinder services"
  service mysql stop
  service zoneminder stop
  /usr/local/bin/sendprowlmessage 'Disk error' '/dev/sda1 not mounted on /var/cache/zoneminder' 0
fi

Moving the MySQL instance to the external disk was also an "ugly" job; I simply stopped MySQL, moved the entire /var/lib/mysql over to the /var/cache/zoneminder folder (which is mounted from the USB disk) and then put soft link in /var/lib pointing to the new location of the mysql folder. Just be sure to retain the ownership and access rights when copying/moving (and yes; I compressed the original folder in case I want to revert).

Code: Select all

/var/lib/mysql -> /var/cache/zoneminder/mysql