Surveillance Camera Options

[mindless1]

I'm trying to find some options for a surveillance camera with as many of the following factors as possible:

Price range up to roughly $500, lower is better but not a toy/junk. This is going in a publicly frequented area though people won't have access to it, does not need to be vandal proof. Price need not include installation or the recording storage medium.

It would be nice if it was a two part system so the recording box was hidden away, far less accessible. Otherwise it would be good if the camera was inconspicuous. Does not need to be portable and will run from wall power, not batteries.

It needs to be able to record video at 2 FPS or higher. Need not be HD quality but not poor quality like the recordings you see on the news when a gas station is held up.

Needs motion detection activation so it can store at least 16 hours at a bare minimum then once it reaches the end of available capacity it starts recording over the oldest footage, looping continually. If it could use a high capacity flash card that would be highly preferred over a hard drive. Either way the storage medium needs to be reasonably easily removable for off-site viewing, there won't be a monitor connected to it on-site although I've no problem with having one there for initial setup.

Ability to function as a network camera would be a plus, preferably over wifi but ethernet cabling is better than nothing.

It would be nice if it were ruggedized a bit instead of flimsy all plastic but this is not mandatory and it doesn't need to be all weather/waterproof.

Does not need to support more than one camera, but the ability to support 2 or 3 would be worth raising the budget a bit.

 

[Fardringle]

I set up one of these recently for one of my clients (I do IT contracting). The base station interface is a pretty simplistic Linux build, but has just about every option I can think of that you'd want in a basic security system (including everything you listed), and it was very easy to set up and you can adjust settings both from the base station and while monitoring the cameras remotely (if you have the admin password). You can set up separate accounts to allow different levels of access for simple viewing (can't change any settings) to the admin that can adjust any system settings from any location.

The kit comes with four cameras and you can add up to four more if you need them in the future. The cameras don't even need a power outlet nearby since they get their power through the 60 foot data cable that connects them to the home/base station. The cameras wouldn't get any awards for picture quality at a film festival but the results were surprisingly good considering the very low cost for the complete system, particularly when you bump the resolution up to maximum. Night vision mode on the cameras worked quite well, too.

The built-in 500 GB hard drive in the base station can easily store months worth of surveillance if the cameras are set to only record when they detect motion in the area. You can even manually set up exactly what parts of the cameras' visible range is included in the motion activation algorithm so if there is a spot that gets a lot of activity that you don't care about (like a window to a busy street) you can tell it to ignore that specific spot so it doesn't record every time a person or car goes past the window.

You can monitor the cameras remotely from anywhere on the LAN or from just about any device on the Internet. You'll need to forward a couple of ports on your router if you want to monitor the cameras from outside the local network, but that's a simple thing to do. There are Droid and iPad and Blackberry apps and IE and Safari worked great once the applet installed automatically the first time they connected. Firefox worked OK but was a bit flaky with the applet and Chrome didn't like it at all, but you can 'force' yourself to use IE just for the cameras if you prefer something else for your normal web browsing.

Really, the hardest part of the entire setup was running the cables to the camera locations.

I realize this sounds kind of like an advertisement, but I was so impressed with the results from such a cheap system (I had my doubts when he first bought it and asked me to set it up) that I got one for my own office as well.

 

[mindless1]

Thanks Fardringle. Initially I was hoping for something that took flash cards as those are easy to pull out of a slot vs the hard drive but what you linked mentions "Backup method: USB FLash Drive or Network".

What's involved in that? For example my needs are, if an event occurred within say a time window of 24 hours, I need to be able to get data off and view (or share) remotely. If the data rate is fairly high then I need to pull data off on-site opposed to an online download. I have no idea what I'm talking about, how is that sort of thing accomplished? My oversimplified assumption was that if it's a flash card I can just swap the card with another and take it with me.

 

[Fardringle]

Just toss in a flash drive and copy the video files you want to the drive, or from a remote monitor (even over the Internet) just choose to save the file(s) you want on that local machine. It takes longer over the Internet of course, but it's not too bad if you have a decent upload speed on the connection where the camera system is located.

 

[alkemyst]

At $500 per camera, cctvcamerapros.com is a good resource. They can design exactly what you need for you and their pricing is very competitive.

These guys are local to me and I have been to their free seminars where they bring in manufacturers and have them give training and system overviews plus they even give you a nice lunch.

I am moving soon so using a very basic three camera setup (2 focams and a trendnet, PTZ camera setup inside). For under $300 it's really nice and I can monitor and do two way audio through my iPhone.

When I end up in a place I plan to be more permanently I will have this company put together a nice package for me.

 

[mindless1]

Just toss in a flash drive and copy the video files you want to the drive, or from a remote monitor (even over the Internet) just choose to save the file(s) you want on that local machine. It takes longer over the Internet of course, but it's not too bad if you have a decent upload speed on the connection where the camera system is located.

Does the unit have a display or some other intuitive way to allow that copying since there won't be a monitor?

The internet upload speed is bound to be poor, it's a low tier consumer DSL account. I'm guessing 768Kbps at most.

 

[Fardringle]

You can attach a monitor, mouse and keyboard to the base station if you want to. Or just control it (and copy video files) from another machine on the LAN/Internet.

 

[mindless1]

^ I've been in contact with another person involved in the project who provided me with some details I wasn't aware of which are mentioned below.

I'm not the one who will most likely be dealing with any issues like getting video from it later, I'm only certain to be the one who sets it up initially. The best option would be something where files can be transferred pushing no buttons besides an "off" button then pulling an SD card out of a slot, and then it starts working again by putting the card back in, or a second flash card, and turning it back on. I've no problem taking a monitor and keyboard, or a computer to network to it when I set it up but these things may not, probably won't be present for the remaining life of the system.

There is a resident in the same building who has internet access but he may or may not stay there long term and ideally we'd like to avoid paying for an internet account perpetually when the only thing it would be used for is this surveillance camera, and we don't want the liability of giving the resident use of the account either if he cancelled his account and we took over payment of an account to use it. Realtime monitoring is not as important as a recording of things after the fact.

So, I initially stated $500 or less but if it needs internet access to avoid having a monitor - which it won't have - then it might as well cost over $1000 for the features I want to avoid the cost of an internet account otherwise - EXCEPT so long as the resident is there, there is only one phone line to the building which I presume can only handle one DSL connection at a time, his. The site does not have cable company lines running to it AFAIK, as when we inquired about them putting some in they claimed the cost would be around $5000 which we balked at. I suppose the other option is to inquire how much the phone company would want to put in a 2nd phone line, and yet we'd still like to avoid paying a monthly bill for that when we don't really need realtime monitoring nor hands-on config changes later.

I suppose there might be another option. When files need pulled off someone can network to it with a laptop, but even this may be too advanced to expect any random person without technical skills to be able to do later. I suppose I could write simplified instructions to do it.

 

[skyking]

I build zoneminder systems for my customers. I have a new one sitting next to me to replace one that has worked hard for about 5 years now.
http://www.zoneminder.com/
It does analog cams with a capture card, x10, wireless IP cams, controls some Pan Tilt Zoom cameras (PTZ), takes TCP messages to use the camera's built in motion detection, if they have it.
Sends texts, emails, etc.
The one I am replacing is an e6600 with 2 gigs ram and a 500 gig array, recording an average of 200,000 motion events in 6 weeks. Busy place
I have a core I3 with 8 gigs to replace it, add a couple HDTV POE axis cams outside.
It will have 11 analog cams on a capture card, and 13 IP cams; the 1 TB array will provide them at least 12 weeks of motion event coverage. IF you can't figure out you need to review the cams by then..........

 

[JoeyP]

Stumbled across this thread, and am also looking for some advice. The link in post #2 is now dead, so I've started looking on places like newegg.

What I'm looking for is a system that can take up to 8 color cameras, do night vision (IR, which i hear is better with coax+power as opposed to PoE), and be networked so it is remotely accessible. I think I'll start with 4 cameras, but then add on others as budget permits. This one looks pretty nice.

Any recommendations?