Home Security

[Yakyb]

Thought i would open this up for Discussion as i have no experience of this whatsoever.

I was planning on Buying a house in the next few Months and my girlfriend is very security concious.

ideally i would like to have a system that would record Video onto a computer that could be stored over a 2-4 week period i would like up to 4/5 cameras

front door
Garage/car
Back door
garden
Other...

now im sure this is possible but as i say i have no experince whatsoever.

i have plenty of HDD space so that is not an issue and would look to run it on a computer which is on 24/7 (file server in RIG) but could possibly re-jig or get a new box if appropriate.

Im not too interested in automatic alarm systems that email me or text me or anything.

as i see it i need to
1.) place cameras around house
2.) shield cameras from weather/damage
3.) Get motion sensitive Lights to light gardens if someone walks in
4.) connect cameras to Computer
5.) get some software that will record (and compress?) the 4-5 inputs and save the files by date

ideally the cameras would be motion sensitive to limit dead video

Does anyone have any experience / ideas on this

much appreciated

[Magnj]

I've been thinking a similar thing. I know there are lowish-tech options for like 1 camera...but to do it right, I'm not sure....but I'd be interested to know.

[Polizei]

Recording five video streams to the same disk is going to be murder. Your file server... whats the harddrive system like? RAID? Controller card?

Youre going to want something with insane write speeds to be able to write that much that quickly. Tons of processing power to be able to compress five files at the same time.

[Kondik]

The CPU raw power the RAM Bandwith and the Disk R/W speed must be unbelievable. I think 5 uncompressed streams compressed Realtime to AVIs or whatsoever would definetley kill even an Quadcore and the drives i think in this sphere a 4 - 5 Raptor 150 GB's RAID 0 could handle it their R/W speed is unlelievable but sooner or later you'll tear to death one of those components ..

[Yakyb]

it doesnt necessarily have to compress nor does the stream be particularly high quality so the fact that you can copy a DVD VOB onto your hard drive in under four minutes makes me think that write speeds are not much of an issue and again would have thought a 3500 should be able to pick up the slack in therms of Processing power, but hey always need an excuse to upgrade

a Black and White 320x240 should be enough in terms of picture quality so long as the image is not a complete slideshow

currently the File server is just an old gaming rig with no Raid on at all backups are dealt out over the network with each other Comp storing versions of the FIle servers Files

the process of the incoming Video feed should be along the lines of

1.) CAmera detects motion
2.) camera turns on and starts signal
3.) computer recognises signal and starts to record onto HDD
4.) motion stops
5.) camera continues recording for short time and then turns off
6.) camera detects motion
7.) camera turns on and starts signal
8.) computer recognises signal and appends to original File
9.) new file created at midnight every day.

im sure there is a commercial program that could do this or better yet could this be done on the cheap using WebCams (USB wiring could be an issue)?

thanks for the replies so far

Jake

[YukonTrooper]

Move to Canada.

[darkone414]

My friends father owns a shop where he recently installed 9 cameras that come on when they see motion and can see in the dark (although the quality isn't that great.) The server stores over a month worth of video and the whole setup cost around $2000. I will see if I can find out more for you but any security company should be able to setup something like this for less than you probably think it costs...

[lutjens]

Move to Canada.

Good idea...then instead they can put up a big neon sign outside their house that reads, "Please come invade my house because legally, I have no right to defend myself, so there is no risk to yourself whatsoever."

[Yakyb]

My friends father owns a shop where he recently installed 9 cameras that come on when they see motion and can see in the dark (although the quality isn't that great.) The server stores over a month worth of video and the whole setup cost around $2000. I will see if I can find out more for you but any security company should be able to setup something like this for less than you probably think it costs...

That Would be fantastic Thank You

[#su]

building a computer for this purpose would be:
1. too expensive
2. unreliable
3. inefficient

i'd start researching options like this: http://www.homesecuritystore.com/ezS...productID=1400