Hi all,
I purchased a BT878 card from Amazon and am trying to setup a PC-based 3 camera system. The cameras are all MR420. This site was bought out by my customer and the cameras and wiring were all left but the DVR unit/power supplies where taken.
I've rigged up a 12V 1A power supply to one of the camera's power cable and connected the BNC to the computer. I decided to firstly try a open source solution and after some searching came upon ZoneMinder. This looks like it might do the trick but I'm not sure at this point. I continue to get garbled images/video from the camera (and other spare B/W cameras I've tested). This may be related to a Linux driver issue, but I'm still looking into this. Here is an example of the garbled iamges:
http://i41.tinypic.com/nb2735.jpg
With some of the testing with the B/W test cameras I have I was able to get clear video for a matter of minutes before it reverted to garbled nonsense as above. I haven't been able to reproduce the successful video since. For this image/video capture (testing) I've been using streamer (part of the xawtv package), but the video feeds look the same inside ZoneMinder.
We have all the cameras, wiring, and PC equipment that we need. I think the only remaining cost is the software. And the remaining budget is about $250.
I'm willing to put WinXP on the system and use a Windows-based software solution but I'm not sure what would fit my budget/needs. Also, I'm concerned that the BT878 isn't a capable card (though the 1 successful video taken was perfect) - perhaps not compatible with software packages in my budget or just an antiquated card.
What were looking for in the software are:
- Motion detection (motion record)
- Remote access
- Simple burning to CD/DVD
The current computer specs are:
- 2.2 GHz P4 (Dell Dimension)
- 768MB RAM
- Hauppauge ImpactVCB Model 188
- Fedora 12 Linux OS
I'm a computer guy trying to take care of this security project for my customer - if you could provide an software recommendation or shed some light on why I'm getting garbled video/image I would appreciate it.
Thanks!