I'm a computer vision programmer, and a month ago, as favour to a friend, I wrote a simple program that helps a local franchise monitor their display floor.
They are quite happy with the program, corporate heard about it, and now they want to do the same at some other locations. The problem is that corporate wants to keep my machine vision software only at their headquarters, and instead of a high end computer in every location, they want to just have the cameras and DVR that can be locked tight in a box.
The problem is, I have no idea about what dedicated DVRs can do. I'm used to capturing the video from the camera as it comes in, and record it at whatever resolution/FPS/compression I need. With DVRs in remote locations, I will need to worry about disk size, and about finding a balance between loss of detail, frames per second, and the size of the video file I need to transfer over a bandwidth limited connection.
I spent a few hours browsing the internet about information, and I am quite disheartened. It seems that DVRs have a huge variety of capabilities, and there is no standard set of parameters one can set, a standard way of retrieving footage over TCP/IP, a standard file format, or really anything. So please allow me to throw a number of newbie questions at you.
0. Do you know of any dedicated DVR hardware that comes with a Software Development Kit (SDK) and can be customized to a great extent?
1. Do you know of any DVRs which let you directly access the videos stored on their hard drives over the network? For example, as if they are a network drive or FTP host, not through a browser.
2. Is it possible to instruct a DVR to record multiple videos at the same time? For example, their 'regular' surveillance video, and a video that only records one frame for every ten minutes.
3. Is it possible to instruct a DVR to record at a particular FPS? For example, an especially low one like 1FPS or even 1/10 FPS.
4. Is it possible to instruct a DVR to use a particular codec? For example a lossless one like Lagarith.
5. How well do DVRs implement access control? I heard that some DVRs let anyone who knows the IP watch the surveillance video.
6. How well do DVRs recover from power interruption? Can they keep their settings, and be ready to serve video after a reasonable amount of time (a few minutes)?
7. How well do DVRs tolerate high temperature? (120F and above)
Thanks, for reading all the way to the bottom. By the way, if you are a reseller, do not hesitate to recommend your high end unit to me, and try to convince me that it will be just perfect for my needs... as long as it is below the price range of a good number crunching PC ($1500)
