Hi,
I've been trying to figure out how to create a community CCTV network. I've had cameras for 7 years, for the last couple of years I've given up on DVR units and have a PC instead. I'm just about to hook up 3 more cameras including a PTZ dome, but my plans for the neighbourhood are much more ambitious...
When something happens, car broken into, criminal damage, etc., people tend to as me if I caught it on camera. What I would like to create is a local CCTV network. The rough design is:
Each household involved would have their own independent PC based CCTV setup.
These would be connected to the internet.
We'd each have a password protected login and be able to view cameras on the network live
A server, probably at my house, would act as backup, and store timed images from each camera in the network
Obviously, step 1 is the easy part. I'm not yet sure as to how best achieve the rest.
I'm a software engineer, but I don't have much experience with CCTV systems. I certainly don't want to develop any software from scratch and want to use something off the shelf, preferably open source.
Any advice you can offer would likely save me an awful lot of searching and reading.
Lyle