Deploying IP cameras

[Sup3rFly 0]

Howdy,

 

I want to share what we are doing at work (casino) to hopefully help others and get some feedback from you on how to make things work better for us.

 

We have about 600 analog cameras being recorded by Vigil 5.0. Vigil is running on Dell PowerEdge 2950s, with 8 cameras on each server for critical (22fps for each camera - limited to 8 by the card we use), and 16 cameras a server for non critical (5fps). Everything works great and we are very happy with it. Storage is contained locally on the server (4x500GB drives in two sets of RAID1). We are able to save about 20 days of footage on each server.

 

Now on to the IP cameras. We demo'd some megapixel cameras and were amazed at the difference compared to our 550tvl analog cameras. We could actually read cards on tables without focusing just on a 1'x1' area!

 

We ended up buying 15 Arecont AV3100 cameras with Stardot MP 4-10MM lenses. This decision was based on that it could do 22FPS at 2MP and the price was one of the cheapest ($500 a camera, $130 lense). Oh, made in USA is kinda cool too

 

With Vigil, we can easilly have a hybrid system with both analog and IP. We have 8 cameras going into a Netgear FS726TP switch (24 100mbps PoE switch, 4 1gbps ports). We are putting 4 IP cameas on a server with 8 analog cameras. The 2950's have two 1gbps NICs, one goes to a network that our surveillance clients use to view footage, and the other NIC goes to a seperate network that the IP cameras are on. We are only doing 4 a server due to the very intensive CPU usage these cameras cause at 22FPS. With just two 22ffps Arecont cameras capturing at 1.6MP and 8 analog cameras recording 22fps, a dual core 3GHz is at 70%. If we reduce the two IP cameras to 11fps, it goes down to 45-50%. We are going to add another dual core 3Ghz procecssor, which should allow to add another camera or two. Might even go with two quad cores. Right now at 1.6MP 22fps, these cameras are eating up 1GB a hour each. Not too bad for the quality you get, IMO.

 

Here is paintshop drawing of our network to give you a visual:

-edit can't do it yet

 

So any thoughts on our setup to make it better?

 

Thanks

[Soundy 1]

Sounds impressive! I deal with Vigil systems in a number of analog, IP and hybrid systems, they're really a great system.

 

One thing I might suggest is going to RAID5 or even RAID6 for your storage, for data security. We've got three sites set up now for the same customer using Enhance Technology's R8 iSCSI RAID systems - eight 1TB drives at RAID5 gives about 6.5TB of storage. The Enhance arrays are super easy to set up and interface through iSCSI.

 

Oh, and maybe stop by that one other IP-cam thread and check out what "cctvexpert" says about using IP cameras in a casino - I'm sure you'll find it enlightening

[megapixel man 0]

Before you go "all in" on upgrading your current servers, have a look at Blades and the Pivot 3 solution, I feel they have alot to offer in the Casino Market.

[Sup3rFly 0]

A question...

 

Does anyone know of a portable LCD test monitor that works with PoE IP cameras? We have one for our analog cameras but need a solution for these new IP cameras. Right now we hookup a laptop to our surveillance network and adjust through the Vigil software, which can be a pain.

[Soundy 1]

Most IP cameras have a built-in webserver, which aids in the aiming and focusing via laptop.

 

What I've started doing recently is taking a cheap WiFi router onsite, and plugging one of the LAN ports into the network with the IP cameras... then I can use that to access it wirelessly with my laptop. I can also plug the camera directly into the router and access it wirelessly (note: this assumes your laptop has wireless). A PoE-capable router would be particularly useful here. See this threadfor more discussion of this...

 

I also have a retractable ethernet cable with a crossover/straight switch that I use to plug directly into the cameras. While this removes the PoE power source, the IQEye cameras we use all support 12VDC power, so I also pack along a 12V/4.5Ah gel-cell battery that I use to power each camera locally, as I'm working on it.

 

While the laptop is also handy to run the camera's locate/configuration tool (IQfinder for the IQeye cameras), to really trim down, you can even use these methods with a "netbook" type computer (anything that can be done via web browser, at least), or do as my co-worker is doing, and use an Archos. He has the PVR dock for his, so it will take analog input (and the super-hi-res screen is REALLY nice for adjusting analog cameras), and of course, it has built-in WiFi so he can browse the network cameras with it.

[VST_Man 1]

you'd think they would put a simple video out port on IP cams to aid the installation.

 

Or, a network monitor that has PoE via network peer-to-peer with a focus meter, and of course, a beer bottle opener!

[zmxtech 0]

The acti 1311 IP camera has video out !

 

But I adjust focus with a hi-res laptop if it needs it...

 

just being picky....

[Soundy 1]

you'd think they would put a simple video out port on IP cams to aid the installation.

 

Or, a network monitor that has PoE via network peer-to-peer with a focus meter, and of course, a beer bottle opener!

 

Several IP cams do have a composite-video out.... most of the IQs have one that's active for a few minutes after power-up and show a focus-aid window, and a few have one that's active full-time (like the Alliance-series domes)... those are handy if you're using it for something like an ID shot and want to drive a customer-awareness monitor.

[zmxtech 0]

oh forgot to add, your Dell's are probably Q64bit-Zeon's, depending on the OS do you have enough RAM ?. more the better

 

I would be splitting the system into 2 the "old" analog and the new IP camera

servers, the Analog is bringing down the performance of the IP cams.

just not fair to the shiny new IP cams.....

 

also get rid of all the unnecessary services on the OS even get rid of netbios

in the TCP settings -if you dont use MS file sharing etc.

 

You could Vlan each camera system which might help a bit, but using netgear [yuk] i dont think they can do "grown up's" networking

 

my 2c

[Soundy 1]

oh forgot to add, your Dell's are probably Q64bit-Zeon's, depending on the OS do you have enough RAM ?. more the better

 

To a point. With Windoze at least, anything over 3GB RAM won't be recognized if you're running a 32-bit version of the OS. It doesn't hurt anything having more, just anything over that is wasted. You have to go to the 64-bit version of XP or Vista to take advantage of more than that.

[zmxtech 0]

actually win 2000Ent can use 8Gb I have built 100`s of servers just depends on the OS really .

[Sup3rFly 0]

Memory isn't a problem, the Dell's have 2GB and aren't even using 1GB. We have 8 analog cameras doing 22fps and 4 IP cameras set at 1.6MP doing 22fps, with a server with two dual core Xeon 3GHz (12Ghz total) at 85% utilization right now. But of course that means there is still 2GHz free The IP ethernet port is utilizing 120Mbps, so each IP camera is using 30Mbps of bandwidth. We aren't putting more than 12 cameras on these Netgear switches, but so far these guys for $350 seem to be holding up great.

 

Vigil only works with Windows 2000 and XP. It took a bit of tweaking, but we have XP working great on the Dell 2950's, even have Server Administrator working for monitoring. Plus, Server License is way more expensive than a Windows XP Pro

 

Disk space is killing us right now, so we are working on getting the rules changed for us to reduce the fps to 10 instead of 22. But the difference between a 550tvl and 1.6MP camera on a Blackjack table is night and day difference! You can read the cards/suites and see the entire table with all of the players and dealer in the shot.

 

Gaming doesn't allow wireless devices on our casino/surveillance networks, so we are now just using a long network cable that is attached to our surveillance network to adjust them. I suppose this works for now, and of course can use radios. Would be nice if there was a test LCD monitor that had an ethernet port w/ PoE. I did test out one of the IQEye 1.3Mp camera and did see it had a video output. But unforuntelly it didn't do 22fps.

[Sup3rFly 0]

Oh, we do have the IP servers setup in RAID 5. The reason the CPU utilization is so high is because we are recompressing the video stream with Vigil's codec to save disk space. Looks like we are burning through 160GB a day with the 8 22fps analog and 4 22fps 1.6MP cameras. Using 4 Seagate 7200 1.5TB drives.

[ak357 0]

Oh, we do have the IP servers setup in RAID 5. The reason the CPU utilization is so high is because we are recompressing the video stream with Vigil's codec to save disk space. Looks like we are burning through 160GB a day with the 8 22fps analog and 4 22fps 1.6MP cameras. Using 4 Seagate 7200 1.5TB drives.

 

Why don't u use 1.3 MP H.264 ?

30 fps at full res and about 2-4 megabits/sec

Vigil can't support H.264 ?

[Privatteer 0]

Thinking along same lines arecont camera, 3.1MP 100Gig a day, 11Mbps a sec approx with H264 24fps.

[megapixel man 0]

A question...

 

Does anyone know of a portable LCD test monitor that works with PoE IP cameras? We have one for our analog cameras but need a solution for these new IP cameras. Right now we hookup a laptop to our surveillance network and adjust through the Vigil software, which can be a pain.

 

Just use a small laptop, like a tablet notebook, running software that will accept the camera and a POE splitter that extracts 12VDC from the POE to power the camera during focus.

[ak357 0]

A question...

 

Does anyone know of a portable LCD test monitor that works with PoE IP cameras? We have one for our analog cameras but need a solution for these new IP cameras. Right now we hookup a laptop to our surveillance network and adjust through the Vigil software, which can be a pain.

 

Just use a small laptop, like a tablet notebook, running software that will accept the camera and a POE splitter that extracts 12VDC from the POE to power the camera during focus.

 

I beleive this post ( by megapix man) should be in diff forum

[megapixel man 0]

A question...

 

Does anyone know of a portable LCD test monitor that works with PoE IP cameras? We have one for our analog cameras but need a solution for these new IP cameras. Right now we hookup a laptop to our surveillance network and adjust through the Vigil software, which can be a pain.

 

Just use a small laptop, like a tablet notebook, running software that will accept the camera and a POE splitter that extracts 12VDC from the POE to power the camera during focus.

 

I beleive this post ( by megapix man) should be in diff forum

 

Just saw your post in the other forum

 

The above answer was to a question asked previous in this thread.

 

Also my understanding is that they have POE available at the camera already from the exisiting cable run. Just need to focus the camera locally.