2-building hi-res camera setup

[varka 0]

Hey folks,

 

I've been asked to upgrade the CCTV system in our company to something that 'can see license plates and capture people's faces' of people in the parking lot and approaching two buildings which face each other approximately 15m apart, across a parking lot.

 

We currently have a pokey Zoneminder based machine with a $20 4 channel analog CCTV capture card off Ebay that leaves a lot to be desired in terms of quality. Most of the cameras are currently indoors, our second building is new hence why our requirements have suddenly changed.

 

My budget is $1500, absolute max $2000, and for that I need at least one wide-angle, high resolution camera to cover the parking lot, and two zoom cameras to cover the front of each building (ie, pointing across the parking lot at the other building). There's a 20Mbps point-to-point wireless link set up already across the yard, if necessary I can upgrade this to about 80Mbps for less than $200. I'm assuming that all three of these cameras will be IP cams, given the two-building scenario and the fact that capture cards are expensive for HD stuff.

 

First of all, are my assumptions about '3 cameras' and 'HD quality' sensible, or if not, what would you recommend?

 

Secondly, what kind of cameras (and what kind of money) should I be looking at spending for these three cameras? It's my understanding that if they support h264 streaming over RTSP, they'll work with Zoneminder (and capture at the full resolution possible), but I'm happy to consider alternative software if it's going to be within budget and is necessary. The cameras will be going indoors for the most part, as we have elevated windows which look out from both buildings. Again, open to suggestions.

 

Third, is the already-set-up Zoneminder software going to be sufficient? I'm very experienced with network and (linux) server administration, and will likely be setting up an offsite backup in a datacenter of the capture files on the operating system level, in case someone comes by and torches both of our buildings. I'd like to hope that any prospective replacement software will also be able to do offsite backup and not cost a ton on licensing. Again, I know what I'm doing in Linux, but I can't say the same for windows server etc.

 

Help a CCTV newbie specify a system he's not going to regret in the future!

 

Thanks all!

 

Varka

[sinbad 0]

I'm happy to hear you got ZM to work last time I tried it it looked more like proof of concept than in production state.

 

If I were you I would put couple of 3MP cams with SD card recording on them.

 

I've had good luck with Samsung SNZ-7080R which is pretty sweet IMHO.

I record locally on 32GB SDHC card. I also record on Samsung NVR server which is free up to 4 channels but will run only on windows machine and the system req are not cheap.(i5-i7 IIRC)

 

I have email alerts and FTP upload to a BSD server I have.

 

You are a little low on budget if you really need 3 cams. I've had good experiance with Vivotek, samsung and Arecont 3-5mp cams.