Need Help with New Setup

[rakoom2002 0]

I need a setup for my house. I tried looking on google but really didnt get any good answers. I need a camera that I can put in my bedroom window and point down at my car.

 

I Need the following:

 

Wireless Camera (Will be inside window):

-Night Vision

-Decent Picture

 

A way to record to a External Hard Drive (prefered), DVR, or my computer.

I only need to to be able to record 24 hours and then it can overwrite. Resolution doesnt need to be super great just decent enough to make out what's going on.

 

I know pretty much where to get the stuff just dont know exactly what I need or how big of a hard drive I need to record 24 hours at decent resolution (480P?). Anyway, I really appreciate any help.

[Soundy 1]

First of all, aiming a camera through glass will be problematic at best - any light in the room will reflect on the glass and be picked up by the camera.

 

Second, "night vision" is just a fancy marketing term for a cheap camera with built-in IR LEDs... which in reality are nothing fancier than an LED flashlight, just in a range of light on the edge of human perception. Putting that behind glass will result in a completely whited-out image.

 

Third, wireless analog cameras tend to be pretty short-range and prone to all manner of interference... plus a wireless camera is never truly wireless, as you still have to power it. Better to just get a wired camera and not worry about it.

 

Fourth, if you're looking "down" on your car, I assume that means from a second-floor or higher window? Don't expect to see faces of anyone lurking around, just the tops of their heads.

 

Without knowing what you're actually trying to achieve or what kind of budget you have, you might want to consider a camera that can record and store video internally, and mount it somewhere with a better view of your car... maybe something like a trailcam or gamecam.

[graphicw 0]

Reasonable quality analog cameras can be aquired from http://www.gadspot.com at a reasonable price. Almost all of them will have the IR capabilities and will give surprisingly good picture quality for the price. It will be better quality than any of the common package deals. For a residential setup, any common DVR card cable of doing 640x480 will do the job. If you want something cheap, look up KMC 8800 on E-bay. You will find those under $100. They will give you eight channels at 240 fps. The software that tends to come with these cards is crap. You can get decent software by contacting http://www.saysecurity.com and getting Diginet 5.2 for about $99.00. This software runs very well with these cards and it works great on an older spare PC as well. This spare PC can have as little as 512mb of RAM and still do just fine with this software. You can always go dirt cheap and free with Linux and Zoneminder, but you will need a beefier computer for the best results if you choose this route. Zoneminder stores all frames in JPG format and that just so happens to be the way you view your video in real time as well. Keeping that in mind, you can see why the system needs quite a bit of processing power to do the job right in the case of Zoneminder. If you have a good budget, then a true Geovision system with 8.3 or better software is the way to go.