Pictures: So Very Cheap House Camera Setup - SuperDVR Errors

[rawfuls 0]

Hey guys, my dad wanted to piece together a VERY CHEAP surveillance system for a few spots around the house.

 

Again, I'd like to stress the words CHEAP and BUDGET, as this is not going to be anything serious, it's mainly here to scare off the teenagers we have coming up our street to smoke outside our driveway/lawn.

 

Currently we have two of these Swann ADS-100 cameras that we picked up for ~$15 off Fry's BF deals:

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/bnh/controller/home?O=&sku=765924&Q=&is=REG&A=details

 

There are at the purple boxes on the Northwest corner of the house, one is pointed towards the sidewalk path coming from the opening of the street, and the other is pointed at the opposite sidewalk, which is a cul-desac.

 

In addition to the Swann's, since we are keeping this very light on the wallet, we got a free Q-See QSPDVR04 from my boss, since he switched to IP cameras for the store.

http://www.q-seestore.com/product-p/qspdvr04.htm

 

We threw this into an older Pentium 4 computer we had laying around, and also tossed in a AGP card, nVidia GeForce FX 5200 (very old card).

We installed SuperDVR which Q-See recommends, and initially worked but we only had grayscale-black and white even though they said both the card and the cameras supported color. But we didn't mind as it was recording upon motion only (what we wanted), and was working fine.

My dad begin to fuss around with the settings, and he told me he clicked on the resolution, and then clicked on "De-Interlace", which is a feature within SuperDVR, which would ideally smoothe over all the video for playback, and wouldn't be as choppy..

 

Either way, once he clicked on this radio box, he noted that it immediately crashed (SuperDVR did), and claimed a DirectDraw Error.

 

Since then, I have followed his steps with a different AGP card (reformat, card replacement, nothing worked), and clicked De-Interlace, and sure enough the error came.

However on the second card (MX440SE), I installed SuperDVR v4.6.1, which actually worked PERFECTLY with COLOR. We were amazed.

I tried the PCI card on my current computer which worked flawlessly, then again, I have modern hardware, that racks up the bill quite a bit!

We are trying to make this work with the current Pentium 4 rig we have for spare without shelling out money.

 

On the MX440SE (the second card), and the FX 5200, we are now unable to bring up SuperDVR as upon startup SuperDVR claims a DirectDraw object cannot be created, and will not start at all.

 

I tried endlessly reinstallations, wiped clean the drive, reformatted everything, reinstalled, driver updates, windows updates, nothing.

 

Any thoughts on this DirectDraw error?

I tried reinstalling the driver, reinstalling DirectX, reinstalling GPU drivers.. nada.

 

Attached is a diagram for what it's worth.

 

EDIT:

Anybody know of any options other than SuperDVR for viewing & recording?

Edited March 17, 2012 by Guest

[rawfuls 0]

Ended up redoing everything in a different computer (Still a Pentium 4 rig, but with a different motherboard), seems to work.

 

Definitely not touching that De-Interlace button, though!

 

Now capturing some decent color, of our front..

 

We spent about a total of $30 for these two cameras, computers & card were both already owned, so nothing spent on that.

We still have two more cameras to put up, whenever we have time & it stops raining on the weekends!

[rawfuls 0]

Got a few PMs asking for some pictures of said cheap cameras.

 

Here we are.

Cam1 is of my main driveway, captures any cars that comes into the 2-car driveway, also captures our alley gate, as well as the corner of the end of the driveway.

Cam2 shows corner of end of main driveway (huge blind spot between the two, but not too shabby), and extends to the end of our secondary driveway, and a bit into the neighbor's driveway.

The reason for a huge blindspot, is mainly because we wanted to mount it in the exact same area where our motion detection floodlights are.

Ideally, if the lights pick something up, the sudden change in light change will catch the motion detection in the camera, and turn those on as well, and after a second or two of adjusting from night to day (with the help of the floodlights), should be perfect.

We tried this out a few times and seems to work well for now.

 

As shown in pictures, motion detection went off on CAM1 detected the car passing, and passed into CAM2 range, where CAM2 started recording right away.

It actually pulled into the neighbor's driveway (behind the giant orange tree), and stopped there.

 

Quality isn't great, but for a $15 cameras we definitely are not complaining.

 

The colors of course off, but I'm not one for messing with color, so I left it as-is.

 

Anywho, the batch of pictures:

http://s53.photobucket.com/albums/g68/godzilla1994/Security%20Camera%20Snapshots/

[graphicw 0]

Not bad at all for ADS-100 cameras. I would not mess with any of the settings as the quality is decent for the purpose. The ADS-100 is a camera that uses IR illumination but lacks an IR cut filter. I would not worry about the color with these cameras. For the money, you got an excellent picture and color is not needed for the purpose you have in mind anyway.

[rawfuls 0]

Not bad at all for ADS-100 cameras. I would not mess with any of the settings as the quality is decent for the purpose. The ADS-100 is a camera that uses IR illumination but lacks an IR cut filter. I would not worry about the color with these cameras. For the money, you got an excellent picture and color is not needed for the purpose you have in mind anyway.

 

Assuming the cut filter is what I think it is (similar to a cover?), would I be able to grab a decent one to just put in front of the camera, this would increase the color drastically, or just merely?

[shockwave199 0]

If you're ever able to put a hundred bucks together for two cameras @ 50 bucks each, consider trying GS907CM from gadspot. com. For a cheap budget camera, I don't think it gets much better than that. And you'll probably have useable images for ID when the need arises. Good luck.

[rawfuls 0]

It seems I have spoken too soon.

I was browsing through some footage earlier, trying to find some events that took place out front (say one of our family friends came over, I wanted to see just how much it'd captured and if it was any good) to find out that our time was off.

 

Being the OCD type, I felt the need to correct this, so I closed SuperDVR, changed system time, restarted, and tried reopening it; until I was prompted with the DirectDraw error, yet again.

 

Given, this time I had installed a few updates (Net framework 2.0 for the DDNS client, Windows Malicious Defender, or whatever, Office Service Pack, and one other small thing).

Obviously, either the system time change affected it, or the software updates did; but I have a feeling nothing will defeat this until I get a decent graphics card that will actually offer DirectDraw, regardless of just how well the computer is still able to push out the video..

 

Will be in search of a few test cards from my AP Comp Sci teacher, and will be digging through the parts box to see if the old GeForce 6200 is AGP compatible.

 

Until then, seems like my toy is offline, yet again.

[tomcctv 190]

hi. on alot of cheap cards if you alter the time you will loose your footage. just reformat your drive after you have set the time.

 

another thing that tells you about your card is it needs its own software to view footage after burning.

 

 

 

also take a look at your card ...... why is it displaying time and date twice . ???

[rawfuls 0]

hi. on alot of cheap cards if you alter the time you will loose your footage. just reformat your drive after you have set the time.

 

another thing that tells you about your card is it needs its own software to view footage after burning.

 

also take a look at your card ...... why is it displaying time and date twice . ???

 

Once burned, the footage actually is viewable through VLC (a program I use on every computer at home), and I believe is burned into the .avi format IIRC.

 

Time & date was a little weird too.

 

Will give it a fresh wipe and see where it takes me.

[graphicw 0]

There will not be an easy way to fix the color issues of the ADS-100. Just run it as B/W. Just like the other poster suggested, you can get better cameras through gadspot.com. I have bought many there myself and you can easily get two decent cameras for under $200 that will easily blow away the Swann ADS-100's. I will provide you some sample footage from gadspot cameras as I have a few of them myself.

[MaxIcon 0]

Yeah, you'll typically have 2 choices - mount an IR filter, which will make your colors better but you'll lose your IR capability, or switch to BW and don't worry about the color. Cams with switched IR filters are the solution to this, but always cost more, and you've got a moving part now.

[rawfuls 0]

I'm now on Spring Break, so I should have some more time to fool around and try and get the thing back up and running.

 

We have a few more AGP cards that I can give a try, other than that, starting to make me mad!

[rawfuls 0]

Threw in another AGP card, this time a Nvidia GeForce 6800.

Works so far, and won't be messing with it this time!

[rawfuls 0]

I'd like to claim some success!

 

One of the reasons we put this camera setup in place was becuase we were pretty curious who was coming by and digging up our roses, and whatnot.

We've always suspected raccoon/skunks, but we were never 100% certain.

Well, we are today!

I fixed it up yesterday, put everything in place, camera 1 picked up some strange little guy with white in his eyes (probably just the camera), as he crossed the middle of the two cameras, light sensors picked him up and on came the lights. Camera 2 then caught him walking towards the front door and into the rose area... That's where it stops because we've yet to install the last two cameras! Out of sheer laziness, I suspect..

 

As per the questions before:

The double stamped time & date, is because when I took the snapshots, it wrote another time and date over where the camera recorded it.

I guess from now on I will ask it to be snapped bare, that way it will have the original time/date the camera embedded.

 

The files are all in .avi files, playable through VLC (videolan.org)

 

Direct album with everything (combined with the pictures before).

http://s53.photobucket.com/albums/g68/godzilla1994/Security%20Camera%20Snapshots/

 

Pictures:

[rawfuls 0]

OFFICIALLY SOLVED!

 

I had forgotten LogMeIn installs it's own VGA drivers everytime.

I would install Windows, install VGA drivers, then wireless drivers, and then LogMeIn so I could run into my room and finish everything else, multi-tasking.

 

Well, I reinstalled Windows (incase it's own uninstaller didn't remove all hints of drivers), only install NVidia drivers, then threw everything else on.

AND IT WORKS!

I'm not sure why it was having trouble with B/W only, but now it's working with color!

 

I've installed Teamviewer, and I'm on my way.

Hopefully, I won't experience the same thing with Teamviewer.

 

Ahhh, so good to finally figure something out for once

 

I assume whenever I threw in a new AGP card, I would install video drivers.

Then I'd run SuperDVR, and it works.

Later, I'd check up on it, through LogMeIn, which reactivated LogMeIn's drivers, which caused the crash.

 

Also worth noting that the videos look somewhat better!

Adjusted some of the colors slightly, and the colors are actually getting closer to what they should look like.

 

All in all, for $60 total, this isn't bad at all!