El-Cheapo 1280x1024 PTZ?

[PeteCress 0]

Windsurfing season is about to start, and I want to replace one of my surfcams with a PTZ.

 

The "Real" surfcam lives almost a mile away from the beach - behind a Comcast cable connection: http://extremesurfcam.dyndns.org:8080/default.htm. It's function is to let people see how well sailors are planing out on the bay.

 

But the cam in question will live on top of a gazebo on the beach behind a very slow DSL connection. It's function is to let people see who is on the beach and what they're doing.

 

I have tried 640x480, but 1280x1024 or thereabouts seems to be the minimum rez that works for this situation.

 

Last year it was an EdiMax IC3030-POE that cost about eighty bucks - inside some DIY weatherproofing

 

The thing actually survived Sandy, but the users keep asking for PTZ so they can check out activity on the beach better.

 

Problem is a limited budget. The windsurfing shop owner will not spring for PTZ, so this will be out of whatever user's pockets I can wheedle a few bucks.

 

Based on experience with the EdiMax, I'm ready to try the same approach with a PTZ.

 

Can anybody recommend an IP cam under, say, $150 that does more than 640x480?

[ssmith10pn 0]

Can anybody recommend an IP cam under, say, $150 that does more than 640x480?

 

Seriously?

 

We sell factory repaired Cyberdomes for 750.00 That's without the housing just the camera.

 

Cyberdomes are junk as far as I'm concerned and you want a PTZ for 150? Good luck with that.

[buellwinkle 0]

There are probably plenty of high quality 1080P PTZ camera with 20-30X zoom out there for under $150, you just have look and report back when you find them because I want one too. Check Alibaba.com or AliExpress.com, thats the place for deals.

[shockwave199 0]

But the cam in question will live on top of a gazebo on the beach behind a very slow DSL connection. It's function is to let people see who is on the beach and what they're doing.

I don't get the scope of the purpose. People go in the gazebo and manually work a ptz? Or see it doing a constant preset tour? How does DSL figure into monitoring locally? And isn't gawking at beach goers kinda on the voyeuristic side? I wouldn't be hanging on that beach if I knew I could be gawked at, personally. At your budget, cheap crap analog ptz. If you can get a half dozen people to pony up 100 bucks each, you'll get a decent analog ptz. Get ten people to do the same and you'll get a very decent analog ptz.

[PeteCress 0]

Well, that kind of simplifies the matter..... -)

[PeteCress 0]

I don't get the scope of the purpose. People go in the gazebo and manually work a ptz? ...

The cam lives atop the gazebo. People from afar want to see who is at the beach and what is going on.

 

Worked pretty well the last 2 seasons with a $80 EdiMax - and it sounds like it is going work for a third season too....

 

95% of the people on the beach and the people looking at the cam from 20-100 miles away know each other. They just want to see who is there and who is not.

 

But people were asking for PTZ and I was groping around hoping maybe technological advances might have brought one into the realm of current economic reality.

 

Sounds to me like "Case Closed"... it ain't agonna happen and they're going to have tb happy with a fixed cam.

[vector18 1]

Why don't you tell the people that are asking for PTZ to all chip in? Considering they are the ones that want a PTZ?

[gilligan 0]

...so this will be out of whatever user's pockets I can wheedle a few bucks.

 

^^

[vector18 1]

...so this will be out of whatever user's pockets I can wheedle a few bucks.

 

^^

 

So why don't you ask the people asking for the PTZ to chip in a normal amount of money rather than chump change? Considering they are the ones asking you for the PTZ.

[gilligan 0]

...so this will be out of whatever user's pockets I can wheedle a few bucks.

 

^^

 

So why don't you ask the people asking for the PTZ to chip in a normal amount of money rather than chump change? Considering they are the ones asking you for the PTZ.

 

That I completely agree with!

[vector18 1]

and so does Mary ann, the skipper, and the professor!

[buellwinkle 0]

Pete, clearly you are giving up too early. Just searching eBay, there's plenty of PTZ camera for under $150 that are 1.3MP or 720P. Sure, the Z in PTZ like your Edimax is digital zoom, and they are indoor cams that you have to seal in a housing or a glass mason jar, but certainly no worse than what you have now and mo-bits.

[vector18 1]

I tried one of those cheap ptz's once and it was such junk it wasn't even worth mounting anywhere. I told the eBay seller it wasn't what I was expecting and wanted to ship it back. He flipped out on me and even told me he would never be able to sell that junk ever again if I return it!

[PeteCress 0]

I tried one of those cheap ptz's once and it was such junk it wasn't even worth mounting anywhere. I told the eBay seller it wasn't what I was expecting and wanted to ship it back. He flipped out on me and even told me he would never be able to sell that junk ever again if I return it!

Hence my trolling for a recommendation from somebody who was using one.

[buellwinkle 0]

Foscam even has a real outdoor PTZ camera but it's VGA resolution and costs $400-500.

[Voipmodo 0]

You could always take a high res bullet cam with a telephoto lens and mount it on a Pan Tilt mount. If you really want to save money, then you can go the DIY route and build a simple 2 axis platform, use an arduino controller, then have a web interface to control it.. Its not a 1 day project thats for sure, but its relatively low cost, and you can learn soldering and Micro controllers to boot. If you are not super technically inclined, do a google search in your area and you should find a makerspace or hackerspace near you and they normally have classes or workshops for free or low cost.

[PeteCress 0]

You could always take a high res bullet cam with a telephoto lens and mount it on a Pan Tilt mount. If you really want to save money, then you can go the DIY route and build a simple 2 axis platform, use an arduino controller, then have a web interface to control it..

That sounds hopeful.

 

Back in the beginning of this project, I was looking at a turnkey solution called "TrackerPod" (http://www.trackercam.com/TCamWeb/productdes.htm) but the more I read, the more it sounded like the product was in a state of neglect by the developer.

 

The DIY route has strong appeal to me since I have discovered that a really cheap camera can deliver the video needed for this application.

 

But I am probably not up to building something from scratch.

 

OTOH, now that I'm thinking about it, the basic idea (IP-controlled 2-axis platform) has to be a sort of bread-and-butter DIY project and maybe I will be able to get in touch with people who have been-there-done-that. I'm capable of following directions - just not of designing a solution.

[dexterash 0]

Problems with PT-Z cameras appear, usually, after some use/moving the camera along.

 

A DIY can be a simple solution, but can you be sure that it will last a full year with people moving the camera day-by-day?

Also, all the cables of the cameras will be forced to move/bend if you use a standard camera with a PT mount... How well will them handle that?

[PeteCress 0]

Foscam even has a real outdoor PTZ camera but it's VGA resolution and costs $400-500.

I guess this qualifies as a Thread Bump... but I thought I would recount what went down on this.

 

I bought a TrendNet TV-IP672P. 1280x800 - as in http://tinyurl.com/nx45xzq

 

It works, but guess what?

 

Right: we wound up making the Pan functionality unavailable to users.

 

Two problems:

 

• The 44k DSL connection is so pitifully slow that the time between
  a user telling the cam to pan and the camera actually panning is
  just too long - as in 25-35 seconds.
  .
  
• Different users have different browsers and a significant number of
  them either cannot access the pan presets or do not understand
  what they are. Bottom line, user A pans the camera to location
  X and user B complains and wants to know why he cannot see
  the location Y that they are used to seeing.

 

"The best-laid schemes o' mice an' men Gang aft agley"

 

Having recently discovered the wonders of Point-To-Point wireless, I'm going down there sometime next week and try to install a couple of Ubiquiti NanoStationM5 Locos.

 

We have line-of-sight over water/beach/blacktop and it's only about .7 miles between the DSL-connected cam and the server's Comcast-Cable-connected site; so I am hoping that I can get that cam talking to the server over a PTP link instead of 4k DSL.

 

viz: http://tinyurl.com/lzvly5b

 

If that happens, and the bandwidth is sufficient, maybe we'll just add another camera: fixed for the masses and the PTZ for whose who want it.