IP Camera system

[olli 0]

Hi all! I consider to build an IP camera system. It would consist of 4 IP cameras placed outdoors. I have planned to use PoE, so I would just need to run RJ45 wires to cameras (probably they'll also need some PoE adaptor if they don't support PoE directly). I want to be able to monitor cameras outside of my local network, I think this can simply be done by port forwarding. It is also important that the cameras record, I have planned to use Raspberry Pi model B (which I already have) and USB storage for recording. I would want 720p quality.

 

So please tell me is Raspberry powerful enough for this? Or should I consider some NVR solution? Please recommend one.

And of course I would like to have your recommendations on cameras? I live in Finland, so I'd prefer to order inside EU to avoid taxes, but I am more than happy to consider China/Hongkong, as well (cheaper prices =))

 

Thank you a lot!

[buellwinkle 0]

In theory, you can run NVR software like Zoneminder on Linux and there's articles on that topic on the internets. Would love to hear back how it works out for you.

 

You can also get cameras that have an SD card slot. Then have them record and playback directly from the camera, no Pi, no PC, no NVR.

[jasauders 0]

ZoneMinder is great software, but just be advised that it is a little resource intensive. I would not advise running ZoneMinder on a raspberry pi. To be completely honest, I wouldn't imagine that any sort of motion detection based software would run all that great on a raspberry pi, including "Motion", which is an alternative option to ZoneMinder, which in my experience has been lighter weight, but at the expense of not running a local database or a web interface.

 

That said, I suppose you would be able to work with full time recording using the save to NAS feature on the cameras (assuming the cameras have that feature, though in my experience, all decent cameras I've looked at in the last year have this feature).

 

I have a low wattage i3 server at home. It runs an array of different things. As a result, I wanted to trim the CPU processing back as much as possible as I didn't want my CCTV software to be thrashing the processor. My cameras support multiple streams, so what I did was I set up a 10 FPS H264 stream and a 2 FPS MJPG stream. I let "Motion" on my server pull in the MJPG stream to take singular JPG snapshots of motion, which saves to my "motion" directory. Simultaneously, the cameras use the save to NAS feature, recording 24/7 feeds at 10 FPS to my NAS to the "video" directory. That way I always have full time feeds, but I still have a series of JPGs I can flip through to get an idea of what happened throughout the day/night/etc. Since Motion is only running at 2 FPS, it runs lighter than it would if I were to push it at 10 FPS. The nice thing about Motion is it's config file based. Sure, it takes a little to get it set up, but then all you have to do is back up your 3 KB config file and your settings are backed up. Server blows up, no big deal, copy the file back and you're ready and rolling. Couldn't be easier.

 

It may be worth it to try a setup like mine that I described above, though I am doubtful the raspberry pi would have enough processing power to stand up to that. Perhaps it does, though. If you bypass on motion detection altogether, your chances of the raspberry pi working go up considerably, as 'save to NAS' is simply a continual disk-save over the network, which requires so little CPU power to accomplish it's unreal.