fifethom 0 Posted August 27, 2015 Hey everyone! This is my first post on this forum or actually, for that matter, any forum. Hopefully you guys can help me with some issues I am running into. I work for a University and have been tasked with setting up ip camera's in the classrooms to monitor for cheating and other incidents. I have a system in place that I might ask about in another post soon but I need to gather my thoughts a little more on that one first. My question for this post is about using a cheap logitech webcam like an ip camera (ie getting a live stream as well as recording to a server). We had one laying around and would like to set it up in our main office to keep track of who is out there during the day and record at night. I have a long usb running into my office where its connected to my Ubuntu computer that stays on pretty much all the time. I'm using vlc to stream but running into issues with streaming to rtsp and when I stream to http its super slow and laggy. I've been scouring the internet to try and figure this out but sometimes feel like I'm going about it the wrong way and would rather not reinvent the wheel if I can help it. Thanks in advance for any information you can send my way! Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
zr1 0 Posted August 28, 2015 You've hit on the negatives, plus add to that a USB cable has a limit typically around 15 feet. To capture cheating, I would think a nice 2MP-4MP camera would be the way to go to capture small details. It does cost money though, the cams, the NVR, then installing the wiring. But it would be the highest quality choice. For quick-n-dirty, a 1.0 MP wifi camera. DropCam and Nest go for like $200, but there's some good versions from China that do great. They aren't commercial quality, but they record a good picture, you can monitor on your smartphone/tablet or from a browser window, and some will record to a micro-SD card. Way cheap...kinda fun to use..but not something to rely on 24/7 like a security camera system. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
fifethom 0 Posted August 30, 2015 Thanks for the reply, does most everyone use a NVR with these usually? I setup a system to capture the rstp feed on Ubuntu but would be curious about the benefit of having a system dedicated to just to capturing feeds. My budget for a camera for the lecture centers is about $500. Does anyone have anything that's worked well for them in this price range? Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
