-------- Original Message -------- Subject: [CentOS] Motion Detecting Camera From: Leslie S Satenstein lsatenstein@yahoo.com Date: Sat, February 01, 2014 7:27 am To: "centos@centos.org" centos@centos.org
mark wrote
With the continuing annoyance from motion, my manager's asked me to go looking again for a video surveillance appliance: basically, a motion-detecting DVR and cameras. The big thing, of course, is a) price (this is a US federal gov't agency, and being civilian, money is *tight*, don't give me the libertarian/GOP line about how freely we spend, thankyouverymuch), b) it has to be on the network, and c) we need to be able to d/l to a server, and rm after we do that... and we want to script or cron job that.
I was in Costco (USA warehouse store) and saw a Philips LED display, Camera, Recorder, that was motorized. The camera followed the movement across the front of it, and could snapshot to a memory chip. It was under $80.00 for the ensemble. The floor model worked well.
If you do not require realtime recording to a hard disk, then this item may be a reasonable cost solution.
Regards
Leslie
Mr. Leslie Satenstein SENT FROM MY OPEN SOURCE LINUX SYSTEM. _______________________________________________ CentOS mailing list CentOS@centos.org http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
Checkout bluecherry.net
We control 20+ cameras with a single CentoOS server running zoneminder: http://www.zoneminder.com/
Just buy cheap cameras that have one of the interfaces zoneminder supports. We use continuos sftp upload (1fps, no sound). Motion detection is way more superior in zoneminder then any built-in solution on the camera itself, so motion detection on the cameras is disabled. To get more fps and sound you may have to use some other interface but it may require more computing power.
-- Peter
On Sat, Feb 1, 2014 at 6:33 AM, tdukes@palmettoshopper.com wrote:
-------- Original Message -------- Subject: [CentOS] Motion Detecting Camera From: Leslie S Satenstein lsatenstein@yahoo.com Date: Sat, February 01, 2014 7:27 am To: "centos@centos.org" centos@centos.org
mark wrote
With the continuing annoyance from motion, my manager's asked me to go looking again for a video surveillance appliance: basically, a motion-detecting DVR and cameras. The big thing, of course, is a) price (this is a US federal gov't agency, and being civilian, money is *tight*, don't give me the libertarian/GOP line about how freely we spend, thankyouverymuch), b) it has to be on the network, and c) we need to be able to d/l to a server, and rm after we do that... and we want to script or cron job that.
I was in Costco (USA warehouse store) and saw a Philips LED display, Camera, Recorder, that was motorized. The camera followed the movement across the front of it, and could snapshot to a memory chip. It was under $80.00 for the ensemble. The floor model worked well.
If you do not require realtime recording to a hard disk, then this item may be a reasonable cost solution.
Regards
Leslie
Mr. Leslie Satenstein SENT FROM MY OPEN SOURCE LINUX SYSTEM. _______________________________________________ CentOS mailing list CentOS@centos.org http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
Checkout bluecherry.net _______________________________________________ CentOS mailing list CentOS@centos.org http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
Peter Wood wrote:
Subject: [CentOS] Motion Detecting Camera From: Leslie S Satenstein lsatenstein@yahoo.com Date: Sat, February 01, 2014 7:27 am To: "centos@centos.org" centos@centos.org
mark wrote
With the continuing annoyance from motion, my manager's asked me to go looking again for a video surveillance appliance: basically, a motion-detecting DVR and cameras. The big thing, of course, is a) price (this is a US federal gov't agency, and being civilian, money is *tight*, don't give me the libertarian/GOP line about how freely we spend, thankyouverymuch), b) it has to be on the network, and c) we need to be able to d/l to a server, and rm after we do that... and we want to script or cron job that.
I was in Costco (USA warehouse store) and saw a Philips LED display, Camera, Recorder, that was motorized. The camera followed the movement across the front of it, and could snapshot to a memory chip. It was under $80.00 for the ensemble. The floor model worked well.
If you do not require realtime recording to a hard disk, then this item may be a reasonable cost solution.
We control 20+ cameras with a single CentoOS server running zoneminder: http://www.zoneminder.com/
Just buy cheap cameras that have one of the interfaces zoneminder supports. We use continuos sftp upload (1fps, no sound). Motion
detection is way
more superior in zoneminder then any built-in solution on the camera
itself, so
motion detection on the cameras is disabled. To get more fps and sound you may have to use some other interface but it may require more computing power.
a) Please don't top post. b) Ok, I guess that either i) I was utterly incomprehensible as to my requirements, or ii) no one has any opinions/experience with what I asked for.
I'm leaning towards the latter, but I'll try again: 1) We run, and have been running for *years*, inexpensive USB cameras plugged into rackmount servers running the motion package on CentOS. Every few subreleases, some problem crops up in what I *think* is the video driver that comes with CentOS (gspca), and I spend a lot of time resolving the problems. 2) My manager says he "wants to be out of the business" of this, and wants me to look into "surveillance appliance" packages - that is, a DVR w/ say, four cameras. They're all in "computer labs", where the lights are on 24x7, so no weather or low-light worries. USB or BNC cables are fine, don't need wireless or IP cameras. 3) They *DO* have to record real-time. 4) We *do* need to be able to d/l the videos to a server for storage, and that needs to happen via a cron job, at least, if not by a process watching it.[1] 5) Budget is a real consideration (unless you, personally, are willing to buy whatever would meet the above requirements and donate several of the packages to the US gov't). 6) We need several, for several "computer labs"[2] < $500 per package is good. Don't need "Professional Grade" quality, just something that will sit there and work for years with little in the way of maintenance. We can easily put it behind a firewall, to protect it against anyone, including the regular pen testers....
1. Having the firmware on the DVR send out an email that can both got to the appropriate mailing list and trigger a d/l would work. 2. They're not server room, server rooms, under current US gov't rules, are much more of a Big Deal, with a lot more rules and $$$ecurity, even if it's a rack in a closet).
mark
On Mon, Feb 3, 2014 at 2:15 PM, m.roth@5-cent.us wrote:
- My manager says he "wants to be out of the business" of this, and
wants me to look into "surveillance appliance" packages - that is, a DVR w/ say, four cameras. They're all in
Does this mean ZoneMinder is out of the question, since it's not an "appliance"? I mean, just for the sake of argument, what happens if you buy IP cameras and use ZoneMinder? Isn't that the beauty of an IP camera, you don't need fancy drivers or have to worry about upgrade breakage? (Unless of course your IP stack breaks, but then you probably have much bigger problems.) IP cameras allow you to (1) decouple the camera problem from the DVR problem, and (2) avoid wacky USB/analog capture driver issues.
I don't know if there's anyone selling OTS ZoneMinder appliances, but it's conceivably possible. And if so, it would be like the Untangle filtering package, where the line between OTS appliance and DIY is blurred. (E.g., with Untangle, you can buy a filtering appliance from them, or you can run their software on your own server.)
I guess I fail to see how the previous poster's suggestion (which is basically the same as what I initially posted last week) fails to meet your requirements:
1. Replace cheapo USB cameras with respectable IP cameras. 2. Assign IPs to all cameras. 3. Set up ACLs and/or partition your network to meet security requirements. 4. Designate a single server (physical or VM) to act as your "DVR appliance". In this case, it's a Linux server running ZoneMinder. 5. Configure ZoneMinder to do full-time/always on recording, and setup whatever maintenance and management scripts to need to shuffle around/delete/archive the video.
Once this is in place, I don't see how the end result is any different than buying a "surveillance appliance". Even an OTS package will require some amount of initial setup. But *either way*, once the system is in place and working, it should "just work" and not require any further hand-holding.
Treat the ZoneMinder box as an appliance - that is, if it's working, don't touch it. Don't upgrade ZM or the underlying OS. Just leave it alone and let it work.
On Feb 3, 2014, at 1:15 PM, m.roth@5-cent.us wrote:
- We run, and have been running for *years*, inexpensive USB cameras
plugged into rackmount servers running the motion package on CentOS. Every few subreleases, some problem crops up in what I *think* is the video driver that comes with CentOS (gspca), and I spend a lot of time resolving the problems. 2) My manager says he "wants to be out of the business" of this, and wants me to look into "surveillance appliance" packages - that is, a DVR w/ say, four cameras. They're all in "computer labs", where the lights are on 24x7, so no weather or low-light worries. USB or BNC cables are fine, don't need wireless or IP cameras.
So if he "wants to be out of the business", why is he having you spec the solution?
Call a security company and tell them what you want, and they'll send the bill and they'll be "in the business"... LOL!
Sorry, just thought your boss sounds as silly as mine...
-- Nate Duehr denverpilot@me.com
On 03/10/14 19:20, Nathan Duehr wrote:
On Feb 3, 2014, at 1:15 PM, m.roth@5-cent.us wrote:
- We run, and have been running for *years*, inexpensive USB cameras
plugged into rackmount servers running the motion package on CentOS. Every few subreleases, some problem crops up in what I *think* is the video driver that comes with CentOS (gspca), and I spend a lot of time resolving the problems. 2) My manager says he "wants to be out of the business" of this, and wants me to look into "surveillance appliance" packages - that is, a DVR w/ say, four cameras. They're all in "computer labs", where the lights are on 24x7, so no weather or low-light worries. USB or BNC cables are fine, don't need wireless or IP cameras.
So if he "wants to be out of the business", why is he having you spec the solution?
Call a security company and tell them what you want, and they'll send the bill and they'll be "in the business"... LOL!
Sorry, just thought your boss sounds as silly as mine...
My boss is *very* reasonable. You didn't read the post. A "security" company would need clearance to even walk into the room (we actually care about the security of PII and HIPAA data). And that would add a *LOT* to the division budget. Sorry, were you offering to pay more in taxes (if you're in the US) every year, and tell them where you were donating more money?
The business he's talking about is this every year, year and a half of me wasting a lot of time figuring out workarounds for ancient webcams and bugs that keep returning....
mark
On Mar 11, 2014, at 6:09 AM, mark m.roth@5-cent.us wrote:
So if he "wants to be out of the business", why is he having you spec the solution?
Call a security company and tell them what you want, and they'll send the bill and they'll be "in the business"... LOL!
Sorry, just thought your boss sounds as silly as mine...
My boss is *very* reasonable. You didn't read the post. A "security" company would need clearance to even walk into the room (we actually care about the security of PII and HIPAA data). And that would add a *LOT* to the division budget. Sorry, were you offering to pay more in taxes (if you're in the US) every year, and tell them where you were donating more money?
The business he's talking about is this every year, year and a half of me wasting a lot of time figuring out workarounds for ancient webcams and bugs that keep returning....
mark
(Sorry for reviving an old thread, but ... )
Apologies Mark, I just thought it entertaining.
As far as paying more in taxes, not sure what the point is... there's no correlation between spending and income anymore.
Anyway, hope you found a good solution.
The above is OT, but haven't gotten back to CentOS list mail in quite a while...
-- Nate Duehr denverpilot@me.com
On 04/21/14 00:47, Nathan Duehr wrote:
On Mar 11, 2014, at 6:09 AM, mark m.roth@5-cent.us wrote:
So if he "wants to be out of the business", why is he having you spec the solution?
Call a security company and tell them what you want, and they'll send the bill and they'll be "in the business"... LOL!
Sorry, just thought your boss sounds as silly as mine...
My boss is *very* reasonable. You didn't read the post. A "security" company would need clearance to even walk into the room (we actually care about the security of PII and HIPAA data). And that would add a *LOT* to the division budget. Sorry, were you offering to pay more in taxes (if you're in the US) every year, and tell them where you were donating more money?
The business he's talking about is this every year, year and a half of me wasting a lot of time figuring out workarounds for ancient webcams and bugs that keep returning....
(Sorry for reviving an old thread, but ... )
Apologies Mark, I just thought it entertaining.
As far as paying more in taxes, not sure what the point is... there's no correlation between spending and income anymore.
I should note that I'm an employee of a US federal gov't contractor, thus the tax dollars at work.
Anyway, hope you found a good solution.
Yeah, we wound up buying a capture card from a company called bluecherry - a true 4-port card (w/ four chips), BNC, and some inexpensive dome cameras - they cater to the surveillance market, and plugged it all in, and voila, video, and once I figured out the setting for motion, it all just worked.
mark
-
m.roth＠5-cent.us -
mark
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Matt Garman -
Nathan Duehr -
Peter Wood -
tdukes＠palmettoshopper.com