[CentOS] Motion Detecting Camera

[m.roth at 5-cent.us]

Peter Wood wrote:
>> Subject: [CentOS] Motion Detecting Camera
>> From: Leslie S Satenstein <lsatenstein at yahoo.com>
>> Date: Sat, February 01, 2014 7:27 am
>> To: "centos at centos.org" <centos at 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