On 02/24/2011 08:25 PM Chuck Munro wrote: > .... > > From experience I can attest to the fact that PAL/NTSC CCTV cameras are > significantly inferior to modern digital security cameras. I have used > devices from Axis, who appear to be the largest and most diverse > manufacturer (www.axis.com) but they're not the cheapest. As an aside, > Axis cameras run embedded Linux. I read that. I would imagine that a lot of digital cameras-- in fact, a lot of digital devices-- employ Linux in their firmware. If I were writing code for an ARM processor, that's what I'd do. Why reinvent the wheel? You'd think under the GPL they'd be required to divulge the firmware code. And there should be a way to hack into these. But now I'm going way OT. > > The newer Ethernet-enabled cameras can use POE (power over Ethernet) but > you'll need either a power supply that you insert somewhere along the > cable run, or a POE-enabled switch which supplies power to its Ethernet > ports. Several brands are available. Wikipedia has an article on PoE and there's other docs on the web about it. It's nice because you don't have to wire in 110V (or 220V in non-US countries) for every camera... cat5/7 is a lot easier to snake through walls and install generally than is Romex. > > Using POE makes a lot of sense and saves a lot of trouble, but make sure > your Ethernet cable installation is of high quality. I found there's a couple PoE standards. One requires only cat5. The newer one-- which delivers higher wattages-- needs cat7. The higher-grade cat7 would be the way to go... if in a couple years you decide to upgrade the camera to one which needs more power, you won't have to re-snake the better cable. > > Open-source software such as ZoneMinder works with cameras from several > manufacturers, and runs on CentOS. I personally haven't tried it, but I > understand it works well. Their website has a fairly good delineation of its features... and screenshots which give you a good feel for what it's like to use it. I didn't know about Zoneminder, so thanks for that tip. According to that website Zoneminder comes in a variety of install routes, one of which is RPMs (yea!). None in my list of yum repos, however, has it. That's okay. I still remember how to upgrade without yum. > > Chuck Thanks for the info!