On Tue, Feb 22, 2011 at 9:31 PM, Always Learning <centos at g7.u22.net> wrote: > > On Tue, 2011-02-22 at 18:04 -0800, John R Pierce wrote: > >> TCP/IP cameras would work with any OS, most just FTP or whatever the >> pictures to a webserver you provide, or they run their own server and >> you can wget the pics off them. but I've never seen any IP cameras I'd >> call really cheap. Panasonic makes a nice line of them, some even have >> remote pan/zoom via a http interface. > > Try Ebay especially the Chinese, including Hong Kong, suppliers. For > example compared to the English prices the Chinese prices are much > cheaper. However one has to wait 2 to 3 weeks for postal delivery. > > Delivery to the USA is usually quicker than to England. The Chinese > preferred payment currency is USD. Been there, done that. You're often much better off with known brands, like Logitech, for simple webcams on your existing server. I've used this effectively for rack security in a datacenter: as long as you're not polling the webcams constantly, they're not too bad of a bandwidth pig, either. They've been around long enough to be stable and workable in Linux, as well. If you want a full-blown remote TCP monitoring system, look at Axis. They're historically very Linux compatible, they have all the features you might want, and while they're not cheap they have all the features you might need.