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For the DVR and management interface, Zone Minder is THE open source solution and has been for a long time. It can do all kinds of things like run motion detection on the feeds and when motion is detected it turns on the light and pans your high-quality camera to view the area where the motion was.

It's -more- secure than the stuff made by Happy Fun Camera Ltd, in China, with instructions that read "button the press longly is record of picture motions", which also happens to be the exact same system sold under many brand names. I don't know that it's had a complete security audit, but it's better than Chinese "button the press longly ".

https://zoneminder.com/

As others have mentioned, configuring a separate video vlan (or ssid) which isn't connected to the internet will get you most of the way there for camera security. Your cheap consumer wifi router can do a no-internet ssid by using the parental control feature.

OK so you want a personal security system, you are going to need a few things. Let start are you going to lock the doors, are you going monitor the internal entries. Are you going to to monitor for break ins and fire and windows, time lock, web monitoring. Well to this things you are going to need a PC capture card and software and some power supplies. The software in simple use zone minder http://www.zoneminder.com/ if you are just going for recording use yamcam http://www.yawcam.com/ You will also need a VPN for monitoring your system. For interface board you can use a raspberry pi or something that will be used for contact trigger points. in ether case you will need a dedicated PC, a capture card or some USB web cams. Now security doors you will use electromagnetic locks you do not deed more then 650 lbs. Fire & smoke and a sound discriminators for the windows, an interface board or and old security system sends a signal to the PC. For the windows use shutters will locks, this is the most likely place for a break in other then back door. And notion detector are a plus but not always needed if you are using software, but low lucks cameras. No need for an over priced security company, just dose things plus internet and a large UPS system and for backup a USB dongle for cell communication. And if you are using cameras are to be placed at eye level, and color is not a requirement just a sharp view. Pin hole cameras are good but remember they only have a 3 foot distance view, and are wide angle view limit then to eye level around 5 feet of the floor. The PC some ware out of the way, a most is good ventilation and large hard drive. How much is the cost, that is up to you how far are you willing to go. The software is free, the rest is all up to you.

ZoneMinder is an integrated set of applications which provide a complete surveillance solution allowing capture, analysis, recording and monitoring of any
CCTV or security cameras attached to a Linux based machine. It is designed to run on distributions which support the Video For Linux (V4L) interface and
has been tested with video cameras attached to BTTV cards, various USB cameras and also supports most IP network cameras. A partial list is given in the
Wiki and Support sections, please give feedback in the Forums if it works with yours. ZoneMinder also requires MySQL and PHP, and is enhanced by a
webserver such as Apache.

Or this ?
http://www.linuxmce.org/nc.htm...

A introduction into LinuxMCE LinuxMCE is a whole home automation suite.
It the 'digital glue' between your media and all of your electrical appliances.
It includes full featured solutions for:
Security
Monitor sensors and trigger events
Monitor security cameras

Foscam have some peculiar things that need to be played with in order to get them working. Have you had a look at the wiki? They have several wiki pages for different models of Foscam cameras http://www.zoneminder.com/wiki...

There is a fairly large amount of documentation on hardware compatibility on the zoneminder forum, if that's the route you're going for capture and control of your cameras: http://www.zoneminder.com/foru...

There was also a rather nice camera that was kickstarted a while back, but I forgot the name of it.

Security Systems: http://www.zoneminder.com/
http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/8513
http://linas.org/linux/secure.html

Alarm Systems: http://www.voip-info.org/wiki/view/How+to+implement+an+alarm+system+with+Asterisk+and+a+webcam
http://www.linux-support.com/cms/diy-burglar-alarm-system/
http://www.linuxjournal.com/content/interfacing-disparate-systems

CCTV: http://www.tuxradar.com/content/build-your-own-surveillance-zoneminder
http://www.seattlesurveillance.com/

Building Automation: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S092658050500097X
http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1029022

Engineering Apps: http://loll.sourceforge.net/linux/links/Software_Applications/Science_-_Engineering/index.html

You get the idea I hope. So what can't run on Linux?

Option 1 : Get a PC and install something like http://www.zoneminder.com/

Option 2 : Even cheaper, since no pc would be needed, would be to buy a number of openwrt-capable routers, plugin a USB camera of whatever brand you want. Run something like http://www.lavrsen.dk/foswiki/bin/view/Motion/WebHome on each of them and store images on USB sticks or have them upload the stuff to a remote server..

Problem with option 1 is that the pc itself would probably be stolen if someone broke in.
Option 2 would allow you to hide each router much easier and have images synced between them or uploaded to a remote server.... Also it would not require you to draw network cables for each station but you could just setup a mesh network directly from openwrt. It would also allow for using cheaper USB based cameras instead of expensive network-based cameras..

I've long wanted to put one of those systems together....looks to be pretty well supported, and works with a pretty large amount of equipment...

ZoneMinder or Motion for video with motion detection. Have it record locally, and rsync or email pictures offsite. You can configure an arduino with some IR and magnetic sensors to notify you of activity in the house. Video motion detection is not quite reliable enough yet. Alternativly, some alarms (eg DSC 1616 with PC5400 addon interface) have a serial output. Alarm companies have a long responsetime, and getting a notification on your phone is not much help if you are away from home. Therefore, talk to your neighbours and set up mutal notification via phone or siren.

http://www.zoneminder.com/

It integrates well with MythTV, too.

Zoneminder works well... warning though, you'll need something with lots of cores and lots of RAM. Oh, almost forgot to mention, it's free (as in beer) and open source.

We had some problems with break ins and vandalism in the neighborhood so I got 3 Axis 207MW camera's setup around the house facing out exterior windows. They're a bit pricey at around $350-$400, but they're the only thing I could find at the time in that price range that did 1280x1024 and were wireless. I couldn't easily wire coax or cat5 to two of the cameras because of my house layout (brick) and I didn't want exposed wires inside the house for aesthetics or outside the house where they could get cut. They do a decent job. I wasn't terribly impressed with the built in motion detection and capturing. You can record video or still pics to an ftp site or have pictures emailed to you, but the buffer is so small that you're not going to get any decent frame rates or length of video at any of the higher resolutions. I ultimately just have my desktop capturing their feed live using zoneminder. http://www.zoneminder.com/ I have it setup to record at 4 fps constantly and then if it gets an alarm (senses motion) it captures as fast as it can. That way I can always be sure and review what's happened before and after an event...even if the camera doesn't alert or I want to see something not captured in the "alarm". So far the only thing the cameras have been good for is helping the police prove a drug dealer was lying about getting shot outside my house. That, and it's helpful in the rare occasion the girlfriend accidental sets off the alarm when she gets home for work. I get a text on my cell phone and then can lookup the cameras remotely.

What software were you trying to use on Linux? It looks like ZoneMinder supports a number of network cameras, among other ways of connecting a camera to a computer. There are cameras that do stupid things, like require an ActiveX control to get the camera data, that ZM doesn't support, but it looks like most work OK.

I got a D-link DCS-920 recently, and it works fine with ZomeMinder. The biggest problem is that the picture quality is only OK and it doesn't have a very big viewing angle (probably because of the low resolution).

What software were you trying to use on Linux? It looks like ZoneMinder supports a number of network cameras, among other ways of connecting a camera to a computer. There are cameras that do stupid things, like require an ActiveX control to get the camera data, that ZM doesn't support, but it looks like most work OK.

I got a D-link DCS-920 recently, and it works fine with ZomeMinder. The biggest problem is that the picture quality is only OK and it doesn't have a very big viewing angle (probably because of the low resolution).

Regarding the Aviosys 9100A, be advised that alternative firmware is available that might work better for some applications, such as ZoneMinder, see

http://www.zoneminder.com/wiki/index.php/Hardware_Compatibility_List#Network_Digitizers

That looks very promising for integrating normal NTSC into a network. Of course, that's not high quality, but it's interesting regardless.

I need lots of coverage...that isn't really good for wired units (2x story house, front, back, inside...etc). I saw a wiki once from their site, but not the main cameras that seemed to be good quality, are kind of $$.

If you want High quality you're not going to get it with wireless.

Switch to Firewire or traditional capture cards and zoneminder ( www.zoneminder.com ) bluecherry.net sells capture cards that are compatable with zoneminder and the alternatives, and even have their own distribution of Linux for zoneminder.

You will be glad you did, and wonder what you did without for so long.

- Dan.

The only downside is the lack of professional support - Management doesn't have anyone externally that they can point at if something breaks.

It seems the original developers are willing to provide this:

Paid support is also available, please mail for rates and further details.

Your daemon has arrived. The current not-so-workingness with V4L2 is a bit annoying but you can always use the V4L2 to V4L1 compatibility wrapper program to ameliorate the incompatibility situation with varying levels of annoyance/pain depending on your linux distribution.
http://www.zoneminder.com/

Am i the only one who read the title and simply assumed they were moving thier security camera operation on to a ZoneMinder?

http://www.zoneminder.com/

'Nuff said

Try http://www.zoneminder.com/ which hits everything you mentioned. (If the webcam is Linux supported)

In the spirit of FOSS, http://www.zoneminder.com/ is a Linux based network camera system with built in motion detection. Works very well, and saves images a jpeg, not a proprietary lossy compressed stream.

I'd go with a web based system and integrate zone minder in as a security camera system to have a single application for everything. You could also include a Tivo Control or a media center like XBMC. Web based also gives you flexibility as more and more devices include built in browsers. You could control your house from a Wii or pull up a web page on the screen on your internet refrigerator.

You might find the ZoneMinder project useful. It is a Linux open-source project that handles video surveillance. They also have a discussion forum that should provide even more information, such as camera selection.

ZoneMinder It has some really nice features.

Time to buy a new fileserver too.

It only records when there is motion, cutting down on the storage space requirements, and making it easier to "find" the footage which has the "action".

> For instance, I saw a TV show where the new speaking CCTV cameras interrupted some guy getting the shit kicked out of him. The attacker realised he was on CCTV and ran off. The camera operator simply followed him from one camera to the next, constantly reminding him he's been videotaped, the cops have his description and are en route, and that he really can't get away. He was caught. CCTV is a great technology.

CCTV is indeed a great technology. Even with a crappy usb camera an old laptop and an always on internet connection one can monitor his home. On linux there is the simple "webcam" software and the sophisticated http://zoneminder.com/.

But does a great technology makes a great deployment? A hi tech camera network can be used for all sorts of misdeed, it all depends on who's managing it. Will it be the police? will it be private employees, like it happened in a delicate operation like Iraq war?

Second is: "I saw this piece on TV where CCTV stopped a crime...". One episode amplified by the media might be significant, it might also be mere propaganda. This one smells of propaganda: once the speaking camera stopped the crime, the operator should have simply followed the perpetrator. Telling him he's framed makes him more alert, more likely to think about ways to defeat the system (getting in smaller roads, stealing transport, clothes.

Also, if a system is made to fight terrorism you simply don't tell the public it's been deployed for that purpose. Make it a system to check traffic violations or regulate it. To defend private buildings. It will be more effective. Well terrorism seems to me the troll that lets the governments do whatever they like so this one point is irrelevant.

Nope sorry, been there, done that, got the t-shirt. Your fucking up computers that your fellow students have to use. I'd like to see how that works out on the school yard for you. Failing some peer pressure enter Zoneminder. :)

There is a bad ass little project out there right now called Zoneminder (http://zoneminder.com/). Works great! You can pick up a 4 port surveillance card for about 100$ and Wal-Mart has color cameras with good res for about 50$. ZoneMinder even does motion detection pretty well, I use it to watch all my stuff, and to solve those, SHE HIT!!! No I DIDN'T!!! argument between the kids!
Linux for teh win!!!!111elevenity

As always there is more than one way to do something like this
for the security camera side of things there is zoneminder http://www.zoneminder.com/
a linux solution for monitoring security camera's

very configurable also very complex.

I've been playing around with security camera's a simple windows program is dorgem which will take a feed from a cctv camera plugged into a tvcard it has a built in webserver so easy to monitor from most locations.

zoneminder is far more flexable allowing you to configure area's of interest and setting up custom alarms

I am sure we can do better than drain the water system, especially since he has broadband.

how about a PC house sitter, for one thing there is zoneminder http://www.zoneminder.com/ which could be used to set up camera's in and around his home you can configure it to notice changes and control a number of camera's placed strategically around his home port forward to his router and he can check his house anywhere he has net access even generate alarms and notify him when something has changed.

Of course it runs on linux so should be able to remain up for as long as he needs it.

come on folks we must be able to come up with some more geeky ways of looking after a house remotely
this is slashdot we can do better than just the obvious from handy andy :)

Why is this modded 0? I've been interested in Zoneminder for a while, but I haven't installed it yet. Apparently, the wife thinks that a working bathroom is more important than webcam fun.

We run an Axis 207 at work. Pair it up with Zoneminder and you've got yourself a montion capture system, albeit in the form of home security system software.

This is a good start. Just couple this with zoneminder http://www.zoneminder.com/ and have it page the border patrol when activity is detected and you have a realtively inexpensive monitoring solution. That way you don't have to rely on potentially bogus phone calls to alert the border patrol.

Really surprised the news media has not positioned cameras and broadcasts the illegal crossings on the news. Oh, right, most of the media is to the left and welcome the illegal aliens. Guess they are trying to get enough votes to actually win an election next time around.

Last I looked into IP cameras weren't quite there yet, especially in terms of price/performance ratio. I started out looking for a camera with a pretty typical use case in mind - outdoor surveillance for an office building. Someone was stealing dumpsters worth a few thousand each from a new heating and air conditioning business, and it was happening at night. There is a lot of mob and union influence in the HVAC industry, and they didn't like the new guy in town's hiring practices. The cops seemed to care less so he wanted to catch them red handed.

The requirements came down to being weatherproof, and also having low light capability for night surveillance. As I began pricing things out, I found IP cameras could be had at low starting prices, around $200, but that those models were useless for real surveillance apps. Here are the pitfalls I found.

A) Most IP cameras below $400-$500 lack an auto-iris, but rather simulate one in software. If you can't mechanically restrict how much light is getting to the CCD sensor, you have to sacrifice sensitivity to the point where night time images won't be useful.

B) Many IP cameras use cheap CCD chips. In the CCTV industry people look for SONY Super-HAD and Ex-View CCD chips because of their night time sensitivity. Try finding something IP based with one of these CCDs and see what it costs you. An analog b&w SONY Super-HAD night camera can be had for $115, and a color daytime model only $185. IP Camera? About $1000. Want color and a good night picture? You need a model that uses solenoid to remove the IR cut filter when it gets dark, otherwise the night picture will be no good. Good luck finding an IP version with this at a reasonable price. The cost for a color analog camera with a mechanical day/night filter is $235.

C) Weatherproof models command a much bigger premium than their analog counterparts.

D) Network bandwidth may be an issue for large setups, as full frames are sent via mjpeg. Court precedent says that to be admissable, digital video footage must be stored as complete frames, so count out any of the mpeg codecs.

Now also figure this, whether you use an analog or IP camera you will still need a computer to store all your footage. $50 is what a 4 channel BTTV based CCTV capture board will cost you, and they are much less on ebay. In terms of software, ZoneMinder is open source and will stream compressed video across the internet while recording high quality frames locally. It supports any format ffmpeg supports, even flash video, and does things like auto-cycling and motion detection recording w/ user definable sensitivity areas.

For a 4 camera setup an IP camera solution will cost nearly 3x to 4x as much as analog. So I have judged them as being useful only for large corporate customers with deep pockets. Anyone here using ip cameras, especially for outdoor surveillance? What do you use and what did it cost?

i'm just reading through this thread and remnding everybody who haven't yet noticed ;)
http://www.zoneminder.com/

if you really are interested in this, you probably already have found references in this thread, but anyway ;)
it would be woth checking out http://www.zoneminder.com/

Check out ZoneMinder, http://www.zoneminder.com/ - I'm also a 1 man IT department for a small office - a medical office, in my case. We've established a 5 camera system, using plain ole CCTV cameras (if you time it well, you can pick up fairly good quality CCTV dome cameras on eBay for $25 each) that we ran coax to. The coax then all runs back to a Linux server running ZoneMinder, which supports most network cameras as well as any device video4linux will support - webcams, capture cards, etc.

Our biggest problem has been finding capture cards that support Linux at reasonable prices. Most of the fancy 4, 8 or 16 input cards out there don't seem to have Linux drivers available.

I'd say ZoneMinder is the best F/OSS solution I've seen for DVR systems so far. It has many different modes, including (IMO the most useful mode) record-on-motion-detect, where it analyzes each frame for motion and only records when motion occurs. You can define different zones within each camera's view and assign them to different types - never alarm, always alarm, only alarm if another zone is alarming, etc. It appears the author is even working towards some type of adaptive system where the software can 'learn' what is an interesting event and what's just a false positive.

Have a look at zoneminder. It may or may not meet your needs. I've only used it with two rather crappy IP cameras at once. I'm currently using it with an IP camera at the wrong end of an ADSL link and the monitoring server remote. It works for me, and I've barely touched it. Lots of development, lots of features, lots of (professional) users.

"It supports capture, analysis, recording, and monitoring of video data coming from one or more video or network cameras attached to a Linux system. ZoneMinder also support web and semi-automatic control of Pan/Tilt/Zoom cameras using a variety of protocols. It is suitable for use as a home video security system and for commercial or professional video security and surveillance. It can also be integrated into a home automation system via X.10 or other protocols."

Not affiliated in any way, but I *am* about to cut a cheque as a donation because this very morning the alarm monitoring centre called me saying that the (professionally installed, approved) alarm had triggered. I can see from zoneminder that nothing's happened, so I'm not going to panic. Otherwise I'd be racing a 100 miles to check up.

http://www.zoneminder.com/ we use this extensively for our security system where I work and it runs like a champ!

this could go to any comment out there - i hope people who really are interested in this thing will take notice even when the article isn't on the first page anymore :)

i have been examining available options for similar system and, from what i have seen, this seems to be the best choice :
http://www.zoneminder.com/

note that it already is mentioned in this thread :
http://ask.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=178695&thr eshold=-1&commentsort=0&mode=nested&pid=14814298

i would be glad to see anybody else with zoneminder experience speak up - are there any significant downsides ?

This may work for you. http://www.zoneminder.com/

Maybe this software can help you:

    http://www.zoneminder.com/

Skyway Security

Star Dot Technologies

Big thing to watch for is insist on seeing a simularly sized system to what you want in operation before you sign anything. When you are running the system, do a lot of browser backs. Interupt it in the middle of things. Bring up six live views at once.

Watch for systems that have to have componets reset/restarted. Computers, cameras, hubs, things like that. Insist on references, and check them. (Good idea for anything, really.)

http://www.zoneminder.com/

Check out zoneminder. This may be the kind of solution you are looking for.

Have you looked at Zone Minder for this? It's open-sourced and it works very well with a wide variety of cameras. We use it to monitor our exterior sites and our data center. The really nice features for us include being able to zone out sections of the camera's view so that motion of plants or motion past door windows won't set off an alert. I don't know if this is industrial enough for your needs, but its probably at least worth a look.

Check out www.zoneminder.com. I have been using it for a few months now with good results. I have been using the Axis 206 and the 206W IP cameras along with a bt878 based capture card for some older analog cameras that I have laying around. The software seems to support all the options that I need or can think of at the moment. Streaming, motion capture, PTZ, all worked out of the box for me. Sorry if this sounds like an ad, I've just been very happy with the software.

There are several options:
Software:
ZoneMinder Welcome to ZoneMinder.com, home of ZoneMinder the top Linux video camera security and surveillance solution.
IPConfigure
Hardware:
Nuvico DVR's - advantage of being built on embedded Linux, with a good feature set.
Axis Video Servers I am presently in the process of installing and configuring a 300 camera system built utilizing IPConfigure and Axis 241Q video servers. I am finding my bigest hurdle is dealing with the corporate IT department for support. How I wish I had paid more attention to network design in school!