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Recommendations for Digital Security Systems?
An Anonymous Coward asks: "My company has an ailing analog security
system, (you know the types: 16 position multi-plexer etc, 24hour VHS
tape, and so on). We're in the market for a 21st century solution,
and was hunting around for a computer/hard drive solution, being able
to store up to 8 weeks of video, from 8am to 10pm, 7 days a week at
multiple frame rates (up to 30, but we'll settle for 3 to 5 frames
per second, with motion detection...) and preferably at a resolution
where you can tell if that's a nose on the persons face or not!"
It's a reasonable enough question. Just for fun, how difficult would
it be to build such a system using consumer-level-off-the-shelf
parts?
"Some of the ones we're looking at have in the order of 480gb of storage. Windows or Linux based, it does not matter, but the ability to schedule recordings, export the pictures (water-marking for possible criminal and court proceedings...), backup options to dat/cd-r/dvd-r, always on, ability to view previous footage AND record live from multiple camera's (8/16 or better), possible remote network access, motion recording, and ability to use both digital or analog cameras (significant previous investment in these, would like to re-use the colour newer models...) and newer digital higher resolution camera's are some of the features I would like. Any ideas from the very knowledgeable Slashdot crew?"
As an added bonus, you can spy on your female coworkers. At least that's what the popups say.
...if you know how to do it.
a security guard!
note to self: break in between 10pm and 8am.
One problem that you have to watch out for with digital security systems is random glitches. Sure, it doesn't happen too often, but when it does it can be a real hassle.
At the company I work for, our security system one day decided to change all the codes, so nobody could get in or out of the building. It turns out that something triggered a complet reset, erasing everything and restoring the default settings.
It's funny now, we all laugh about it, but craving a smoke while locked inside can be very stressful. I don't know how many times I was tempted to break a window and escape....
-Space for rent
Why not use that 1TB Array for only $5k? This would be quite ideal for storing mass data such as that. Also, you could have almost any quality you would like, with great performance.
we wanted to catch a change-stealing thief. We bought a buch of alaris weecams off of eBay ($25 and under) and set them up. We didn't bother with motion sensors. The images didn't take up a lot of drive space and the software (webcam32) we used created AVI files for the time lapse. It worked well too - the bonehead looked at one of the cameras up close after he cleaned out a drawer. We had taped over the little light showing it was on and had the monitors off on the PCs. Nice picture. You could probably do it more advanced on the fly (add cameras and drive space as needed) for under capital expense (our company requires God to sign if anything is over $500).
"If you are on fire you can just stop, drop, and roll. If you fall into Lava you are just dead." - my 5yr old daughter
Get yourself a bunch of HDD based TV recorders. Upsize the HDD's and hook them to the existing system.
I've been thinking of setting up a similar system at my house. It seems simple to throw together a computer controlled video switch, a video digitizer (Bt848?) card, and some cheap CCD cameras.
:)
The motion detection software is commonly available and could be used to drop the frame rate to almost nothing in areas without a lot of traffic.
I'd also like to set up a periodic uploading of the pictures to an off site server in case someone were to steal the computer taking the pictures...
http://www.masturbateforpeace.com/
I"m sure these guys could help. Still in Dev so you could prolly get it fairly cheap and insure that they incorporated the exact features you want.
If voting were effective, it would be illegal by now.
Could you imagine a Beowulf cluster of Tivos?
On a more serious note, a similar question was asked some time ago, however on a much larger scale. Some of the suggestions posted in the comments might be relevant to your case.
In Soviet Russia, Jesus asks: "What Would You Do?"
It's a one terabyte disk array for under $5k. This should get you started.
The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
I had my camera and cable modem up for a day when I caught this image
the story is here
---- join dshield.org Distributed Intrusion Detec
What, you didn't click on the 100 X10 popups you got each day?
sulli
RTFJ.
or is every other ask slashdot about "What should I take in college?" or "I need to build a security systems help..." ?
Yes but every time I try to see it your way, I get a headache.
I think what you are talking about is surveillance, not security.
I'm not sure how hard it would be to put something like that together yourself, but I can offer one suggestion in case you decide to try.
National Control Devices has been offering a video switcher for a few years now that will handle up to video 16 inputs, for only $150. It looks really impressive. I've been considering getting one for ages, just to play around with. It's controllable through an RS232 serial port.
aka, a dog :)
Get a camera hooked up with some motion sensor gear, and most simple software will capture "video" or images as a time lapse. Set it to like 5 times a second or whatever. You'll be able to set your resolution high, and still keep it under less space than full video.
Their network cams use multipart jpegs over HTTP. You can simply save off the growing jpeg file on a disk, or you can also set the camera to automatically upload a incrementally-numbered file onto an FTP server every n seconds, or you can write a small script that'll pull the file from HTTP every n seconds ...
What's more, you can also use third-party free software such as VNCCam that will allow you to customize and view your camera's display over VNC.
That's what I use for an indoors security solution : I have one of these cameras bolted on a ceiling (it comes with the hardware) of a room that has expensive equipment. For indoor use, these little cameras work great, they're reliable, they only cost between $500 and $1000, and they're a no-brainer to get going. However, if you plan on outdoors security, an Axis camera is definitely not what you want.
My EUR 0.03.
I recall seeing a software project on freshmeat for detecting motion from video sources, but I can't remember the name of it. If you want to use a seperate motion sensor, it's quite simple to wire one up to the parallel port (there's a phrack article on parallel port interfacing that has all the info you need).
----
All of whose base are belong to the what-now?
jwz is trying to do 24/7 streaming video(plus audio it seems) at his nightclub...
check it out: DNA Lounge tools
also of interest: DNA Lounge: Video Webcast
This was asked a while ago ..
I'm sure the consensus that I felt was expressed will be the same: go analog.
"I can't give you a brain, so I'll give you a diploma" - The Great Oz (blatently stolen sig)
If you build it yourself you have to prove that you didn't tamper with the evidence (should you ever charge someone with a crime based on the recordings...or fire them and then they contest it).
If someone else builds it a large part of their business plan is how they defend the thing in court. Plus that is something they would pay for.
That's not to say a system you make yourself is significantly more prone to tampering, but it is likely to be perceived as such (esp. if you build one for your home).
It also interfaces with point of sale systems, captures images at predefined events (such as NO SALE's or lottery winnings etc). It does timelapse video with retention as far back as 13 months. It does sales reporting as well as many other reports.
I could go into more detail but I'll just direct you to the website.
http://www.visilinx.com
Check it out...
Actually, that's why most people start smoking. If that was the only reason I still did then I would have quit years ago.
Unfortunately, it's a lot harder than I ever imagined. (Actually, the problem is that it's a lot different than I ever imagined.)
-Space for rent
RCA capable capture cards (winTV and others with the BT848) are about $25 now. All you need then
is practically any security camera. If you don't
mind investing in a card for each camera, multiplexing becomes trivial. Since they're PCI,
4-5 per computer is as good as you're going to get, but you can use low end pentium systems for the capturing easily enough.
Then you can do several frame captures per second easily enough if you want to store frames, or you can do realtime mpeg encoding. At 5 fps, with full color/sound, you're talking a little under 100 megs an hour per source when recording at 320x240. And this is without scaling down the quality any.
-Restil
Play with my webcams and lights here
Check out Patapsco Designs, they make a product called datacatch. I've been to their site and seen the product, it rocks! You can tie it into a cash register system too to track transactions as they happen.
m l
(Plus they are using embedded Linux for thier newer camera-network interface)
http://www.patapsco.com/pdi/featured_product.ht
or
http://www.digitaldatacatch.com
~Sean
When you think about it, there's a`only one reason why anyone would ever live: simply because everyone else is doing it, They have a need to appear cool in the eyes, to be accepted by the unenlightened masses. I mean, how many people actually want to be friends with a dead guy? That's why, whenever I see someone living, I think to myself, "Wow, what an insecure fuck."
I've created a very simple security system for my home computer, mind you it's probably not exactly what your looking for, but it does the job.
I started off with a Logitech QuickCam. The camera I had was of horrible quality, but enough to make out whats going on. Next I downloaded the SDK from Logitechs website and within 30 minutes or so, read up on their documentation for the SDK and created a very very simple security system program.
Esentailly all it did was monitor the camera using a built in function in the SDK for movment, once X amount of moment was detected over Y amount of time, the camera switched on and started filming until the movment stopped for a specied amount of time. The files were avi files stored on the local hard drive, and didn't take up much space at all. Now I would suppose you want a much higher quality system, so go out and buy a bit nice digital camera. At 5-10 fps you can fit quite a bit of compressed video on a computer. The only downside was that it performed very poorly in the dark.
I'm actually thinking of wiring my house for security too. This is what I'm looking at:
- A bunch of motion sensors, installed at all entry points (actually, pointing to the entry point), including windows and fireplace.
- A few micro camera, pointing to those entry points (I can save a few cameras, if I figure out how to control the head of the camera from the computer)
- An old computer (P166) with a large HD.
- A few cron tasks to activate the system, when we are not at home, or activate only certain areas while we are sleeping.
- Motion sensor signals are sent to the computer for processing.
- Cameras are controlled by computer remotely.
- In order to save disk space, the cameras are activated and start taking video, only when a motion signal is received by the computer. Cameras are turned off 3 hours after last motion signal.
I'm also considering to have 802.11b on my palm, so I can remotely de/activate the system.
I haven't done the total cost estimate yet. But a motion sensor cost around $29, an 80GB HD around $250. Camera's price varies, depends on whether you want b/w or color. I think the wiring part is going to be the most expensive, as I'm no electician.
I thought there were building/fire codes that exist where you cannot be locked into a building. Think Triangle Shirtwaist Fire
From the start, is it feasible to store to HDD?
8am to 10pm is 14 hours/day. That's 14 * 3600 = 50400 seconds/day.
8 weeks * 7 days = 56 days storage required.
56 days * 50400 secs = 2,822,400 seconds storage
at 30 frames/sec, or 30 * 2822400 = 84,672,000 frames total storage.
A 100Gb hard disk stores 100*10^9 bytes (NB: not 100*2^30). Divide that by the number of frames:
100*10^9 / 84672000 = 1181 bytes per frame. This seems a little low, although I'm not sure exactly how much you can compress the data. DVD -> DivX compresses about 10x...
A DivX movie uses about 200 megs/hour, so if you want that quality, you'd go through 160 Gb in 56 days. That doesn't sound too bad, because you don't need DivX quality -- if you push the compression up a bit (and the quality down a bit) you should be able to fit 56 days of fairly good data in 80 Gb.
This could be reasonable. If you want 8 or 16 cameras, multiply that by 8 or 16 -- 640-1280 Gb total storage, so 4-8 of the new Maxtor 160Gb drives will keep you going nicely.
I think I'm obliged to link to the $5K terabyte disk array now, but that's not really such a big thing -- if you've got 2 free IDE channels (buy a new controller card if required, they're cheap), you can plug 4 160Gb drives into the PC that's running the thing. Don't worry about RAID if you don't want to, just plug in the drives and set the software to swap drives when one gets full.
Nothing against open source, but the integrity of the video has to be proven in court or the guy who stole those laptops walks.
The significant problems we face cannot be solved by the same level of thinking that created them. -Einstein
For a fairly cheap 1 Terabyte arry look no farther then here: http://www.kcgeek.com/content/features/1011742784. Peloquin.feature/feature.html
I'll Sig you!
If you are securing a room that people rarely enter, MPEG compression will see one frame as very similar to the previous frame, and record very little information for the frame.
Also, a feature you may not have thought of, if an alarm is triggered, the recording should go into overdrive, and record high resolution colour at 30fps. There's no excuse for the grainy out-of-focus stop-start security camera images we see on the news!
Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more, Or close the wall up with our American dead!
Note that, at 1.5Mbps ("Basic" quality on a TiVo), 8 weeks of 30fps video (14 hours per day, 7 days per week), comes out to about 400GB, per camera. That's 3.2/6.4TB for 8/16 cameras, which is a lot more than the either the 480GB solution mentioned above, or the 1TB array mentioned here in other comments. Even at 3fps, 16 cameras together will require 640GB.
It seems that since Sept. 11, the issue of security systems in offices has become a pretty hot topic. The place where I work is now looking into some pretty neat digital systems.
Like traditional systems, these systems pretty much record 24/7 whatever is going on. However, most of this data is useless. Unlike in traditional systems, all the data is not stored. The system can analyze when there was motion and then save what happened 10 minutes before and 10 minutes after motion occurred. At the end of the day, you are storing much less data that happens to be much more usable.
http://www.advanced-spy-equipment.com/ http://www.securityplanet.com/security.htm
"Upon attaching the waterblock to my penis, I began to notice that I know nothing about computers." -- JRockway
SAIC's Digital Video Audit System sounds like a really good fit for what you're looking to do. Check it out at http://www.saic.com/products/transportation/digita l/.
Records and plays back simultaneously, availble through LAN or WAN, Searchable by time, date, location, etc. Top-notch stuff.
We eat the pig and then together we BURN!!!
http://nemesis.inodes.org/ and http://motion.technolust.cx/ I'm not sure if the specs overlap, but if not I guess you could probably hack them together.
My current employer, Ultrak, does exactly this sort of thing. Our Eurocorder II(PDF doc) unit is a digital video recorder unit, it is PC based and runs a version of the NetBSD OS. It is capable of up to 16 cameras per unit. And has Motion detection, and a pre-event buffer, so you can save valuable drive space by only recording actual events, and still get the whole show; or you can keep a camera going in a "live" recording state. You can also backup to CD-R by default, and have the option of reviewing previous records while the system records. Your requirements pretty much describe our product.
Necessity is the mother of invention.
Laziness is the father.
At first glance, this looks pretty straightforward.
There is always the issue though - how much is your time worth?
Can you afford the time to develop (and debug) something like this from scratch, or would it be simpler
(& cheaper in the long run) to use a commercial, turnkey solution?
If you figure it _is_ worth developing from scratch - here's what I'd use:
Linux, with a fairly recent kernel (nice BT8x8 vidcap drivers), an el cheapo video capture card (or more),
'streamer' frame capture software (infinitely configurable for framerate, size, etc),
'XawTV' for live viewing, and a whole bunch of 'glue' code (my preference is Tcl/TK),
-- and Bob's yer uncle.
check out the system from www.everfocus.com :)
it's cool...and sounds just like what you are looking for I think it's about 3K maybe less for 16 cams....it's cool
Get yourself a big mean dog and don't feed it too much.
There's a company in Canada called March Networks that has this sort of stuff. Digital recorders, with archives that let you pull up specific timeframes to review. Their site is at www.marchnetworks.com/solutions/secure.asp
I don't really know how you would get the correct images back if you need them. Hmmm, maybe a promotion for somebody to win something if they have images with a certain timestamp. Perhaps a date with the cute secretary. Or money, if you have to stoop that low.
Disclaimer: I'm somewhat affiliated with that company since they're a wholly-owned subsidiary of my parent company, but that's about it. And I speak for myself not on behalf of any of these companies :P .
Check out http://www.integraltech.com their DVX systems are easy to setup and have the best looking interface I have ever seen.
That's a good question which has been asked here before. The best answer is still this one :)
Maybe you can get one of those X-5 cameras that pops every time you go on Yahoo...
Why not use a digital tape solution?
Hi data rate, you can buy terra-byte tape libraries. If there is a piece of footage you need, you can view it on tape or pull it to a Harddrive to run other apps against?
For long term storage(years)you want hi credibilty, putting it on glass is the way to go.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Assuming that you manage about a terabyte of storage, here are your numbers...
Let's use Tivo's basic quality as an example, but drop the framerate to 15fps. This should look acceptable considering the limited changes from a stationary camera.
A week's worth of data would use up 49 GB per camera. 16 cameras? 784GB.
I'd advise settling for something more realistic at this point. Perhaps lowering the resolution, or going grayscale. Either way, you've still got to address *sixteen* cameras, so they'll need to be Axis webcams or something else capable of talking IP. There's no way that you'll get away with USB cameras.
So, assuming that black and white reduces you to 33% of the previous number, that's still 262GB per week.
You'd need slightly over two *terabytes* of storage to handle 8 weeks of 15 fps, TV resolution, B&W footage from 16 cameras.
And you'd still need a way to encode the video feed to MPEG on the fly at the camera. And handle roughly 2.3 Mbit/sec per cam into your "server," which would have to reliably write 37 Mbit/sec to your 2 TB array. Without failing.
Now, considering the fact that this is all *WAY* under Fast Ethernet and ATA specs, it's doable. But a homegrown solution with 8 week rollback just isn't feasible. Drop the rollback by a bit, dump to tape (unless you've got a fiber line going to a remote site for backups,) and keep a lot of spare drives around. You can't afford to have a failure anywhere in this assembly.
Sorry if I've taken the wind out of anyone's sails through the judicious use of math, but I just wanted to make sure that no one does anything without being informed.
Raptor
"Procrastination is great. It gives me a lot more time to do things that I'm never going to do."
If you have PC, a webcam and a burner, you're set.. It doesn't even need to be a fast PC or a fast burner. A typical sysadmin could sit down in one afternoon and get Linux up and running on the box, and toss a few entries into the crontab for that box to build an ISO of all the collected images to a harddisk, and subsequently burn a tarball of the day's events onto a CD-R. Cheap, costs pennies on the dollar compared to most commercial security systems, and is vastly more reliable/configurable/upgradable/stable. All you'de have to do is pop a new CD-R in the tray at the start of business every morning, or hell, make the CD-R a CDRW, and swap the disc out every couple weeks.
DIY or DIE, buddy.
Bowie J. Poag
The "Image Vault" products that this company produces work pretty well. I know someone who works there and have seen the product in action.
If I needed to install a security system, this is where I would go.
http://www.image-vault.com/
This place sells nag-removed TiVos PVRs just for this purpose. With two 80GB hard drives, you would store 160 hours of decent quality video with audio. Note: I have no experience doing business with the company so I'm not vouching for them. See The Tivo Community Forum for comments on the company.
You would still need to get a time/date generator to put in line with the video feed if you want to make the evidence court-admissible. Those are standard CCTV devices and may be built into CCTV cameras. DVRs are used by CCTV and surveillance professionals
Ever dream you could fly? Get up from the Flight Sim. I Fly
quick, somebody break out the duct tape!
i hate pansy republicans
Dobermann, Franchi SPAS-12 and my wife.
Check out this (http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/pulpit20011220 .html) article by Bob Cringely from a few months back. He talks about these smart cameras from a new company. They have their own processors built in and can do some really nifty things. I don't know about cost or if you could just get the cameras and connect it to an off-the-shelf computer but it sounds like a great way to go!! Hope that helps.
Have a Happy.
I was recently working with a device that seems perfect for your problem. It costs around $1000 per device, each can handle 8 cameras. It has built in support for motion detectors, can record all 8 cameras. You give it an IP address, set up security on it, (and of course, with a decent switch security can be increased). Using multiple devices of this type seem ideal. http://www.vpon21.com/ The website sucks but the device is pretty cool.
While I'm not a fan of their advertising practices, I am a fan of the hardware. And there is a Linux driver for the CM11A controller. X10 will allow you to integrate motion sensor events with camera control for /very/ short money - 3 cameras, receiver, x10 receiver, etc. for about $140.
My boss recently asked me about implementing a video security system, and this is the way we're going.
...or at least that's what this site claims.
It's an analog audio monitoring system put together in the early 70s, and hooked up to an early, experimental signal processing and digitizing program.
This was a DARPA - Secret Service project, and apparently the software is still kicking around. Amazing what those paleo-geeks from the age of ARPAnet were capable of...
Here's a fun game to play w/
One of my former employers had a system that was really bad. They had 4 VCRs and 30 cameras running 24/7 to catch what they thought was EVERYTHING....you know, remote control cameras, frame switcher, auto tape switcher, all the toys.
Kinda funny thing happened, a co-worker had his car broken into only 2 stalls away from the camera (maybe 30 feet) in the front of the building. The tape showed it....just not in enough detail to know anything more than "the criminal was wearing some type of pants and a T-shirt"
I'm sure that it was pretty embarassing for our "security" person to explain to the police that the theft was caught on tape, but that the tape was wortless!
In this case, there's no possibility of catching employee theft either, because they couldn't tell who was who!
I think that in this case, the high framerate was irrelevent. 30 frames/sec. of fuzzy B/W blob is not good for anything, and really a waste of money, electricity, and materials. In this case, it was even worse because the camera provided a false sense of security....."of course nobody will break into my car, it's right next to the camera..."
I'd rather have a few really good stills to work from than an entire fuzzy B/W movie!
Having been involved in the development of just such a system (I won't name names, but you've probably got plenty of their products in your home and work environment already) I can give you one extremely important piece of advice:
;)
Forget all these "get yourself a bunch of webcams and X amount of diskspace".
No uncertified homebrew system will EVER produce footage that's admissable in court. Period.
Contact your local police department for a list of their approved equipment and vendors. The kind of solutions you're looking for do exist out of the box - the one I worked on had all the features you mention plus plenty of others - and you'll be able to use the footage in a "1st Evidence" capacity. Also consult with an attorney experienced in the field.
This is one time when you need to know the legal requirements as well as the technical ones, and as has been said many times before, Slashdot is a really bad place to go for legal advice.
I've used CCTV cameras hooked up to unix boxes for a few years now to keep an eye on things.
I use Gspy, or motion. http://gspy.sourceforge.net/
Eventually, i captured this - http://gspy.sourceforge.net/gspystory.html
a car their parking a stolen car.
I've also captured council workers standing around, etc. I had each days worth of stills uploaded to a PPro BSD box that then converted them to mpeg.
Since then, i've used B+W cameras and IR spotlights to illuminate (to those of us inside) an alleyway being used as the entrance to a rave.. All using secondhand or home-made components, except for the capture card - $100.
http://www.kjaycar.com.au and http://www.oatleyelectronics.com. have a nice range of security gear.
This article probably covers a lot of questions that may come up for you.
Blaze a trail to the New World
Actually the company I work for is doing the exact same thing right now. I haven't tested it yet, but I just got a server sent out from HQ that uses Intellex Digital Video Management System. It stores atleast a couple of weeks on the hard drive and then archives to 4mm Dat. The video is also accessable over IP, so it can be viewed remotely or on any computer onsite. Sorry I don't know more details, I haven't had a chance to do more then open the box yet.
Don't worry about RAID if you don't want to
that is, unless you give a shit about what you're recording. something about the use of the word security in conjunction with camera leads me to believe you might, however.
if you're not using RAID, you're gamlbing with your data. it's very unlikely, but I've had two drives (in an array) fail catastrophically in the period of 1 hour. at 50-100gb/drive, without RAID, that's a lot of lost data.
There's a company called Dedicated Micros that has a 1U rackmount 320Gb digital security system, runs a stripped down linux, has a groovy little webserver interface, and controls up to 16 cameras on a single unit, and you can cascade multiple units. Also includes external SCSI connector to connect either an external tape device to archive the video, or an external drive enclosure/RAID array... We've got one here, and they even support PTZ cams... It's totally slick!
Diebold (The Banking Equipment Maker) sells an off the shelf unit that records and indexes images by time and date using a SQL Server. The thing will run almost any b+w or color video camera. The thing runs a a web server so that you can grab pics from your browser. Authentication comes from Accounts stored in the Database. If you can live with the fact that the thing runs on all MS software, it works great the thing has been running seamlessly 24hrs. a day for about nine months without any type of intervention. Depending on how you a adjust the image capture frequency we get about 3 and 1/2 months worth of recording on the thing. I think the whole setup with 12 cameras, Software, and Server w/ about 100GB of Storage went for about $7000.
Forgot to mention, can be used with outdoor cams (As we have set up). check it out at www.dedicatedmicros.com and select the digital sprite...
I have operated a similar 32 camera system for about 3 years. In the processw of upgrading it now, (12 more cameras).
1. As mentioned below - don't DIY. Find a contactor that has been in the business for a while.
2. Consider tape storage if you want to store anything more than a few days of video.
3. Don't let the salesperson talk your into "continuous loop" disk recording. You WILL find yourself needing to look at video that has been overwritten.
4. Do get cameras will good resolution under the lighting conditions on your property. (Arrange a test -- don't believe the salesperson's claims.)
5. Have fun!
8AM to 10PM. This probably isn't the usual middle-of-the-night, low-traffic, little-change-between-frames security system. From the hours, it might be a store, where they're more concerned with people stealing during the day rather than people breaking into the place after hours. If it's a heavy traffic area, constantly changing, you won't get nearly the compression rates as you would from a night security camera. So the requirements for storage space may be much, much higher depending on how much traffic passes in front of each camera.
-- If god wanted me to have a sig, he'd have given me a sense of humor.
...is these guys. They do a Linux based sixteen channel system. I think that, as standard, it only archives for a week, but I guess you could just put a bigger drive in it.
Andy Armstrong
Try Presearch
http://www.allthings.com.au/mainindex.html
I guess I should have explained that one a bit more; I was in a hurry to write that comment and didn't think as carefully as I should have.
When I said "don't bother about RAID" I wasn't thinking in a security context, only cost and convenience. Lots of people think you need fancy hardware RAID controllers to have lots of hard disks in a system, but you can quite happily just plug a few IDE disks into bog-standard controllers and set up your software to swap disks when required.
If I personally had to set up the security system in question, I would set it up with at least two computers. Each would store a full set of the data, and would control a number of cameras. They would be be located as far away from each other as possible, and talk by fast ethernet.
Each computer would store a local copy of the captured video as well as stream it across the network to be recorded on all the other computers.
That way you protect against failure of individual drives, as with RAID, but you also protect against fire and make stealing the computers without anyone noticing quite a bit trickier.
Print out little labels saying, "By picking these locks you are in direct violation of the DMCA?"
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
Come on give us a nice evil look, thanks
I think it is Windows only (older version only worked on Win 9x, current one at least does Win 2k). They have their own PCI card that comes with it, and the cameras attach with coax. Data is stored in avi format I think.
chris@xanadu:~$ whatis /.
/.: nothing appropriate.
I was researching for a slightly different project some time ago and found some cool stuff by talking to a Philips salesman.
This may not scale for your project, but Philips (one L not two) has some ethernet cameras. Here a while back, I believe they had some cameras with built in Linux servers. This way, the stream was digital and you had a lot of power over it. You could view it over the web, archive it forever, etc. etc.
Some of their products here.
The first thing I did was get a high-resolution webcam, the FirewireDirect DV WebCam and an X10
Ninja for remote panning/tilting. You can remote control this with your computer, but I chose to not use this option yet - though I would like it controllable from the web.
Then, for the recording, I'm using a beta build of CoolCam X from the great folks
at Evological who implemented a few motion detection changes for me.
Currently, for every time the motion detector trips, it records a JPEG still shot, and it also appends it to a Quicktime movie (in Photo-JPEG format, which, xine and xmovie happily reads). Every nite, a crontab entry moves all of the JPEG's and the movie into a dated directory, for later review.
The Quicktime movie is kind of fun, watching life in motion lapse. I keep it all on the web, but since my link is small, I'm not going to link to any of the quicktime movies for now.. suffice to say, it's funny watching the street in the front of my house.
All running happily on my (now obsolete) G4 DP533 running MacOS X.1
Try looking at www.vigilos.com. They have a solution similiar to what you are looking for.
Call up some security firms.... ADT (http://www.adt.com)although they are a huge company are good for doing walthroughs and recommendations. Going digital is pretty standard for security companies nowadays. good cameras are what will kill the budget however... look at spending about 750-1000 dollars each for a good security cam.... 'course, you can cheap out with usb webcams, but it'll break down the day whatever you're looking after gets stolen... Murphy's law and all that.
Get a quote from a security professional, then cut back what you can.
In case you're wondering, I'm a jeweller. I know a teensy bit about securing things. :)
~ a low user id is no indication I have a clue what I'm talking about.
VERY BAD IDEA!
I would suggest you stick with the analog system for one big reason:
Law enforcement may not accept a digital format as valid evidence.
I realise they are wrong, but the point is, you may find it difficult to press charges if your video is not submittable as evidence.
To the best of my knowledge, the only truly recognized system of this type is the analog (mostly) AVID system.
Of that guy who was looking for us to solve his digital camera dillema--the fellow who was revealed to be deeply involved in face-recognition software development? Where he wanted to know how best to set up a giant closed-circuit black and white 5 fps digital tv system?
:)
Haha, and this time he's come back as an anonymous coward with a re-phrased question in hopes we won't mercilessly track him down and belittle his lame software skillz.
Some of the high end ASUS video cards come with SVideo and RCA in/out ports along with motion detection software etc for free... check it out
we had to put something together on short
notice with similar specs. motion detection,
small hidden cameras, wireless, stored on
a harddrive, etc. we purchased the entire
system (sans computer) from the spy outlet
for $1000 and it's been running well for
over a month.
take a standard digital backup system and build a beowulf cluster of those :-)
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
First, most people here seem to be assuming that video is stored in RGB with N bits per pixel. In fact, video is nearly always captured in YUV, where the Y channel (luminance) has two or four times time resolution of the colour (UV) channels. Even "uncompressed" broadcast-quality video (Betacam) uses this trick (that's what 4:2:2 sampling means, and DV uses 4:2:0 or 4:1:1), which means only half the colour information of Betacam. So stripping the colour will not reduce the data rate to 1/3 of the original YUV, but only to 2/3 or 1/2. And colour can be important (unless the thieves happen to always wear gray). Of course, compared to 24 bpp RGB, grayscale only uses one third, but no-one in their right minds would save video in 24 bpp RGB (it would be like converting 7-bit ASCII to 16-bit unicode).
Second, and I belive this is the main point, motion detection is not (just) a way to detect intruders. It's also a way to decide what needs to be captured and at what quality. The system can capture at full-resolution, full-colour, full-speed while there's movement, and if it doesn't detect any changes for, say, 30 seconds, it can simply switch to a lower quality mode (black and white, 1-5 fps, 1/4 the resolution). As soon as it detects movement, it goes back to the "high quality" mode.
Finally, to save space, compress the video clips to MPEG-4 or a similar format (DivX, etc.), or even MPEG-1 (which is much easier to encode, although not as efficient).
RMN
~~~
check out cvideo.
they custom build systems to do exactly this sort of thing, mostly for banks and the security industry.
i'm pretty sure they support all the capabilities you mentioned, ie.: many cameras, network access, timed recording, using their own video codec.
oops thats www.cvideo.com
We use this exact solution in our premises. We have also attached an external 1U storage array whcih enables us to have ~30days of storage.
My advice, go with a professional digital solution. Analogue/tape is dead (at least in Australia).
---- Put Sig here:
A security company local to me (D/A Central) sells and supports software from Lenel that does professional digital security systems, including video. We evaluated this as part of a security system purchase, and it was really expensive. We ended up going with a less sophisticated (and analog) system from Galaxy Control Systems (seriously). The demos of the Lenel stuff were quite impressive, and they were serious enough that I imagine that the data they collected would stand up in court (to comment on a previous poster's concern). BTW, almost all of this stuff is Windows only, but continues to work if the controlling computer is unavailable. However, the security of that computer becomes paramount (ours isn't on the network and is in a locked room, for example). If your company is serious, X10 and some random freshmeat probably isn't the way to go; what security company supports that, anyhow? Find a company in your area that sells Lenel (or whatever) and have them do it right for you.
Power corrupts. PowerPoint corrupts absolutely. E. Tufte
Well, I've only done a little tinkering, playing with motion, which runs on Linux. I pointed a USB EZCam out the window and recorded a collection of cars passing, pedestrians, and bicyclists. The problem was the low resolution and the poor low-light sensitivity of the camera. I wouldn't want to try identifying anyone with the images. But a better camera should help.
and the serial driver
Using the keyboard matrix determines what sensor is set off.
The serial output controls what video gets fed to the card.
And the card captures the video.
All done in 1996. Redone in 2001 via USB.
Why? Because I could.
You might take a look here:
http://nemesis.inodes.org/
It's a linux video security system that is currently being used in at least one hotel, the guy claims.
You mean to tell me this isn't a high demand item?
did anybody who modded this even
go to the fucking website?
Not sure if their stuff is any good, but the company next door sells web-based surveillance products.
Frisco bay offers a product that may work well for you.
http://www.friscobay.com/vip.html
Heard of Terry Matthews? The guy that started Newbridge Networks (now Alcatel), Mitel, and many others? Well he's at the helm of March Networks now, focusing on Voice/Video/IP solutions.
They have several sweet DVR systems made for your purpose.
- everything IP based
- 16 channels @ 30fps
- controlls PTZ
- muliple event/alarm monitoring
- and so much more
I have a buddy that worked there and is just raving about the stuff.
Still the most tried and true security system is a loaded gun. Just invest in some motionactivated turret guns, sure if you have a mistake it's a wee bit costly, but then again, so's loosing your data.
(I know it's a stupid post, go a head and mod me down, Karma is only a state of mind.)
T Money
World Domination with a plastic spoon since 1984
I recall either 8 or 16 cameras per rack-mounted machine, but I imagine they've gotten bigger / better / faster in the last five years. A higher number of simultaneous inputs reduces the frame rates, so we chose the maximum number of inputs that could give us the frame rates we desired (3.5 frames/sec, I think.)
They have digital tape jukeboxes parked next to the racks, and even our largest site keeps at least 90 days of video.
They provide client software that allows us to remotely access the video stream via our internal network, and they modified their system to include a SQL database of a journal of the accompanying financial transactions being performed. They identify each computer with a camera, and upon request deliver this journal synchronized with the video stream. We also have some public safety cameras feeding the system that are not tied to the transaction system.
It's elegant for the investigators, who are non-techies. They have search capabilities on that data, and can speed right to the relevant transactions. They can also simply click a button and burn a CD with the selected video stream and it even comes with the required digitally-signed proprietary viewer.
Another thing it has that you maybe haven't yet considered is that their company has experts who will testify in court on our behalf that their system is valid, and that the images haven't been tampered with. We have used their imagery as evidence in many successful prosecutions. IANAL, but having a built-in Trusted Third Party strikes me as a strong benefit.
So, with a wonderful system like this, what are the drawbacks? Money, plain and simple. You have to be willing to invest money (and people) to get a top notch system, but the cost-avoidance was definitely worth it for us.
Oh, and before anyone goes off about Big Brother, you should know that the transactions we are recording are financial in nature, and cash is involved. The computers are ours, and the users know they are being recorded. Just that knowledge provides a huge fraud deterrent. We honestly much prefer deterring theft up front than prosecuting our own employees after the fact. And armed with this system, we have no problem prosecuting thieves.
Disclaimer: I do not have any financial investment in Loronix, I am just a very satisfied customer.
John
Why exactly is this marked flamebait? He/She asked a legitimate question ... why does the fact that this device runs linux have any bearing whatsoever on the matter at hand?
Now, I am sure plenty of you have responses as to why the operating system choice makes a difference, and I for one would like to hear such arguments. But there is a major difference between posting a rebuttal, and marking down any post you don't agree with as flamebait.
Ok this might not go well with many of you guys... but just keep an Open mind... if you are serious about meeting all the items in the Original Post....
-set up a network with tiny boxes everywhere you want a camera...
-set up each box with windows 2000 pro minimal config & windows media encoder 7.1
-connect all digital or analog cameras to the configured boxes and configure the encoder to save the media on to a file server of your choice (That Terabyte server would be great here!)
-change the bit rate of the encoded images to something small with 5 frames a sec and no audio (remember it is illegal to record audio kids! only video is legal by the wiretapping laws in this country.)
-although you can encrypt the streams after they are saved through Digital Rights Management, I wouldn't suggest it since it is all in house anyway, you have to get a license through MS, and I presume few people would have access to your terabyte server. So if you have crappy security on your file server... you might as well not even do any of this. (file server can be an OS other than MS if your paranoid.. you know...)
-set up your encoders to record the "live event" to your file server(s)... you can also broadcast them out at the same time to specific computers... for live monitoring, it's up to you all if you want to just record, or monitor and record.
-Ok, now start all the suckers, and you are off and running.
- There IS a major drawback... the video can be delayed between 10-20 secs.
Hope this helps!
-Please no flames... just my 2 cents.
Mabidex
Imagine a Beowolf Cluster of THESE!!!
Last week, I connected our company's old analog security system to the firewall's parallel port (in a way to detect the open-circuit or closed-circuit state) so the firewall could change policies when the alarm was on (and therefore, no one was working on a workstation). It took only a day or so to go from concept to complete solution. Easy and cheap. Since then, I've been thinking about doing something similar at home. Get some parallel port cards (if one won't do it), and you can connect lots of sensors which use the open or closed circuit sense.
--Phil
Give me a call We are selling these types of solutions, Exactly what you are looking for. email me at graham@catg.com. With your contact info.
We just started selling these so we have limited data. I just made the webpage for this and we haven't determined pricing. It will probably be $3000 to $4000 depending on features, etc.
16 inputs,
Various input (motion detection/timers) and output triggers
Up to 184 Days continuous recording
up to 30fps
Uses MJPEG compression and 80GB removable drives.
You will have to ask about pricing as it hasn't been determined for retail yet.
See This page
On a personal Note, and from personal experience, I recommend that you NOT PATRONIZE those "SHARK PETTING ZOOS!" Believe me, I know. -Three Fingered Joe
Search for Geovision gv-800 cards
They allow you to use your existing cameras, work with PTZ cams, include motion detection, search, IP network viewing, local and remote playback and save to disk while recording.
The cards come with up to 16 inputs and different levels of total FPS for different prices. I think the top model does 16 cams and 120 FPS. They use 4 Brooktree chips per board and wavelet compression. I have seen this top card for under $2000, that's three zeros. Add it too a decent PC, say 850MHz+, with some 80-160gig redundant Hdd's and it's a nice system. Something comparable from Integral is well over $15k. try remote-security.com, they are one vendor i know of.
There has been a lot of mention of off the shelf parts. This doesn't work for a commercial security system however. Anything that is used for genuine loss prevention has to meet legal standards. You have to have a recording that will stand up in court. VHS is an accepted standard, courts will uphold it. Digital gets tricky. One of the things that is needed for digital, even though there is little case law on the point, is some sort of watermark that can authenticate the video.
That part of things is still tough. The issue with digital is that it is very easy to alter images. This is why the courts are more reluctant to allow digital. In the mean time, if you want a digital video system, you should visit a reputable security professional. They already are dealing with exactly these issues and can help you determine what is right for your needs. They can also give you the pros and cons of various systems.
All this being said, I am neither a lawyer nor a sales rep. I have worked in security for over 5 years and have researched such systems many times. If you have any fear that you may need to take your footage to court, make sure it will stand up.
Scott Boersema
I can't even remember the last time I saw one one those. But then again, I've been using Mozilla and/or Konqueror for a long time, and I have those annoying popus turned off.
This functionality works better on Mozilla because it only turns off popups that happen when pages load, not *all* popups. Some sites use popup links, and Konq breaks that....
-Vic
Unfortunately if power is cut to the 'security guard' software, with current technology the data is irretrievable (unlike hard drive technology). Experience indicates that the two systems complement each other quite well.
Phillip.
Property for sale in Nice, France
The online demo indicates that the resolution is great under good lighting, but lousy in dim light.
I always thought the Tivo was ideal for security work, but you missed a couple of points. Tivos have been upgraded with dual 120Gb hard drives, I forget but it's something like 150 hours max storage. Something like that. Anyway, that's almost a week of recording, worst case. Since you can dump to tape from the Tivo, you don't need to store much, just keep everything from the last week and if you have a security incident, just dump it to tape. Overwrite it continuously on a 7 day cycle. Any standalone Tivo can do all this stuff right out of the box. Sure beats videotape systems.
Another thing you can do to reduce storage requirements is putting 4 cameras split screen, it's very common in surveillance recorders to gang up several cameras in one image. Get 4 streams recorded for the price of one, with the cost of lowered rez in each single image. Good enough for security work, I suppose.
You might want to take a look at http://www.milestone.dk
I did some research on the subject so here are some links.
o ri ng/webcamservers/webcamserver_flsoftware.html
m l
http://www.cctvwholesalers.com/remotevideomonit
http://www.surveillance-video.com/
http://www.videocomplex.com/
http://www.cctvvideo.com/colorcameras.html
http://www.trakonic.com/trakonic/trakBIG.html
http://www.teleeye.com/products.htm
http://www.vcs.com/vcs2_english/vcs.htm
http://www.remotecams.com/
http://www.darvision.com/products/seehawk/more.ht
Two Towers-Two Worlds.One seeks triumphs and freedom for man.The other deems man unworthy and wrecks them.
Yep slashdot reaches another level of superiority in 1 hit - now smiking is beneath you all.
Fuckwits - like masturbating to linux man pages and drinking jolt is any better for you
I am a programmer at Milestone Systems.
:-) - so that's another way to use your existing investment in regular video cams.
That being said, I recommend that you take a look at Milestone Systems' web site - http://www.milestonesys.com - they make some pretty decent surveillance software to do exactly the sort of thing you describe. Sorry - for now it only runs on M$ Windows 98, 2000 and XP. It supports most models of digital network cameras (Axis, Convision, JVC, Sony, Panasonic, WebGate, IndigoVision, and others) and basically records JPEG images (color, B/W, whatever) from the network cameras to a database on your PC.
Some features: up to 64 cams, motion detection, scheduling, alerts via email/SMS, external camera sensors, browse images while recording, able to archive image database automatically, event logging, image or AVI export, pan/tilt/zoom control, web interface for remote viewing of event logs and live images
In your particular situation, you might want to consider using network video servers - these are just standalone boxes that have multiple video inputs on one end (usually 4) and a network connection on the other. Plug your existing regular video cameras into one end, and the other into your LAN. Axis makes several of these. We're also supporting frame grabber cards in the near future. I'm working on one right now, the Falcon Quattro by IDS. It should be supported in a few days
As for storage capacity - it's not as big a problem as other posts have made it out to be. Assuming a decent quality and resolution color JPEG around 40kB (PAL 704x576) you get the following if you store all images:
15 frames/s * 60s/min * 60 min/hr * 24 hr/day * 40kB/frame = 49.4 GB per cam, per day
That's a lot...even a more reasonable 10 frames/s for 12 hrs a day, at 10kB/frame (lower qual and res but still good) gives you 4.1GB. Some people want to store all these images - and the only answer for them is a serious drive system. The solution for the rest of us is simple: you don't store all the images - you just store the images with motion.
So check out the web site, and write an email if you have any questions...I hope it works for you.
A couple of years ago I saw the Digital Detective from DPS which was a hard disk recorder box for video surveillance taking up to 4 cameras. The best features included being able to tweak what is stored on events including going back in time (perhaps only a little but even 10 secs makes a huge difference) and it could hook up to the net for remote viewing etc. Don't know if they still do them or if they cover all your criteria but no-one else had mentioned them.
Never underestimate the dark side of the Source
What about close-circuit TV connected to a TiVO or other DVR? Or am I not understanding how those work...
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
Just for fun, why don't you get a life and stop being an annoying pin head.
PegQuin--I've got a sneakin' suspicion
I believe March Networks is exactly in this business. They offer digital video and security solutions to all sorts of companies. I heard many banks are now using their technology to record you every time you do a transaction at an ATM. You can read more about that specific technology here
mail me websecuritycams@insecurity.co.uk
we have it all (4 years developing)
motion detection
24*7 recordings
web interface control from anywhere.....
++++++
This is exactly what you described, go play with the online demo
http://www.vprotect.com
Take a close look at Axis network caneras and Milestone XXV Software.
here is your answer: dedicatedmicros.com -- you can attach something like a Promise TX8 external scsi raid enclosure.
They have units that will take 16 video feeds, store them to internal disks (you can add external) AND you can view all cameras in full speed over a web browser or proprietary client program.
prices are _very_ good -- i was suprised.
post. :-)
We, at BrightNoise.com have sold Axis Network Cameras for several years now and find Milestone XXV to be a great product for PC based surveillance.
Some camera examples http://www.brightnoise.com/sections.php?op=viewart icle&artid=66
BTW there are a number of other hardware vendors emerging and we will be posting them soon. One great example is http://www.alarm24.de/convision/index.html
We use an off-the-shelf system in our building. It consists of some simple ethernet capable cameras with build in motion sensors. As soon as the cameras detect motion they start sending either seperate images or a video stream. We use seperate images. We normally store a few weeks worth of data, on a raid with only a few hundred GB. This is for about 12 cameras.
We use a simple linux box as the system the raid is attached to. Every day a script removes all files older than 3 weeks.
Works like a charm.
Cor
My company manufactures a system that provides most of the functionality that is listed. Continuous recording, up to 128 cameras, each camera is settable to either 1,2 or 4 frames per second, full set of remote features. The system is called Digital Datacatch and compresses & stores the video on internal hard drives. Up to 90 days storage and more is available, depending on the application. If you would like more info check out www.digitaldatacatch.com
I'm a senior engineer with one of the bigger companies creating digital video systems. I spend my days living and breathing this stuff.
My advice is, don't roll your own unless you need a very simple, non-scalable system, and you can live with limited functionality. Even then, you've got a lot of work ahead of you to get the system solid.
The problems encountered when creating DV systems are different than most other technologies. You have large amounts of incoming video data you do not want to lose, and you have a finite amount of resources and time to store that data before losing it. In addition, the system must have hi-availability, so you have to put a lot of effort into making it robust. The other features you mention, such as watermarking, scheduling, motion detection, and the use of hi-res and hi framerate cameras are non-trivial to implement and support.
There are many vendors on the low-end of DV systems that could probably provide the system you mention for less time/money than you could roll your own for.
You can buy special video capture cards that have 8 inputs or so, and use hardware wavelet compression. You probably don't want to use cards that do software compression as you would need a cluster of computers to record. As is, you may need more than one. Throw in a few 120G hard drives, and you have a decent system.
Note: these are NOT consumer level cards. They are not very cheap either, but you get what you pay for (they are generally high resolution.) Because they are used in custom apps, you usually get all the docs to write drivers, souce code samples, etc. (don't know about linux support...)
integraltech.com makes some of these cards...
(frankly, most bt848 cards are junk IMHO.)
This product looks pretty good - haven't actually tried it yet, but I've heard good things about it... Sounds like almost exactly what you are looking for?
Anyone out there have any experience with this?
http://www.merlinsoftech.com/products/dvr.html
Specs are all on that page and the pricing seems to be more than comparable to VHS/multiplexers...