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?"

Comments

A Simple Cheap Solution

[toby360]

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.