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Cheap and Capable Video Monitoring Server?
An Anonymous Coward asks: "The company I work for is looking to invest in some security/surveillance technology. We are currently using an out-of-the-box, purpose built solution, but for the price it's pretty unreliable and leaves a lot to be desired. The specific need is for cameras to monitor areas of a site, with motion detection, the ability to integrate with other systems via simple boolean conditional switches, and a video web server. Naturally I would prefer to use a PC, as the reliability/price would be much better and the system would be more configurable. Zoneminder looks quite good, it's a Linux based OSS solution, but I'm not sure it's ready for a commercial implementation. Are there any good DIYish solutions around or are expensive consultants and esoteric hardware the only way to go?"
It sounds to me like the stuff you're monitoring is pretty important, so you need to make sure your surveillance is good. I'd go with hiring a consultant to deal with that so that even if it does screw up, he'll be accountable instead of you.
http://dorgem.sourceforge.net/
Dorgem has motion capture, but it will probably fall short on many of your other requirements.
Stop the world; I need to get off.
You might want to have a look at Motion. It is an application written for GNU/Linux that can capture video from several sources, has builtin motion detection (hence its name), can execute commands when motion is detected and a has lot more features.
:w!q