Illusory Follies

I have another project in the works… I bought a security camera and some accouterments recently with the hope that I can easily configure up to 4 for my house. We live in a safe [relatively] neighborhood and I’m really much more into this for the geekery of it rather than the practical value although I think it may have some value down the road if any of my customers are interested in security solutions.

Here’s the gear:

540TVL, LED 30pcs, 4.3mm Fixed Lens, 1/3 inch Sony Super HAD II CCD IR Bullet Camera ($62.61 at Monoprice)

Seems like a good price for a camera as solid as this is. I just got this on Tuesday but haven’t got it set up. I’m impressed with the construction and I did verify that the IR is working great (if you want to check for IR, you can set this up to shine its IR LEDs, turn on a digital camera and see the room bathed in “light”). As a side note, I’ve been REALLY pleased with Monoprice. Great prices and solid products. Their camera line is new as of this summer and so far, I’m impressed.

I also picked up some video baluns so I can run the power and video over Cat5e instead of running video and power separately. A lot easier to manage and install and you can terminate them using typical keystone jacks (which makes for a nice clear install).

PV-149 – 4 port video capture card (120FPS) ($154.95 at BlueCherry)

Might be overkill, but it looks like a nice solution. I haven’t purchase this yet, but hope to soon. I may stick with the 4 port model and save a few bucks. This should allow me to use 4 cameras at about 30 frames/second, which is ideal.

I’m planning on using ZoneMinder for the DVR solution. I’ve not used this before, so I’ll definitely do a writeup when I get it up and running. The hope is to get this streaming data to disk but also presenting the video display on a simple web server. I’ve been really irritated by the somewhat more expensive turn-key DVR’s that support video streaming using an ActiveX control. Not that friendly unless you happen to be running Internet Explorer. Yuck.

As I progress, I’ll post details on the install, additional hardware, ZoneMinder installation and configuration, and overall evaluation.