roknjohn

I'm sorry if I wasn't clear. I'm not proposing this as a way to make money. I'm proposing this as an alternative to my town of about 8,000 over what would otherwise be cost prohibitive for us. We expect perhaps a dozen cameras initially. I'm sure we all would be very pleased if that number eventually grew to 25-30, with maybe a license plate camera or two in the mix. If SD storage is not an option, do they make a small DVR that can "emulate" an IP camera?

It may very well be a challenge to set up as I doubt most folks will have static IP addresses. Ideally, a camera initiated connection would solve this issue, but I don't know if this is a feature that is common among camera vendors. Without static IPs, some sort of dynamic DNS would be necessary. If the site has a computer running most of the time, the IP can be updated via something like no-ip.com or perhaps this has already been addressed in the industry. If homeowners and/or local businesses would like to participate, the city would like to recommend specific hardware and vendors (or perhaps we will just team up with local security installers) along with installation services, which would include all network, router, firewall configuration, etc. As for bandwidth, I was hoping that the camera could be streaming a live view at a low frame rate around 100Kbs while simultaneously recording to on-camera storage at a higher frame rate. Only when an event has occurred, i.e. something was stolen, etc, would investigators pull the recorded video from the camera after searching for a particular time period. During these playbacks, the bandwidth requirement would be much higher. All participants would be made aware of this and protocol may even require their permission for each query. The idea here is to conserve bandwidth at "idle" an only retrieve high quality video when necessary. In normal operations, central recording wouldn't even be mission critical. Basically a live frame or two per second would be sufficient, until an incident occurred. We are attempting to gradually build a system that is mostly funded by concerned citizens who would like to "do their part", rather than spend a lot of money (at a time when we don't have much) on a system. We want this to be a "volunteer" network of cameras that leverages existing residential wifi. Any specific suggestions on cameras that would work well for this project?

Thank you all for your responses. You have been most helpful. I think I'm at the point now where I'd like to purchase an IP camera for testing for proof of concept along with some free or trial central software. It appears that IP cameras would be the easiest to install and configure, especially for those who already have a wi-fi network in place. Based on my current home DVR system, I think I want a camera with these specifications: 802.11 Wireless IP Camera 30m IR 4-7mm lens (fixed or vari) On board storage Can you recommend a good unit to evaluate? My guess is that I'll need one that is compatible with whatever central software we end up with. How does the on-camera storage work for IP cameras? Can you (remotely) configure the recording parameters? Do cameras have onboard motion detection? Can you have live viewing at one frame rate and on-camera recording at another? Can the NVR or central software search the recorded video for motion events, or playback recording remotely? For NAT installations, how does one handle dynamic addressing. Or, can the camera just "call" the server? Last question (for this post anyway), do any of these camera or NVR vendors have any open API? I am a software engineer and may be willing to develop features that aren't available off the shelf. Thanks again for your willingness to help.

Our local crime watch community group is exploring some ideas about bringing CCTV to our small community. Full scale commercial systems are cost prohibitive. The idea that interests us is a community-based system, where homeowners and businesses would purchase a single camera and allow our local police department some type of central access. Considering that most people have broadband internet, it may be a low-cost alternative. Here are some thoughts that we have discussed. Businesses and homeowners could purchase a low cost camera mounted on their property used to monitor a nearby street or sidewalk. The camera would be accessible from a central location over the Internet. Networking would be achieved using the existing broadband services of at each camera location. The system should be designed to minimize bandwidth requirement at each camera site. Perhaps, each camera could have some on-board storage or a 1-2 channel DVR so that law enforcement could query video archives on demand whenever an event had occurred. 24 hr live video or snapshots would also be useful, if bandwidth (especially during business hours) is minimized. The main purpose of the system is to help investigators identify criminals/vehicles that were in the vicinity around the time of a crime. For example, this past weekend a quiet little neighborhood was awakened to gunshots at 3:30am. Fortunately, no one was hurt. Several homeowners in the area had CCTV systems had were able to get glimpses of the vehicle that was responsible, but identification is going to be difficult. Our thinking is that is we had 20 or so networked cameras located around our small town, an investigator could easily reconstruct the vehicle's movement through town with possibly more easily identifiable images. The city is willing to buy a PC-based central monitoring system and additional bandwidth to have some sort of real-time monitoring (it could be something like 4-8 frames per minute per camera) unless a specific camera was selected (for a limited time) for faster video. Again, the main purpose would be to search archived video stored at each camera site for a specific time interval or motion event when necessary. Therefore, we'd like the cameras to have about a week of motion-detected DVR capability. To attract more volunteers and participates in the program, it would be nice if the individual systems were expandable with more cameras and normal CCTV features, but not shared with the community network. In other words, a homeowner could buy a 4 camera system, and elect to give access to only one of those cameras to the city. Having said all of that, I'm asking this group for any information on similar setups around the country, and pointers to additional information, hardware specs, etc., so that we can put together a proof of concept to pitch to the city council.

I've been using a Digivue XView4 with 4 bullet cameras for home security for several years. I'm a bit disappointed in both the software and the image quality of the cameras. I plan on upgrading my system with better cameras (with longer night vision range) and hopefully, much better software. Currently, the system is installed in the family server computer in an upstairs closet. My main purpose of the system is to monitor my parked cars at night (There has been a rash of car breakins lately.) and to protect my children playing in the yard during the day. I'm asking for any recommendations or comments about your own experience before I upgrade. I don't want to spend more money, only to realize that I've bought junk again. Here's are some of my thoughts and observations to help you get an idea of what I need: I need more than 4 cameras to cover my yard and driveway. Since the server is not easily accessible, I connect to it using Windows Remote Desktop. This method doesn't allow "live" viewing of the cameras. The remote viewing client software supplied by Digivue doesn't work. I would like a better method to see the live images, from a downstairs computer or perhaps from a TV. I often travel and would like to view live and recorded video via the Internet. I can accomplish this somewhat using Remote Desktop, but it should be an easier way. iPhone viewing (over wifi) would be great! The motion detection of the Digivue software is a bit flaky. Motion detection is a plus, if it works and doesn't miss any action. I am mostly concerned with recently recorded video, within 24-48 hours, and would like the highest quality for that period. Afterwards, it could be archived at a lower quality or frame rate. (I've written a small program to automatically delete old video files (>30 days), so storage is not an issue currently.) I may want to add some additional IR illumination, invisible beam barrier, or motion detector for late night alerts.