Video surveillance - advice required

[pcwilson]

Hi Guys

I've been tasked with setting up a system to monitor one of our factories. The system should be a visible deterent to skivers and pilferers. The factory is a bit smaller than a football pitch and reasonably well lit.

The spec is:
Budget £1000
2 - 3 cameras
Record constantly
Record to hard drive for easy search/play back
High enough quality to identify people

I'd appreciate advice from anyone who supplies this kind of kit or who has set up a similar system.

Cheers
Phil

[stevieb]

A good place that i know of is

www.y3kcctv.co.uk/

I have used a couple of there harddisc packages before.

[arfur]

You need to look at the following. I use this setup in retail premises for cctv and at home ( yes I was burgled and have nice pics of the muppet nicking stuff !! The BiB were very happy when they downloaded the pics from a website ! )

Decent PC with big HD ( PC world special and a 300 gig disk ) 500£
Wireless PCI Card ( Netgear ) 30£
Wireless Access Point ( Netgear ) 40£
Linksys WVC54G Wireless Cameras ( with audio ) 60£ each
Active Webcam Software from the web 40£

Will sort your budget easily and works very reliably. You can d/l the software for a 30 day trial and have a play ... is very good

[sp60]

arfur, you know what kind of range you get from the linksys camera's?
Also, do you happen to know if you can run more than one on a single pc...I guess you must by the sound of it, but how is it set up.
many thanks

james.

[arcturus]

We've done a few of these recently. We use the iCatcher CCTV software for running and recording the cameras. It works really well.

You then need to choose between IP CCTV cameras or the more traditional CCTV cameras. I would not recommend webcams in a surveillance type situation. They are just not up to it, IMHO.

IP CCTV cameras use the same optics/frontend as 'traditional' CCTV cameras, its how they deliver the pictures that is different. Traditional cameras deliver a 'TV type' signal which you plug into a decoder card in a PC (4 way cards are common). You need to run a coax cable from the camera to the PC.

IP cameras just plug into a convenient network point and deliver a Motion JPEG stream to the PC with the recording software on it over the network. If there is already a network infrastructure that you can tap into, then this can save lots of cabling.

IP cameras are much more expensive than traditional cameras, because they are relatively new, but if it saves you some cabling......

iCatcher comes with a built in web server which means if you configure your software and router correctly, you can see the video from anywhere on the net.

[deva link]

pcwilson said:

Hi Guys

I've been tasked with setting up a system to monitor one of our factories. The system should be a visible deterent to skivers and pilferers. The factory is a bit smaller than a football pitch and reasonably well lit.

The spec is:
Budget £1000
2 - 3 cameras
Record constantly
Record to hard drive for easy search/play back
High enough quality to identify people

I'd appreciate advice from anyone who supplies this kind of kit or who has set up a similar system.

Cheers
Phil

I note some of the well intentioned suggestions but there's a world of difference between retail / home premises and a factory that's almost the size of a football field. How is it going to be a visible deterent, unless you put the camera's in large housings? And getting quality good enough to identify people - from 2 or 3 cameras? You'd only be able to monitor tiny areas with fixed cameras. Trying to use wireless cameras in a big area could be a significant issue on its own.

This sounds like something *a lot* bigger than a £1000 system.

[arcturus]

deva link said:

This sounds like something *a lot* bigger than a £1000 system.

I would agree entirely. 3 cameras is nowhere near enough for the size described.

And if the site requires dustproof or waterproof cameras then again this will push the cost up.

If this job is to be done properly/professionally, then the budget would need to increase.

[Graham]

We're looking in to these as a side line at the moment.. its probably going to cost more than a 1k though.


you can get a pack of 4 axis Ip cameras and the monitoring software for around the 1k mark, but then your going to want external housings for the camera, mounting and cabling of the cameras, and a PC to run it on.

some of the big advantages though are the quality of the images which is great plus you can get enhancement software that works very well in fog/ darkness etc.

The motion detection is interesting in that you setup the camera and then mark out areas to watch / avoid in the cameras view.. so you can just watch a door, or watch everything apart from a flag or tree that would constantly set things off. You can set the software to start recordng or e-mailout ect when it detects motion.

The axis camera system also allows internet access to the cameras, you get a domain name through their server so you can access them from anywhere.


If you want more info on the axis stuff drop me a line and I'll pass it on. These cameras are suitable for commercial applications as well as domestic

cheers

Graham

[SlidingSideways]

This guy ended up paying out a lot more than £1k, but it sounds like it was worth every penny....
www.theregister.co.uk/2006/09/14/holidaymaker_foils_burglary/

[Plotloss]

Coaxial cameras are generally better quality and cheaper than IP based cameras.

You can get a card that allows the connection of coaxial cameras to be connected to a PC and the content recorded via a DVR mechanism.

The crucial bit is recording based on events rather than constant recording, if you record constantly at a decent quality then you'll eat up even the largest of disks pretty damned quickly.