Well, the time has come to dive into the world of home security and surveillance.
I wanted to start with a PoC, so I grabbed my Dell PowerEdge 1800 and tossed in an old Hauppauge WinTV 878 tuner card.
I spent some time testing out a few software package options. The 2 I liked the most being;
Activeweb Cam
Security Monitor Pro
Security Monitor Pro worked really well, cept they drop support for hardware based cameras in the newer versions (4.1..etc)
So I opted for an older version of Activeweb Cam.
I ran some "homebrew" cat5 that I rigged RCA and Power at each end and connected it to a cam that came with my old Hauppauge card. Amazingly enough the cam is 30FPS 520TV line with Varifocul lense... I may end up moving this into the garage when I replace it with a proper exterior camera.
Now that I've got a good idea of what I want to do, let the ordering begin.
First I'm grabbing a RapidOS RW-1120R 4 channgel PCI DVR card. This is still a low range card, I found it for $85. But why this card?
I was wanting to stay entry level with all of this, this card was the seemed to give the most bang for a buck.
4 Channel with 120FPS max across all channels (yes 30 per cam, rather than most of the cheaper cards only support 30FPS max, thus 7.5FPS on 4 cams).
4 Channel audio. I may only use audio for the front door... but you never know, and now I'll have it.
I'm in the process of picking out some starter camers, once I iron out all the details I'll be sure to post a full parts list
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