# multiple cams

Nathan Hand (nathanh@wookie.chirp.com.au)
Mon, 1 Mar 1999 08:58:57 +1100 (EST)

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There have been a couple of recent burglaries in the neighbouring offices
and I'm interested in putting some cheap b&w cameras in my office, mostly
as a deterrent but also for storing photo evidence to help out the police
if (god forbid) my offices are burgled as well.

It looks reasonably easy to use SANE to connect up one camera and use the
sanecgi software to store continuously running images. I'd then upload my
images to an offsite server (in case the servers stolen). So 1st question
is: what cameras do people recommend for this sort of application?

Cheap is preferred, but keeping CPU costs low is also important. I have a
small battery of servers, but I'd like to keep all this scanning software
on a single machine, probably a PII-333 running Linux, which will also be
doing a number of other things. Another issue is cable length (need 10m).

I'd also like to use multiple cameras, possibly 4 of them. Does this rule
out parallel port cameras (ie, would the CPU usage sky rocket)? Would the
scanners require a dedicated server (I have no idea about the bandwidth I
would need here)? Are there camera "chains" designed for this purpose?

I've looked at the dedicated camera/vcr setups but was unimpressed. It is
impossible to monitor the cameras from the web, and getting offsite video
storage costs an arm and a leg, far more (I think) than even buying a new
dedicated server just for scanning and paying for additional bandwidth.

What else am I missing? I've never had a scanner before, let alone one of
these new fangled "computer cameras". I'd appreciate any advice.

    --
    Nathan Hand - Chirp Web Design - http://www.chirp.com.au/ - $e^{i\pi}+1 = 0$
    Phone: +61 2 6230 1871   Fax: +61 2 6230 4455   E-mail: nathanh@chirp.com.au

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