In light of a recent burglary that took place at my residence, my landlord has decided to install CCTV systems in the main hallways. Rather then buying expensive DVR systems or proprietory Windows applications, I decided to find out whether the open source community had anything to offer. To my delight I stumbled upon Zone Minder which is a fully featured surveillance application. I can use the existing network infrastructure to connect the IP enabled network cameras to the server We haven't bought the equipment yet but I decided to trial the installation of Zone Minder on a Ubuntu 6.06.1 Server virtual machine. I managed to get the majority of the application configured after going through a few tutorials, some of which were complete dead-ends. I am not sure how difficult the cameras will be to set up, but I've already confirmed that the cameras we are buying are 100% compatible with Linux. If everything works out fine then I will most likely bill my landlord extra so as to give a donation to these crazy open source kids So heres to another open source solution in my household IPCop is still doing it's thang very well :good:
That's good! BTW, if it helps, there's also a company called Neon who sells pre-configured DVRs. It comes on an IDE flash drive; Debian with Motion. You just plug it into a motherboard and you're good to go. They're only like $40/USD, so may be worth a look.
That Zone Minder software looks very complete. I like how video devices in linux are accessed with the /dev/video files, everything really is a file in *nix.
The cameras arrived yesterday and my landlord donated his old computer so I got to work installing the systems. The initial set up and configuration was a little bumpy as expected. Obviously I have never done anything like this before so I knew it would be a learning experience. However I've now got it working to a reasonable degree and I am quite chuffed! I've installed 4 cameras and I've set up the system to record whenever it detects movement. I can monitor the system by simply pointing my web browser to the ubuntu server. Dedicated DVR systems are pretty expensive. I've probably saved around £100 - 500 pounds by choosing the DIY route. BTW, I discovered Webmin whilst I was building this computer. Basically it's a systems administration tool that uses Apache. Instead of ssh'ing into the Ubuntu server to perform administration, I can now point my web browser to the Ubuntu Server Webmin page which is much easier to manage. :beer: to open source!
Hmm, I thought this computer was unstable and now i've got proof; 17 errors in Memtest86+ after an hour and a half. Of course, just ONE error is a serious problem. 17... well shoot me down... I can't put a dodgy computer into use, that's for sure. I'll have to inform my landlord that his computer sucks :doh:
