Security Cams

Steven Hook just anyone here

The Axis products are about as good as they get for the $.

Looked at them very seriously last summer for my cousin's trucking yard and in the process decided that I would price out a solution with them before shopping elsewhere. Diesel price increases have put it on hold for now, so for him it remains just a want :) Never found anything else that compared $-performance-features, fwiw.

Question is whether you need a video security capability or just a means to feed video images for the curious.

If you take the time to look at and price an Axis setup for security purposes, you may find your insurance company would be most interested and helpful (with reduced rates, etc.). A small setup may pay for itself in 2-3 years or even quicker. Insurance companies usually have someone familiar with Axis.

If you just need video frames for the curious your choices are bounded by these practical considerations (among others): -- upload bandwidth -- streaming video server setup -- available software

You may be able to cobble together something that will send out still frames every X seconds (the fewer frames and more seconds the better) with your current hardware-software combination. Eg., a server playing back the past 10 minutes of captured still frames, a server "relaying" the "current" captured frame set, or sending frames captured-converted to jpeg stills, etc. The idea would be to produce still sequences from the video signal.

If you (or someone else) are willing to put in some elbow time you can probably set up a streaming server with "free" software, buttuming you have the upload bandwidth to make it suitable for your needs.

I'm not sure if your current hardware would readily support streaming over IP or not. Been years since I've played with video capture cards, which is what I buttume you are using. Haven't even priced current, more capable capture cards. I buttume there are some reasonably priced cards that will aid streaming video.

Googling: linux streaming video server produced the usual suspects afaict. Worth a look. And note that some of the projects support Windows as well as Linux if that is a necessity.

hth, prg email above disabled