I need to install 2 video cameras per room in 4 different rooms to allow supervision of university students talking to patients.
My IT department has suggested a Milestone system with Axis M1054 cameras.
My requirements are as follows:
- a supervisor needs to be able to watch one or two cameras at a time, including sound - in real time.
- the students need to be able to return to watch a recording of their own patient encounter - at a later time
- most likely, the software will need to be installed in a server center somewhere "out there" in the IT infrastructure - I will have no physical access to the server but will need to support/maintain the setup myself (as the IT department has sold out to the man from Richmond:-)
Does this sound like a problem/setup for ZoneMinder?
Kind regards
Soren - Denmark
Is ZoneMinder a suitable solution for this 'problem'?
Pretty much all that is doable, with one exception.
Sound. ZM doesn't do sound.
*However* - most cameras allow you to view them directly, and if using mpeg4 as a stream, VLC will certainly allow two concurrent streams and more. (In a web browser, many require activex which is IE only, and IE doesn't support mjpeg streams via <IMG> tags like FF or Chrome, so you can't put two on one website like that, /although/ you may be able to with some iframes. What I'm basically saying is if you want sound, you'll need some external method of addressing them. The Axis cams will allow many concurrent connections. For the user, this could be setup easily enough with shortcut icons, or even some fancy multiplexer to put several stream together into one image.
For the rest of it - events are stored by dates, both motion and normal record, so it would be easy to locate someone's own session if they knew the date.
Authentication for that might be a little tricky if you want to allow them direct access to only their recordings.
Remote server is certainly something ZM does well. You just need web access to view events and tweak zm, and ssh to setup and maintain.
I've never used milestone, all I know about it is that it's OH MY GOD expensive like most CCTV software.
I've also never used the M1054, although I have many 105 106 205 206 207 207w and 211 axis cameras running. It will almost certainly be suitable for both systems so you may be able to persuade your supervisor to give ZM a try, and if it doesn't work to their requirements, try again with the commercial - on the basis that the hardware will all be reusable; server and cameras. I think most will appreciate the budget benefits of zoneminder.
Sound. ZM doesn't do sound.
*However* - most cameras allow you to view them directly, and if using mpeg4 as a stream, VLC will certainly allow two concurrent streams and more. (In a web browser, many require activex which is IE only, and IE doesn't support mjpeg streams via <IMG> tags like FF or Chrome, so you can't put two on one website like that, /although/ you may be able to with some iframes. What I'm basically saying is if you want sound, you'll need some external method of addressing them. The Axis cams will allow many concurrent connections. For the user, this could be setup easily enough with shortcut icons, or even some fancy multiplexer to put several stream together into one image.
For the rest of it - events are stored by dates, both motion and normal record, so it would be easy to locate someone's own session if they knew the date.
Authentication for that might be a little tricky if you want to allow them direct access to only their recordings.
Remote server is certainly something ZM does well. You just need web access to view events and tweak zm, and ssh to setup and maintain.
I've never used milestone, all I know about it is that it's OH MY GOD expensive like most CCTV software.
I've also never used the M1054, although I have many 105 106 205 206 207 207w and 211 axis cameras running. It will almost certainly be suitable for both systems so you may be able to persuade your supervisor to give ZM a try, and if it doesn't work to their requirements, try again with the commercial - on the basis that the hardware will all be reusable; server and cameras. I think most will appreciate the budget benefits of zoneminder.
If all you need to do is listen to the sound in realtime you could rig something maybe with vlc, connect sound input to sound card and you can embed the streaming player in the montage page. I use vlc to play streams over speakers but the opposite seems possible too.
You could also archive the audio with maybe vlc or an external client, it won't be integrated and in sync with zm but at least you will have it to go back to.
Weigh the options between zm and china dvr. some newer ones claim they don't need activex to view but I never seen one that didn't. Thats only one of the things to consider anyways. You can evaluate zm for free...
You could also archive the audio with maybe vlc or an external client, it won't be integrated and in sync with zm but at least you will have it to go back to.
Weigh the options between zm and china dvr. some newer ones claim they don't need activex to view but I never seen one that didn't. Thats only one of the things to consider anyways. You can evaluate zm for free...