Hardware to terminate Q-See QM-7007B Cameras?

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fengshui
Posts: 1
Joined: Thu Mar 23, 2017 5:28 pm

Hardware to terminate Q-See QM-7007B Cameras?

Post by fengshui »

We recently bought a house, and it came with about 6 Q-See QM-7007B cameras installed around the exterior. The DVR equipment has been removed, but the cabling and cameras are still in place. I'd like to bring these cameras online with ZoneMinder, but need help figuring out what hardware I need to do so. I have a full Ubuntu 16.04 system sitting right where the cables terminate. What do you recommend?

Here are some possibilities I've considered:
  • V4L cards. This looks good, but I don't know if there's a V4L card that can terminate 6 cameras. I've used V4L to capture analog cable with MythTV, so I have some hardware, but not 6 channels worth.
  • External capture device that ZM can interface to over Ethernet. I've seen some reference to commercial products that can convert analog cameras to IP, which ZM could then capture, but these seem expensive. Are there cheaper ones?
  • Replacing the cameras with IP cameras, by re-purposing the 2 video and 2 power lines to create a 4-wire POE connection to more modern IP cameras. This would require more work, and I'm not 100% sure the cables would be able to provide a reliable Ethernet connection. However, if the QM-7007B cameras are not worth keeping, and modern POE IP cameras were cheap enough, I would consider this option as well.
  • Something I missed? I'm sure there are other possibilities that I haven't thought of.
I look forward to any guidance or insight you can provide.

--Ted
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