Suitable hardware ?

[litb]

I've been away from using "PC" based machines for a long long time and have no idea whatsoever what is currently available, carrying out research for the best machine and thought it sensible to ask the experts.

I'm wanting to use ZM with a machine that takes up as little space as possible and runs as silently as possible, with a battery backup as well if such a thing is available.

I will be using four cameras, possibly upgrading to six at a later stage.

Ideally I'd like a way of sending an sms if power is lost (my alarm system has this function)

Can anyone recommend a cost effective solution ?or any experiences with different types of hardware ?.

I already have the cameras connected to a mac / Security Spy system running on my desktop, but after losing recordings for three days for the second time, want to use a dedicated machine.


Many thanks in advance to anyone who can offer help/guidance.

[montagdude]

I use one of these with four cameras, and it works well:

https://www.zotac.com/us/product/mini_pcs/zbox-bi325

It's not particularly fast, but it does the job. I think it could scale to 6 cameras with no issues as long as you don't try to run at a high framerate and resolution. My 4 cameras are each 1280x960, running at 5 FPS, and the load average is generally under 2 when running.

[alabamatoy]

Ideally I'd like a way of sending an sms if power is lost (my alarm system has this function)

Nearly any system that can send email can send SMS. All of the major vendors of SMS services have email gateways - Verizon's for example, is 10-digit-phone-number@vtext.com If you use another service, try sending a SMS text to your email address, then look at the received message and the "from" address should be the one to use to send to the phone.

As far as power backup, you can purchase any of a many different Uninterruptible Power Supplies (UPS), but APC is one of the more common ones. For Linux, you can run apcupsd and it will monitor the UPS and send emails under various configurable conditions (onbattery, offbattery etc) If you are running Windows, I think the UPS will come with something which serves same purpose.