Newbie needs help with hardware and cameras

[*Ben]

Hi, I am hoping to get some help in setting up a new zone minder installation. I returned home from work yesterday to find some parts stolen from my car so I want to get a multi camera CCTV system set up ASAP.

I have read through the Wiki and documentation but I’m still not sure what type of cameras to buy that will be suitable for my needs.

I plan on using a Mini ITX computer to run ZoneMinder which has the following spec,

Intel Core i3 Processor 3.3Ghz
8Gb RAM
500Gb Hard Disk

Space is very limited in the case and there is no room to fit a PCI card but I do have a few USB ports or I could use IP cameras. I am looking for a camera that isn’t too expensive but it must have good day and night performance, ideally with its own IR. I haven’t set up anything like this before but I don’t mind a tricky install if the results will be worthwhile.

Last night I set up an Acorn Ltl nature camera to watch over the car and it took some very clear day and night pictures, so I’d like to set up something with comparable quality if possible.

Thank you
Ben

[Carrier82]

If you want image quality and/or day/night performance, i'd suggest you stay away from usb webcams. The best camera for you depends on your needs:
- constant recording or motion detection. If latter, what technology
- what kind of illumination, external IR is usually better than in-camera, especially with image motion detection
- what kind of image quality do you expect, what are your needs for identifying objects
- where is the camera going to be located in respect to the area you are planning to monitor
- what kind of environment are you working on
- how large area are you going to monitor
- etc etc.

Try narrowing your needs a bit and search for alternatives and hardware reviews. Quality comes with a price. A budget solution with decent quality might be a second hand video server with second hand analogue cameras. This would be quite low resolution. The acorn seems to be 12MP. Don't know if the resolution really is that high (not interpolated), but IP cams with so many Mpixels cost a fortune. Usually more megapixels gives worse night capability when lower resolution gives better night capability if cell size remains the same.

[*Ben]

Thank you for your reply. Ideally I’d like to be able to have two cameras covering the front of the house, one wide angle to give a generalised view and another for a closer view of the cars on the drive. I’d rather have the set up record only when movement is detected within a boundary and the quality on the narrow angle camera must good enough to identify a person. Later on I might add a third camera on the garage to cover the length of the drive, but for now just to cover the approach will be fine.

The Acorn camera I think is 5m pixels that it interpolates up to 12m on its highest setting. Day and night quality are very good however its quite a narrow angle so I can only cover a small area, also the PIRs are very sensitive so people walking past on the pavement the other side of the road are triggering it.

Are there any good / reliable USB video capture cards that work well with ZoneMinder that I can use a normal security camera with? I do have a couple of analogue cameras that operate down to 0.05lux that would certainly get me started if I had a way to connect them.

Thank you
Ben

[*Ben]

Well a quick update with this, to get started I bought a cheap Tenvis IP391W IP cam which seems to work mostly ok with ZoneMinder. The logs tend to fill up with errors about corrupt JPG info but it doesn't seem to affect the monitor and record functions.

Quality of the image is good in daylight but in low light that suffers and the slow shutter causing some blurring of moving objects. It could also do with a wider angle lens but I will suppliment this with another camera when I find something better.