Linux Video Security

irishguy

i was wondering if anyone could help me i am looking to setup a system to record a video signel form a security camera. I already have a Linux server running 24/7 [Redhat 9 not fedora core 1 happy now fractal?? ,celeron 700mhz,192mb] and i wanted to modfy it to record video.Has anyone one seen anything like this? I was thinking of using a tv tuner with a record function or is there some specialized kit for this? any info would be of use

rob1891

you should find drivers for your tv card and some video capture software on this site:

http://www.exploits.org/v4l/

I think I have all the gear needed to put this kind of thing together, I might try with what's left of the holidays!!

irishguy

if you do let me know i have a TV anywhere card here but its a heap of crap wouldnt say there is even Liunx drivers for it not sure what chipset it uses. Do you think is would use alot of the CPU as the server is being use for other things as well

rob1891

your card is supposed to have a Conexant CX23883-19 chipset that is supported by this driver:

http://bytesex.org/cx88/

however as you can see it is in release 0.0.1, hrm a bit bleeding edge!

The video capture program I have in mind is called motion, it seems very configuable, it can take still jpgs when it detects motion, a frame every x seconds, take an mpeg video for x seconds when motion is detected, etc etc. So if your machine can't handle it initially you should be able to adjust until the load is okay. However if that driver is very inefficient ... have a look at these searches for info on what performance other people are getting:

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=utf-8&safe=off&q=+site:www.frogtown.com+motion+cpu+usage

rob

irishguy

Had a look at that seems to be what i am looking for.But i am not 2 happy about using that driver as its going to be running on a server and i want it to be stable. So i might just buy a new card any recomendations?? i was thinking of a card that would do most of the encoding on the card and reduce CPU usage. any recomendations? also looking for a exterior security camera [medium quality possible with motion detction] the area will also be flood lit

Typedef

I'd use a well supported webcam & motion (which kicks ass) tbh.

Better yet, get a noddy box ( an old p2 400 or some such) and use it as your 'security' server, and test out the driver's stability/usability.

If all goes well you can either keep the setup or integrate the card/driver into your red hat server.

*bump*

irishguy

i have a test pc allready ill play around with it. cant use a web cam as its going to be outside. was also thinking of using an infra-red cam,but i am not sure of the picture quality

parasite

saw this in linux format

rob1891

The setup is as follows:

933 PIII, 196MB ram, slow 4GB hdd.
Hauppauge WinTV-GO PCI card
old SVHS Camcorder

- Fedora Core1
- mysql-devel installed (missing from fedora dist cds but on ftp, can use mysql to log events, haven't actually bothered)
- vloopback installed (kernel module, can use to watch video feed while motion is processing it)
- ffmpeg installed from source (to encode mpgs, rpm didn't have .a library file needed)

Fedora is dog slow, top reports rubbish (0% cpu usage across all stats) so I haven't a clue what is going on. Motion is not adding a great deal of load as it seems as slow running it, as when it is not running. I have it running with the Gnome2 which is probably be the culprit, I just wanted a bit of friendliness while I worked out how to get the thing running.

The TV card was detected on boot, didn't have to do a thing, however I'd look into some of the multiple input cards for a security setup. My card doesn't have a video in, rather an RF in, but the camcorder came with an adapter to convert the video signal to a TV channel type signal that can be tuned in on the TV card. I'd also worry a little bit about what resolution the card provides for capture. I don't have a great TV card or video camera, so perhaps it is not surprising that I can't read numberplates from it, which might be of some importance! However if you were filling the frame with a persons body as they enter a door or something, it would be okay.

It has been very easy to setup, the mysql thing can be ignored if you aren't using that. The vloopback lets me watch the stream with xawtv while motion is running, but motion also runs a webcam server which is usable (not as good as viewing through xawtv however). ffmpeg was a bit weird, make install didn't move some of the files needed from the build directory, however I just pointed motion there and it works fine, builds a time lapse video for each day and also captures at a good frame rate whenever it sees movement.

It is useless after 4pm with the lack of light, not to worry. I'm going to switch it on tomorrow and stick whatever it grabs up on the web for your perusal. I've been quite impressed by this free opensource software.


Rob

rob1891

Follow the directory structure here from here:

http://www.neer-do-well.net/motion/

This is a timelapse mpg:

http://www.neer-do-well.net/motion/2004/01/05-timelaps.mpg

and as you follow the directories down you get more mpgs and stills. They are arranged by date and time. I'll take it down in a few weeks.

Somethings to note: B&W, it was in colour last week, not sure what I changed, but it could be the camera kicking the bucket. I could have captured larger pictures, I think twice the size, but didn't bother. It used 87MB between 10am and 4pm (what a nice student working day :P). Problems with interference ment it was hard to set a sensitivity that would detect a person walking across some parts of the image.

A better camera is in order and using a video in rather than RF would help a great deal. Hope you can get something going yourself,

Rob

irishguy

ok all the posts have been very helpful.
so what i am going to do is use a WinTV-GO [or somthing with good driver support] and motion.now my other problem is the camera i was looking at this
but i dont know how good the quality is i need somthing that will enable me reconise somone at about 20-30 foot anyone got any good ideas? also was wondering what kind of connector would be the standard for security cameras?

rob1891

Any card with a Btb848 or Btb878 chip will give you good results. The WinTV-Go cards sell on ebay for less that the cost of shipping! I don't know a thing about cameras, but the maplin website is recommending you buy coax cable and BNC connectors, so I'd imagine there would be a male or female on the end of the camera (BNC is what cablelink use on their little boxes).

I'm a bit of an idiot, there is an RCA (phono) jack on the WinTV-Go card and I never bothered checking what it did. It takes a composite video input, our camcorder has a RCA composite video output, so using that I get a much clearer image than having the RF converter and tuning in the camera. It just needs channel 1 to be set in the motion config file.

If you are to get that camera then all you need is a BNC to RCA converter, maplin have them on the site.

I'm going to rig the camera up another time as it's working in colour again and the RCA is so much clearer. I'll also set the capture resolution to the same as that camera you are looking at. WinTV can do a large 33KB jpeg grab, 7xx x 6xx resolution, which I guess is the same as a normal TV, at that res. motion uses 50% CPU! I'll note what it uses at 582 x 512.


Rob

irishguy

cool thanx for all your help rob

rob1891

I ran it again on Wednesday, almost 200MB from 9am til 9pm (not such a great student day!). Here is an example of a person at what I can only guess is 20-30 feet.

http://www.neer-do-well.net/motion/2004/01/07/10/14/34-06.jpg

Not very recognisable! I've used a photo camera to guess that the video camera had its lens set to 50mm, which is a pretty normal focal length. I'm not sure if you can expect to much more from a proper security camera, as it's quite a distance for a lens with normal field of view. If you are in Dublin then get a salesperson to recommend it for your security application so if it's not appropriate you can get cash refund

If you look at the pictures or any of the mpgs you can see quite bad interlacing effect. It only happens when capturing at higher resolutions (compare with the smaller captures from the 5th). I've read a little on this, interlacing is a fact of life in the analogue to digiatal transition, but it appears that any bandwidth problems on the PCI bus will make it worse. Some cards fare better than others and the solution seems to be disabling DMA or messing with IRQs or such bios related stuff.This could be a problem for you if it is to go in a live server that has other I/O business to attend to.

Hrm ... I'm I guess if it doesn't work then you shouldn't have sunk more than e200 into it

irishguy

been looking into it and i dont think it will do what i want for the price i want to pay, also reliased all the pci slots in the server are full.so it would be more expense to upgrade that 2.ill just stick more lights out there and hope for the best. thanx for all the info rob,been a great help