Surveillance

Rick Stevens rstevens at vitalstream.com
Fri Oct 1 18:40:02 UTC 2004


Paul wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> 
>>I need recommendations on equipment suitable to capture such action at a 
>>distance of 200 feet. Audio only at night would suffice as long as we 
>>can show video and audio of similar events during broad day light. The 
>>audio is the part that concerns me. I may have to have the equipment 
>>outdoors to get good audio.
> 
> 
> Video camera with a date on while recording. Recording into PC with some
> form of date stamp and pgp signature, encode to some format of your
> choice.
> 
> Failing that, a couple of webcams (you can get them with pretty decent
> lens now) pointing at the neighbours house which are sound/light
> triggered.

D-Link's larger webcams use standard C-mount lenses, meaning that
they're capable of accepting any standard video lens including
telephoto.  Barring that, get a video card such as the Hauppage or
AverMedia and use a standard video camera with the appropriate lens.

You'd probably want a gun- or parabolic-style mic, as these are highly
directional and quite sensitive.  Visit your local electronic store
and find one that will work with your sound card or video card.

For recording software, you could try VLC, MPlayer or any other free
PVR software that works with Linux and handles V4L.  A google search
should reveal a bunch of them.  Many webcams now come with surveillance
software, although it's usually Windows-based.  Depending on the
package, it might run under Wine.  If you have VMware, all the better.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
- Rick Stevens, Senior Systems Engineer     rstevens at vitalstream.com -
- VitalStream, Inc.                       http://www.vitalstream.com -
-                                                                    -
-          Consciousness: that annoying time between naps.           -
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