On 11/23/2013 07:03 PM, Grant wrote: > I've been using motion along with USB cameras for a while. I need to > expand my monitoring capacity and I'm wondering if I should consider > changing software or hardware. motion seems fairly dead but is > stable. I'm reading conflicting info about the current status of > zoneminder. Is anyone using IP cams? > > - Grant > +1 for motion, it works very well (is being developed afaik), gives you live view as well as frame capture.
the bug bear for scaling up is you do need a usb controller (not just a usb port) per camera if you want anywhere near sensible resolution with usb webcams. however i find i can normally get away with two cameras hooked up to my routers so that i know who last touched them. this is not a motion issue, it is a hardware bandwidth issue. you might like to roll your own ip cam by taking a raspberry pi+gentoo+usb webcam(+powered usb hub) - still v.cheap. alternatively consider a dedicated mpeg2 (hmm showing my age i think) capture card which has multiple inputs. you can find a list of compatible devices at the motion website http://www.lavrsen.dk/foswiki/bin/view/Motion/WorkingDevices it is the hardware that is the issue -- not the software. if you are looking to have like a security wall with 30 odd cameras all showing the a different view of your secure area, all you need is a web front end that connects an html table with each piece of the table a live view of each camera. you could therefore easily have 100+ seperate computers each with two cameras, and the only piece of kit that would struggle would be the end computer that would try to stream 200 camera images scaled down to fit ! one more thing is that there is an android app (i'm sure there are many but i can say this one works) called ip webcam which lets you bookmark all your motion live cams, meaning that you could then check security status from anywhere using your phone. not sure if you can do that with the other programs, maybe someone else can chip in if they know. hth
