Dear people: I have a neighbor who's been vandalized twice to the tune of thousands of dollars. He is a nice guy who's only at his Montana home for 5 weeks out of the year. We have dumb kids in the neighborhood with too much time on their hands. I too am looking forward to all your ideas for remote monitoring in a cost-effective manner. Chris Daum Oasis Montana Inc. 406-777-4309 406-777-0830 fax www.oasismontana.com
_____ From: re-wrenches-boun...@lists.re-wrenches.org [mailto:re-wrenches-boun...@lists.re-wrenches.org] On Behalf Of Jason Szumlanski Sent: Tuesday, August 06, 2013 7:04 PM To: RE-wrenches Subject: Re: [RE-wrenches] Security cameras for off grid home: Who has a low wattage solution? This is not a full answer to your question, but I wanted to point out that live remote viewing is not a 24/7 need usually. I have set up a monitoring solution where the router, wifi, modem shut down on a timer at night and a DVR captures camera video from selected night cameras with IR. This can cut the energy requirement dramatically. If you do not need to send video over the Internet at times, this might be something to explore. There are plenty of PCs that draw far less than 100W, but I'm guessing it needs a PCI card for the camera input. That's a bummer. A laptop would be ideal. I am interested if anyone has any low power consumption ideas. Jason Szumlanski Fafco Solar On Tue, Aug 6, 2013 at 7:41 PM, Mick Abraham <m...@abrahamsolar.com> wrote: Hello, all~ My client likes to watch what's going on at his remote cabin while he's away. The problem is the energy impact on his battery system resulting from the presently deployed system. +++++++++++++++++++++++++ They're running a Windows XP desktop computer, circa 2010. That has software loaded which collects the video from about five cameras then the computer sequences that data out beyond the firewall, through the satellite modem, uplinked to Hughesnet then eventually can be viewed by my client far away. It's amazing this can work at all but just the computer box is ~100 watts running, 24/7. The cameras are relatively low in their wattage demand, and of course there's the satellite modem plus a router for the LAN "local area network" which are also relatively low wattage. If we were attempting "energy triage", the satellite modem and LAN wifi router are most justifiable in terms of their energy impact relative to the benefit my client receives while at the cabin. The cameras are next most justifiable but of course those are useless without some way to serve the data, but the power demand for that computer is making me cranky...and we don't want cranky. +++++++++++++++++++++++++ I think beginning with the Windoze operating system is one of the errors here but of course the video software is built for that OS. Surely someone sells a video streamer that's built from the ground up for this purpose and maybe running Java or some other code that's more appropriate to this solitary task. ...and surely that only needs a small percentage of the power demanded by a full blown Windows box. OK, I've done my part in describing the challenge. Now it's up to the crew to name that product! Just kidding; I will do some more legwork but it's often the case that the Wrenchies have already invented the wheel. The Wrench List is the Bomb! Thanks & Jolliness, Mick Abraham, Proprietor www.abrahamsolar.com Voice: 970-731-4675
_______________________________________________ List sponsored by Home Power magazine List Address: RE-wrenches@lists.re-wrenches.org Change email address & settings: http://lists.re-wrenches.org/options.cgi/re-wrenches-re-wrenches.org List-Archive: http://lists.re-wrenches.org/pipermail/re-wrenches-re-wrenches.org List rules & etiquette: www.re-wrenches.org/etiquette.htm Check out participant bios: www.members.re-wrenches.org
