What Is the State of Linux Security DVR Software? 112
StonyCreekBare writes "I am wondering what slashdotters have to offer on the idea of Linux based security systems, especially DVR software. I am aware of Zoneminder, but wonder what else is out there? Are there applications that will not only monitor video cameras, but motion sensors and contact closure alarms? What is state of the art in this area, and how do the various Linux platforms stack up in comparison to dedicated embedded solutions? Will these 'play nice' with other software, such as Asterisk, and Misterhouse? Can one server host three or four services applications of this nature, assuming CPU/memory/disk resources are sufficient?"
Re:Direct tv uses Linux on there HD DVR's (Score:1, Interesting)
While they both say "DVR" in the name, Security Camera DVR's and TV DVR's are completely unrelated.
begging the question (Score:2, Interesting)
Can one server host three or four services applications of this nature, assuming CPU/memory/disk resources are sufficient?"
Uhm, by definition, yes.
Re:Zoneminder (Score:1, Interesting)
If no one is willing to provide those terms at the price you are willing to pay it is a good indication that at the price you are willing to pay you are citing unreasonable terms. The solutions are simple:
1- Increase your offering.
2- Decrease the specification of your terms.
15 min SLA @ 24x7x265 essentially means that 2-4 people have to be employed (depending on how many hours they want to work), and for JUST your company (since with a 15 minute SLA if two companies happen to break at the same time they will not be able to respond to both), assuming 1/5 pay for 'on call' and $60/hr for a zoneminder expert I would ballpark how much that would cost to ~ 700,000/yr
(24*7*365 = 61320 hour per year, $12/hr for within 15 min on call pay, $735,840 per year)
Somehow I do not believe you were offering that amount of money, which is sad, because that would be right in the ballpark for say what keeping millwrights on staff at an assembly line would cost (and consisting of the same sort of 'this is critical and cannot go down so we will keep people able to immediately respond and repair it at the ready')
kmotion (Score:1, Interesting)
From http://www.kmotion.eu
We've been testing it for a few months alongside Zoneminder, and it's definitely progressing.
I rolled my own (Score:4, Interesting)
Linux natively supports these devices, and the V4L2 APIs make it trivial to reads frames. Using libavcodec from the ffmpeg project you can encode the frames to practically any format imaginable. I encode all 5 cameras to MPEG-4 at 30 fps using minimal CPU power. All of this is possible with only about 500 lines of C code. Of course in my own version I've added a lot of fancy features over time and the project has gotten quite large with support for low-bandwidth streaming, crude motion detection, time-lapse video, etc.
I won't lie to you and tell you that the documentation for ffmpeg is any good. But there are tutorials out there that explain how to use libavcodec and everything else is a piece of cake. Don't overestimate how simple is it to get something basic working.
Re:Zoneminder (Score:1, Interesting)
Zoneminder is terrible for any kind of large installation. I tried to run 24 ip based cameras on quad-core with a nice fast raid array. The system load was crazy high all the time, and would lock up and crash the server every 60 days. For a small setup its fine, but anything larger that about 10 cameras gets overloaded with image processing. I really like Linux and linux based solutions, and looked everywhere to find something at a decent price that could handle 30 cameras, and didn't find anything. I ended up with software from Milestone that runs on windows (shudder), but it has been way more stable than Zoneminder, far less processor intensive, and has much better features and search. Search on Zoneminder seems okay, but becomes dreadful in real world situations i.e. find an event that happened some time in the last 24 hours, and give us all 3 camera angles for it.