Want to set up a home surveillance system at home while having a bit of fun?
Here’s a bit of a guide of what to do – or more so what I did and how.
Originally this started as a bit of a project in my spare time, but after some teenage idiots decided to throw rocks and eggs at our place one night, it became more of a security thing as I wanted to catch those bastards!
Anyway, back to the good stuff. Not having a big budget, I decided to do a bit of reading and find how much a cheap setup would cost me.
First of all I needed a dedicated PC that I could ‘break’ and it wouldn’t be a drama. Easy – I have a few lying around here and decided to go with a IBM Net Vista PIII 850 with 256M RAM and a 40 Gig hard drive. It’s nothing flash but a good stable PC. I also needed a video capture (DVR) card and a camera. That’s where Ebay came in.
Ebay have these cheap 4 port capture (DVR) cards that you can pick up for about $10. There are a few different types, and if you pay a few more dollars you can get one that processes more frames per second (fps) at a time.
One thing I did read quite often is that with these cheap cards, if you think you can run 4 cameras at real time, then you are dreaming. One or two cameras is bit more realistic. Don’t forget this was more of a project.
The card I got was called a Pico 2000 DVR card
(Please take note of comment #1 at the end of the post),
and looks like this:
The card comes with Windows drivers, and I can tell you now that getting this card to work under Windows (XP) was a real pain (and didn’t work with the drivers supplied) . I will do a separate article about using this under Windows as it deserves its own post. I ended up using Linux for my project.
Now, the camera – again from Ebay. Search for ‘Nightvision camera’ and see how many results come up. You have a few options here as well. Whether you want a wired or wireless camera, color or B/W, and of course what physical size.
Here’s what I chose (but in a cream case). It’s a wired color camera, with 18 LEDs that does enable a bit of seeing in the dark:
To connect the camera to the DVR card, I will use coax cable and terminate RCA plugs at either end. Not too hard to do if you’re handy with a soldering iron. Note: As you can see there are two connectors for the camera. One is for the video signal, and the other is for power, which comes from a standard plug pack transformer.
Next article, I will get into the OS and software that i used.
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Dear writer,
Please note that the capture card in the above article is being referred to as a “PICO2000” capture card in eBay auctions because of the software that is being supplied with the card. PICO2000 is a registered trademark of our company and refers to our general line of surveillance software. The version of the software being suppled with these capture cards is a pirated copy of our original 1.8 PICO2000. The original software was made obsolete about 7 years ago and this pirate version appeared about 5 years ago. Since then it has been mass distributed with these capture cards to the point where the cards are now being labeled as “PICO2000” and the name is often being printed directly on the cards.
The use of the name and distribution of the software is something we are constantly battling, however, I just wanted to make clear that we do not have any claims on the capture cards themselves. From our point of view the cards do not violate any copyrights.
We offer a legal, legitimate and support Windows version of the software which will work with these third party capture cards through our distributor here:
http://www.centerlink-international.com
Thanks Michael for your input.
Only after I bought the card I found out about the pirated version of software supplied. Until I read your post, I did not fully understand how it all came about etc.
If I have incorrectly misrepresented your company or the PICO name, please let me know and I will adjust my post. In fact, I have added a line into my article to refer to your comment.
Thanks again for clearing this up.
Indi
(Site admin)
Thank you Indi.
I look forward to your follow up articles and hope you consider one of our software options for the Windows installations.
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UniVision Enterprise (Shenzhen) Co., Ltd
Tel: +86-755-82839147
Fax: +86-755-83438944
Add: 5/F, Block C, Shenzhen Academy of Aerospace Technology, No. 10 Kejinan Road, High-Tech Zone, Nanshan District, Shenzhen 518057, China
Email: david@uvel-cn.com david.univision@gmail.com
MSN: david.univision@gmail.com
Website: http://en.uvel-cn.com http://www.uvel-cn.com
Dear Madam/Sir,
Good morning!
I’m David, from UniVision Enterprise in China mainland. Below is the brief company introduction.
UniVision Enterprise(Shenzhen) Co., Ltd is one of the largest CCTV Camera manufacturers in China, whose factory covers 20,000 square meters. UniVision has researched and manufactured in digital security products over 10 years.
General Camera
Day & Night Camera
Outdoor IR LED Camera
Infrared Camera
Dome Camera
Spy Camera
UFO Camera
Mini Camera
IP Camera
Camera Boards (PCB modules for CCTV cameras)
Control Keyboard
Access Control System
Digital Video Recorder
Our products have approved some quality accreditations, such as ISO9001:2000, CE, 3C etc.
Hope to have an opportunity to cooperate with you!
Have a good day!
Best regards,
David Gui
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To the first poster :
If your software is made ‘obsolete’ – as you state – then it is now technically regarded as: abandonware.
This makes it license-free, to use for anyone.
So it would be weird to speak of ‘pirated’ copies of your free-to-use software.
If you made it impossible to buy a license for (this particular version) of your software, and left it unsupported, then it is public domain now.
Regards ,
Vince
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This is an old post, apparently, but still relevant and still useful. Thanks for the direction, brother!
This save me lots of time. I was planing to buy stand alone DVR then find out that Linux can convert my old PC in a Linux Wireless Security Surveillance System.
You write so well I am so much motivated to use Linux:)
Thanks for your writting.