Video surveillance

Hardware
1

Hello community,

I'm doing a research on video surveillance systems because I want to initiate a business installing and maintaining these kind of systems. I've seen a couple of prebuild systems that can handle between 4 to 10 CCTV cameras. I think the main advantage of these systems is that it comes all bundled and ready to be used, and they are generally cheap. But I could not find any system capable of data mirroring or any kind of data replication. My concern is that if the disks fail, all the information will most likely be lost. So I am thinking on building a template computer running Linux or BSD to have ZFS control data replication between an array of disks. of course, this will increase the cost of such system, but it will offer a much reliable one.

I want to ask you what do you suggest me to do?
Will a cheap processor like an Intel Atom suffice the needs of such system?
Are there any capture devices that are compatible with Linux or BSD?

2

I have one


yes

compared to what?

not sure if mine does that

no, in my case I have 4 concurrent 1080p streams coming into the box, you'll want a quad core something, even if its a laptop

3

I'm divided on this. I totally get the appeal of wanting to build your own.

That being said, maintaining security software could be a major chore, especially if it's not mature or has bugs.

My dad just bought this system, and my uncle has one similar to it. FLIR is the parent company.

For $800 you get a pretty good system with PoE cameras, wire, etc. Just about everything you need to get started. It even accepts a 2nd hard drive for redundancy. Also, it has 'apps' for remote viewing, etc. I think it is good enough for now, and the price to piece together something youself, the time to support it, etc, probably more than warrants the relatively modest $800 price tag.

4

For residential or commercial? Commercial installs generally won't use consumer grade equipment. You need to look into local security supply houses and finding a product to rep like Pelco or Axis. Companies like these provide both the hardware and software complete with support. Being able to offer a client a system that is not proprietary and can be serviced by others is more attractive. Plus mfg support that you don't have to provide will save some bucks.