> On Mar 1, 2016, at 09:30, Michael Voorhis <mvoorhis(a)cs.wpi.edu> wrote:
>
> On 03/01/2016 09:20, Frank Sweetser wrote:
>> * Assume wireless will stop working, because at some point it will. Wire is
>> pretty cheap (you can get good prices on bulk wire at Monoprice), and it will
>> more than make up for it's cost in reliability, performance, and security.
>
> At some point you may decide that one shot every 20/30s isn't enough, so
> having a fast reliable network will become more and more important, as
> you add cameras and start increasing frame-rates. Depending on the size
> of picture you want to store (once again think about Frank's other list
> items -- image resolution & quality) you can saturate a low throughput
> network. If you're doing multiple cameras, or having multiple pictures
> coming into the server per second, post-processing of the images on the
> server end, you will end up with a CPU bottleneck.
>
> Look at the low-light performance of your cameras also. You don't want
> to record a blur ... you want a useful picture of a person that you can
> show to the authorities. Make sure the target area is well-lit.
>
Thank you for the responses. It sounds as if the PI is a good platform. The wired/wireless is a tradeoff like any other. I’m not sure i have any network drops in the area the camera would be mounted. If only i had the foresight it would have have network/power drops put on at the top of wall which we just installed this summer. If i can find a way do it nicely w/ wires i will. I will also investigate the frame rate. I specified 20-30s frequency more to emphasize that i didn’t require streaming video. It will take some experimenting.
I do plan to off load the images on a regular basis (perhaps even instantly) i assumed these devices were short on storage. I have a NUC on site which i use as a VPN/SSH end point. i will likely offload images to the NUC (and/or owncloud instance) then use mencoder (or something similar) to create a timelapse video.
It will be a fun project, hopefully i can carve out some time for it soon.
Cheers,
- brad
