Surveillance setup

[ochadd]

Of all the requests IT gets in a week this one was off the radar. I was asked to setup a couple of surveillance cameras at a remote office for "cheap".

The two areas to be monitored are 20-30 foot away from where I'm thinking of placing the cameras. It would be on the "roof" of an office inside a larger building that is kept around 40 degrees. It's protected from water but it is rather cold. The closest PC is 25 foot or so away from the camera's location.

After a little research I'm thinking a 4 port DVR card inside of the manager's PC is the way to go. Stick a TB drive in it and be done. This kit: Newegg link

Whole kit is $340 or so and then electricians have to get me power up there which shouldn't be that big of a deal. Can anyone recommend a better solution?

 

[saltyvinegar]

I have run surveillance for a couple years using completely different types of cameras. This kit does look good but you need to make sure the included software is going to recycle hard disk usage when it runs out. If your recording continuously on 4 cameras @ 640x480 with 1TB you'll probably get 30 days of recordings, all depends on which protocol they use, may only be 15 days. The 4 cameras share the 30fps bandwidth so if anything were to happen would 7fps be enough to catch/identify an intruder? Your options are USB cam or network cam. Network cams are expensive but can "monitor" and save enormous disc space and don't struggle with bandwidth. USB struggles with bandwidth but if your mobo has 2 or more usb controllers then you could run 2+ cameras on one system. Locating an intruder is more difficult with hours/days of recordings but motion detected clips esp. when emailed make response/searching quick and easy. Dlink makes a good product with decent software. Digi-watcher has inexpensive software for usb cams with all the functionality. You would need to use different branded usb cams too, software doesn't detect same branded cameras properly.

 

[ochadd]

I've gone away from the DVR card to a full DVR setup. We are only planning to record from two cameras and use motion detection so space shouldn't be too big of a deal. If it doesn't work we aren't out a heck of allot.

This is the kit I'm looking at. Newegg link

 

[OutHouse]

http://www.costco.com/Common/C...=en-US&whse=BC&topnav=

coscto is also running a good deal on a system with two wired and two wireless cameras
http://www.costco.com/Browse/P...ang=en-US&Sp=C&topnav=