Home surveillance

>>1122495
CCTV is generally an analog system. So you need dedicated wires to each camera, and some sort of capture card for the cameras. You can use baluns and use cat5, so you can reuse ethernet wiring if you have it already. For capture, there are USB versions available, so maybe you could get away with using a laptop? The cameras for analog are dirt cheap for low/medium resolution, and capture cards are cheap, if you have a dedicated box with old style PCI slots. Anyway, it's possible, but not overly likely you can get away without a dedicated box for CCTV.

IP cameras are more expensive, but still cheap. Problem being, the really cheap ones are locked to vendor software if you want to do more than browse to the camera's built in website. Ways around are found, but it varies from device to device. If you use the vendor services, often it pipes video out of your house, to their "secure" servers, so you can use their phone and webapps to view your camera from anywhere. These are companies that don't think to turn off telnet on the devices they sell. The quotes around secure should be highlighted. And underlined. And have a an image of giggling girls behind it.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=OY_fz16lPvE&t=5019s

Analog systems are not worth it. You may save a little upfront, but IP cameras are just so much more practical. If you have fast wifi you can buy a single IP camera without any other gear, that streams live 720p to your mobile phone or laptop whenever it detects movement.

If you know how to build a desktop computer it will be easy to built a network video recorder (NVR) that records IP cameras transmitted via wifi or lan. Or you can buy one:
dhgate(D0T)c0m/wholesale/search.do?act=search&sus=&searchkey=nvr&catalog=007003001002#Homesearch201403

File: lorex 8-channel.jpg (12KB, 350x350px) Image search: [Google]

12KB, 350x350px

i think your best solution is to get something like a Costco kit, all assembled with 4 cameras and a video recorder. you can probably get one with VGA or HDMI output so you can use an old monitor to view it. and with an ethernet port, or wifi, so you can pull out interesting bits of video.

computers are not well adapted to this task, coz too noisy, too much power, will die soon of they're run 24/7, probably will not restart recording if they reboot coz of power failure, or coz of windows updates.

>>1122495
You want a network based system (IP cameras) and a DVR to handle the video. Not an off the shelf DVR for your TV, a dedicated surveillance system DVR. They handle storage and deletion of video on an automated basis and it's much less of a headache. You can also connect to them from your computer and even your phone and watch the video.

>>1122571
The difference between an NVR and DVR can be confusing to many.

NVRs (Network Video Recorders) are for IP and DVRs(Digital Video Recorders) are for CCTV.

>>1122569
>computers are not well adapted to this task, coz too noisy, too much power, will die soon of they're run 24/7, probably will not restart recording if they reboot coz of power failure, or coz of windows updates.
Wow look at all this bad advice

Surveillance can be as expensive or cheap as you want, personally I plan on getting a bunch of PoE IP Cameras hooked up to a PoE ethernet switch, then control it with a Pi Zero running MotionEyeOS

>>1122626
>control it with a Pi Zero running MotionEyeOS

please tell us how you fared AFTER you do it. $50 says you are gonna be sorely disappointed by the results.

Get a NVR and use PoE cameras.
Foscam cameras.

Or if you have deep pockets panasonic cameras.