WHS as a Surveillance System? The Possibilities...

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dydx

Limp Gawd
Joined
Apr 24, 2009
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Im wondering about the possibility of using my WHS machine as a surveillance system for the home

There are some (USB or PCI) 4 channel DVR capture cards that you can get on eBay or DealExtreme for very cheap. Coupled with a good CCD camera (perhaps one with night vision), and potentially you can have a 24/7 motion detect surveillance system based on the WHS. But my house is fairly large, and it would be a pain to run wires everywhere, so Im also looking at adding wireless cameras instead. The hardware side of things shouldnt be too difficult, I can always take a look on eBay or at some local surveillance stores. If you guys have suggestions that I should consider for hardware, feel free to let me know. With 24/7 recording, I am wondering if this would be stressful to the hard drives, especially since my drives are not enterprise grade (a 640gb WD Blue and 1TB WD Green).

On the software side of things, I have found several programs such as Digiwatcher or Capture! that would do exactly what I want, which is to record footage and automatically delete older footage. I can run these programs as a service within WHS.

What I am really interested in is the possibility to do more than to just record. I think with Digiwatcher, I would be able to view camera footage over the internet. I am also thinking about the possibility to maybe have some way to arm the system when I leave the house, then have it automatically notify me (text message, email, phone) in the event that the motion detection is tripped? I am not aware of any software that has these capabilities, but it's just a fun thought I had.

Anyways, Im interested in hearing your opinions. Anyone done anything similar to their WHS?
 
I have thought about a system like this, I was not going to use WHS as my storage setup, but the ideas you have make it sound possible.
 
If you really want to set this up, go for wireless cameras with motion detection and triggering. I would suggest the axis range, more expensive, but are by far the best. They have things like pre-trigger buffers etc and depending on model this can be for motion detection or external sensor input. I use them hooked to a simple FTP for uploading image sequences after specific triggers. They are also essentially a small linux distro so you can hack in and update with whatever scripts you want - attach them to a web-service if you want.

nb if doing multiple then axis also do an encoder that takes 4 video feeds and give you the same functionality.

I also designed a system which is essentially a bank of 32 servers each encoding 8 4cif full frame rate CCTV video streams which is complete overkill for what you want and will eat your electricity bills (65% CPU usage on a XEON quad core 24x7) but it has the advantage that we can write custom plugins for what we need it for.
 
cyberjt said:
I also designed a system which is essentially a bank of 32 servers each encoding 8 4cif full frame rate CCTV video streams which is complete overkill for what you want and will eat your electricity bills (65% CPU usage on a XEON quad core 24x7) but it has the advantage that we can write custom plugins for what we need it for.
Click to expand...

is that for your home?
 
^^That sounds a bit overkill. Im now questioning whether I want to pursue this further or not. I do live in a fairly nice and safe community, I really doubt there is any crime here (if any).

My main interest is the possibility in having WHS be a complete replacement for my existing alarm system which has a monthly fee to it. What Im most interested in is the capability of not only video surveillance, but being able to attach motion sensors and have some way to "arm" the sensors when someone leaves the house (like with a touchscreen keypad?) such that the system can notify the home owner about any incidents when they are away.

Quite frankly, I think the current alarm company I am with is practically useless in responding to incidents. When my parents first installed the system in our house, I messed up entering the password and obviously got a call. All I said to the operator was "Oh my parents newly installed this. I must have messed up the password, Im sorry" and I basically got off scotch free. They didnt ask for any verification or anything.
 
I have used axis cameras for a few installs, and for the price they are great. I have also had great luck with panasonic NVR's.
 
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