[plug] open source video (burglar) surveillance

[Scott Middleton]

On Wed, 2003-09-24 at 22:48, Denis Brown wrote:
> I'm wondering if anyone has investigated or used open source software for
> the purposes of video surveillance for theft.   The context is my son's
> preschool where several pilferings have occurred.  I'm musing about the
> possibility of using (something like) the Wizard mini PC, the USB ports
> interfacing a video camera or two and the processing being done on a
> frame-difference basis mitigated by time of day, since we'd be interested
> in out-of-hours activities, region of interest and by the change magnitude
> - to eliminate false triggerings by dogs, cats, birds, ....

I've been playing with it lately see:
http://srgw.linuxit.com.au/~webcam/
apt-get install webcam. Webcam cost: $50
Later i plan on using webcamd but standard webcam it works quite well in
a screen.
(This is my home ADSL so don't expect good speed if a dozen of you are
looking at it at the same time.)


> The school is considering getting broadband so that would make keeping an
> eye on things (no pun!) a bit easier.  This should be a modern spin on
> something we (industry) used to use many years ago in the slow-scan TV
> line.   A frame capture device would compare successive frames of video
> and, in the presence of a significant change in a defined
> region-of-interest, would raise an alarm.   It was pretty crude by today's
> standards but it did the job :-)
> 

Webcam takes a photo and compares it with the last and if it is
different keeps it(Settings between 0-255). Every hour i run a shell
script which uses mencoder to encode it to a divx :)
http://srgw.linuxit.com.au/~webcam/video/
It is interesting to look at the file sizes of the AVIs as the are
indicative of the amount of car traffic outside my house (I live on a
pretty busy road).


> I've just done a bit of Googling and had a hunt on Sourceforge and
> Freshmeat without too much in the way of direct hits.  There are several
> commercial approaches, including a turn-key solution from iomojo, several
> offerings from Axis (manufacturer of video and other servers), etc.   I
> don't doubt there is something out there but neither do i fancy ruffling
> through Mr Google's nearly 8000 hits on "surveillance, video, linux, open
> source" and so on keywords.   Freshmeat turned up net-cam but documenttion
> is sparse and it seems to talk of Axis-2000-something cameras, probably
> related to the other Axis reference.
> 

For a relatively cheap hardware solution that i thought was pretty cool.
http://www.netcomm.com.au/one/support/specification/Network%20Camera%20Spec.pdf

> In summary: one or two (or more?) webcams connected (USB?) to some cheap
> Linux-based hardware.  Within a defined time of day, and region of
> interest in the camera(s) field(s) of view, a snapshot of the DIFFERENCES
> is taken.   If the quantity of different pixels is sufficient, this
> information is written to storage, along with the next to-be-decided (5,
> 10??)  seconds of video.   A flag is set, ready for interrogation at some
> future time.  A remote PC could then poll the surveillance unit from time
> to time and retrieve any captured "footage" for analysis / action.
> 

I haven't spent much time on it yet it is more of a proof of concept. 
The webcam has only faulted when a car hit a power poll outside and it
needed to reboot. The webcam i use doesn't like Linux a hell of a lot
and is quite slow. Since i have only tried 2 different ones in Linux the
best being the Logitech some experimentation will be needed. I don't
think the wizard will be able to do it but i maybe wrong.

I have been playing with a video camera and capture card also (not
available on web yet). While being a lot more expensive the quality is
excellent and the webcam package will still work.

Regards

-- 
Scott Middleton <scott at LinuxIT.com.au>

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