For reasons I wont go in to I need to move my PC from upstairs to downstairs. As such I'll need to rerun all my cabling. So I'm windering about a network solution instead. I dont want to use wireless, but have some homeplug adapters I can use to send ethernet over the mains wiring.

The camera I have currently cost about £70 for a sony ccd non-infrared bullet camera. I'm happy with it but the next camera will be infra red.

So what can I get that will work with ZM and enable me do do what I need to do, without spending a small fortune. It will need to be weatherproof too.

Or are IP cameras simply still way more expensive than their traditional rivals. I'd want to spend less than £200 ($280 I believe)

Thanks

I know you said you don't want to use wireless, but a modifed dd-wrt or openwrt router running in repeater mode or even client bridge mode would save you a lot of headache. I've got mjpg_streamer and webcam's running at 30 frames per second at greater then 640x480 on my test routers with usb webcam's. Running a lan camera would be just as easy and you could place the repeater upstairs and then run the lan cable outside if your worried about the weather.

You can find the ASUS 520gu for cheap and have it running stable in no time, not to mention make money if you decide to run it in hotspot mode, that's another subject and I don't think most of the forum users are wanting to make extra money.

Did you limit the frames on those? Both appear to be capturing at <3fps, and the Axis is capturing a tiny image.

The feeds are limited in the fact my wireless solution is running on the upload of a remote wireless connection, just for testing purposes. I can get 30fps when using it on the lan. Plus the feed is going from Germany to the US on a VPS system and then to your browser where ever you are. The Axis cam I do not currently have control over per say so I'm not sure if the frames are limited on it, but I didn't limit it within Zoneminder. The same thing applies to it, the upload is coming from somewhere remote, to the VPS hosted server, then to your browser. I will admit, the PTZ of the AXIS is pretty cool to play with. Just click the control tab on either one of the feeds for control.

The point I was trying to make, and something I think everyone is missing, the average user or small business owner cannot afford these really expensive camera's, especially with the economy the way it is in the US. I have the solution to this as well as a way to make money. Before I wear out my welcome here in the forums I would like to say thanks to all that tried out my DVD. You know where to find me if you have any questions or interest in what I'm trying to provide.

I don't know that you're wearing out your welcome, you're just telling people that have been spending large amounts of money on hardware that they trust that it can be easily replaced by relatively cheap hardware. Sounds too good to be true. I'd certainly like to see otherwise.

Can you toss one of these demo setups in the direction of Curtis, Cordel, Phil, Lee, or someone who has time to test one and verify how well your stuff works? (Obviously I can't volunteer said people, you'd have to contact them or vice/versa).

-Scott

I personally have not had the opportunity to play with any thing like this out in a testbed production type environment. I have tried some wireless IP cams and didn't personally like them, while they worked for the most part, they were not reliable enough were I'd feel comfortable suggesting them as one of the cams I found would fall out any time my neighbor used her cordless phone regardless of what channel the wireless was on, and also her microwave was cheap and would also interfere with the performance and cause the cams to occasionally fail.
I don't like my cams to ever be down more than a second at a time but found the above interference would take them down for several minutes up to an hour when the neighbor is feeling chatty.

Watching the whole thing on a spectrum analyzer I was surprised at how susceptible 802.11b/g really is as the noise floor around the signal was not nearly high enough that I would have thought it a problem.

Recent events at work today also suggest I might be out of a job soon, although ATM still very uncertain, it strongly suggests such. Basically would mean I will not have money to through around at all to play with this as I had hoped and will likely happen in the next week to one month if is the case.

That is a good suggestion, I think I will do that. I will get with cordel and arrange sending one of these devices to be played with. My setup does not have to be wireless, the router can just as easy be plugged in and still host two or more usb camera's. I put a wireless device outside my building and it's connected to that hosted VPS in the United States, so the signal is going wireless to an open network from Germany all the way back to the States and it's been running non stop, except for when about 50 people at a time try to view it and of course bomb out Zoneminder.

I am very sorry to hear about the events at work. I know I have not been on this forum long but you've been very nice to me and I'm sure everyone in here wishes you the best. Hopefully things will get better over there and you won't have to worry about it. Keep in touch and let me know if there is anything I can help with. If you have time I'll send you one of these setups to play with.