Cameras

One of the highest priorities in Project M was to provide the ability to remotely view most or all of the interior of the house to check that all is well.

The cameras finally selected were Panasonic BL-C131 IP Network Cameras. These are priced typically at about £200 as of October 2007.

Six of these cameras have been installed in the house so far and provide almost total coverage. This is due mostly to having chosen motorized cameras. Originally we were planning to use static cameras for cost reasons, but using motorized cameras has proved to be a big advantage. Firstly we've probably halved the number of cameras required to provide the necessary coverage. Secondly, the installation process was much simpler. With static cameras it's necessary to take great care selecting the installed positions, with motorized cameras you can take much less care and simply move the cameras (or pan them) to achieve satisfactory views.

The layout in the house is shown here.

 

Camera features.

• wifi - just require a power connection, no other wires required
• no PC required to run the cameras, they can be accessed from the internet since they each host a webserver
• each camera can use a different ip address and different port, making it easy set up access through your cable or adsl router from the internet
• each camera hosts a webserver from which you an view all of the images from the other cameras in a single screen at the same time. You can click on each image in this screen to log into the selected camera and view a larger detail image