Security Cams

[JLB Please excuse me, I'm a Dick. Not a moron just a Dick Find all posts View Profile Close JLB]

Anyone know anything about security cams connected to your PC. At Sam's they have a four camera system using a hard drive to store the images. I believe for 30 days, then it storing over again.

Right now I have our home security cams connected to VCRs, with 8 hour tapes, which I have to change/reset.

Does anyone know if I can connect them to my PC and store the images there. Do I need a program to do that?

The two cams I have are wired, and have RCA connectors.

[taffy19 Gold Contributor Find all posts View Profile Close taffy19]

I know that you can with a Mac but don't ask me how. I am sure it is done with a PC too. Some of the techies will respond, I hope.

[gophish Super Moderator Find all posts View Profile Close gophish]

Jim, You need to first have a video board in your PC that accepts Input video.
Also, yes you will need some software to accept the video and store to the hard drive.
You can get a software solution pretty cheap if you already have some cams and your PC already has a video board that has Input jacks.
To do multiple cams you usually need a switching device to alternate the Input of the cams or you can purchase a video input board for PC with multiple input connections (when you purchase a turnkey system you usually get all the pieces, but it is also possible to put the pieces together that you already have by buying the missing pieces although it complecates it a bit).
You can also connect you cameras in by wireless transmitters or thru housewiring by using X10 connections to avoid having to hard wire the cameras from the camera site to computer, but, it sounds like you already have them to a central spot if you are already hooking them to a VCR.
One spot you can get some info on doing this is thru www.smarthome.com, they sell all kinds of home automation stuff.
You can also get a lot of info on some of the IT forums like
www.daniweb.com/techtalkforums
Also there is a lot of info on www.cnet.com
I know that this answer is kind of jumbled up but I'm just dumping stuff off as I think about it.
If you have any specific questions or want me to give you some more spcific info let me know.

[JLB Please excuse me, I'm a Dick. Not a moron just a Dick Find all posts View Profile Close JLB]

Do you think Win98 would be too old?

Thanks.

[gophish Super Moderator Find all posts View Profile Close gophish]

Do you think Win98 would be too old?

Thanks.

No, but you will need to make sure that whatever software you use works under 98.
I used to do some web cam stuff when I was using 98 but did not do any multiple cam stuff at that point.I would be more concerned that you have some pretty good hard drive space if you are going to store video.
Many of the available programs also stor snapshots of the web cams at various intervals which is probably what you would want to do.

[JLB Please excuse me, I'm a Dick. Not a moron just a Dick Find all posts View Profile Close JLB]

Here's my system.

500 mHz
9.20 GB free space on the hard drive
16 MB Voodoo 3 3000G Video Card

Will that handle it?

[gophish Super Moderator Find all posts View Profile Close gophish]

Here's my system.

500 mHz
9.20 GB free space on the hard drive
16 MB Voodoo 3 3000G Video Card

Will that handle it?

Jim, if you use a system that save periodic snapshots from the cameras you will probably be ok depending on how long you want to save them for. If you are thinking of keeping full video from 4 cameras then you will eat up that disk space very quickly.

[JLB Please excuse me, I'm a Dick. Not a moron just a Dick Find all posts View Profile Close JLB]

We have two cams. I don't know anything about saving snapsots unless the program I get would do that. Right now I am rotating 4-8 VHS tapes on each of two VCRs. The way it is we really can't leave, and whatever might happen will happen if we leave.

Anything better than tending it every 8 hours would be an improvement, but we had problems while we were in Florifa last January.

I'd like to be able to capture a couple of weeks without having to tend it.

[gophish Super Moderator Find all posts View Profile Close gophish]

We have two cams. I don't know anything about saving snapsots unless the program I get would do that. Right now I am rotating 4-8 VHS tapes on each of two VCRs. The way it is we really can't leave, and whatever might happen will happen if we leave.

Anything better than tending it every 8 hours would be an improvement, but we had problems while we were in Florifa last January.

I'd like to be able to capture a couple of weeks without having to tend it.

Jim, From what you said previously you have 9 GB available on your hard drive. In my opinion if you are trying to save video for that amount of time you will need a lot more disk space. What I was referring to about saving snapshots is that some of the programs save stills from the video at a predetermined rate, instead of saving the whole streaming video. The snapshots are then saved as still pics and take less disk space. The downside to this type of system is that you have gaps in your saved images depending on the rate of snapshots.
Again, my honest opinion with what you want to do and with the computer system that you have is that it is not going to work very well without upgrading. I think that it would end up costing you more than you would like to pay.
Another possibility is to look at a video recorder of some sort, they have both standalone one and PC connected and controlled ones. Again the good ones are not cheap.