Recent forum posts have gotten me interested in the idea of using CCTV to monitor my staging yards. What kind of cameras are y’all using and where do you get them? I’d prefer a web based implementation so I can watch on old smartphones, cheap tablets or the JMRI monitor.
The cameras usually come with the system. You can buy more, if needed. Most entry level systems are two-camera and can be set to stay on either channel or to switch between them, although 4 channel systems are available and fancier monitors offer split screen options in addition to switching the entire view. You can also buy switches so you can have more than one camera on an input.
I have a WiLife internet video camera, but have never hooked it up for anything. Something similar could put you on the web. Another way is to use a video output jack on your CCTV monitor to deliver video to your computer, then to the web. The CRT and LCD Harbor Freight systems I use both have video and audio output jacks.
Thanks, Mike.
I guess I misused the term CCTV. I was thinking about connecting a few of the amazingly cheap USB webcams to the railroad computer and creating an in-house web page so I could watch from any device I might be using in the train room.
My control panels will be low cost or recycled tablets using the JMRI web interface. I’m thinking they could do double duty as video monitors to watch the staging tracks as required if the video was also web based.
Yeah, that would be something else. CCTV (Closed Circuit TV) has been around since the days of the vacuum tube, so nothing that advanced. Just a video (and usually audio, too) signal down what is essentially your private cable TV network.
The WiLife thing could be a starting point. It’s 7 or 8 years old technology, likely superceded by something way cheaper (than ~$200 IIRC) than it’s cost. It’s a one camera device that is IP addressable so gives you the basic of what you’re after. Bur repurposing old phones, tablets etc would be cool and pretty practical, too.
I started off simple about 20 years ago and kept adding to the system as I learned more and as my “needs” increased.
What I use now is a Geovision GV1480 card in a dedicated computer with a 2 tb hard drive. I use this for monitoring and recording cameras throughout the layout AND home and property. The cards are on sale now but mine was about $950 two years back and I put it in a Dell Studio XPS that I only use for the security video.
http://www.palmvid.com/content/categories/dvrs/sub-categories/dvr-cards-pcs.html
The Geovision offers lots of monitoring options, I can check on things anywhere I can connect to the internet and there are lots of smartphone options.
I only use 16 cameras but I can expand to 32. Most cameras I bought on Ebay for a tenth of new cost (Pelco is a good brand) and a few I bought new. I have a few network cameras but they can get pricey as the specs go up.
Cameras are a great way to keep “track” of what’s going on at the layout!
Have fun, Ed
Huh, I thought CCTV stood for Closed Caption T.V.[}:)]
Mark,
It probably does, too. In our modern times, the idea of a TV being physically wired to something to work is rather passe, so I think the acronymn has been repurposed to a related use. Evolving terminology in technology is interesting that way many times.
It goes to show our age, too!
When I was a kid if you knew what a superheterodyne multiplexer was, you were talking space-age lingo!
Today you would have to go a museum to see a superheterodyne!
[%-)] Ed