Security system, which camera??

[ross franey]

Hi! this is my first post so go easy on me! I have been looking into this as a final year CS project.

I have seen lots of project examples on youtube use the official camera module for the pi which is cool, but I feel it won't allow me to do all I want and as such think a USB Webcam is the way to go but I am looking for suggestions.

Essentially, once movement is detected (PIR), the camera will begin recording. However, I want the option of opening up a live connection to the camera also via my mobile device/pc etc (perhaps could be done through skype or something similar).

Is this doable or do I have to settle for something like still pictures being uploaded/saved to a dropbox. Thanks.

[peterlite]

How do you detect movement? Start a Pi project to watch the image and detect movement. This will be independent of what you do with the video afterwards.

Connecting to your phone... Do you use the Internet so you can watch from another location? There are articles and posts about connecting to the Pi over the Internet and through local networks. You can work on this separate to your detecting movement.

The next decision is streaming video or sending files. They use different protocols. You need to open different ports for different protocols. Do you control your router and your Internet connection?

For the camera choice, you would choose a different camera if you need high resolution in low light or infrared or very wide angle or telephoto. A simple cheap USB Webcam would be a good starting point then you can upgrade to a different USB camera later if needed.

Some security cameras are Wifi which is useful when your Pi is indoors and your camera outdoors.

[RaTTuS]

I would suggest that the foundation camera is the best choice
you can easily record all the time to a circular buffer in RAM and dump it to storage if you get a movement [either by PIR or via motion]
a NOIR camera will work fine in the dark [with separate IR lamps]

[peterlite]

https://www.raspberrypi.org/products/pi-noir-camera-v2/
After the comment by RaTTuS, I looked at the NoIR camera again. The new version 2 is 8 MP. Worth a look. AU$36 here.

How do you protect it against the weather? Can you use IR through glass? Plastic?

[peterlite]

From what I read, IR works through untreated glass. Did not find anything about plastic.

[jbeale]

IR illumination can work through most glass or plastic BUT the light will channeled by the glass and some will get back into your lens, if it looks through the same piece of glass. If you look at most security cameras with built-in IR LEDs, you'll see a dark ring around the lens which is where there are two physically separate pieces of glass to break up the "light pipe" effect. The exception is "dome type" cameras, but they don't work well if there are any dust / dirt / fingerprints on the inside or outside of the dome.

IMHO, serious camera installs use hardwired ethernet, and generally PoE (power over ethernet). Wifi can work most of the time, but it is simply not as reliable as a wired install, and you still need a wire to provide the power anyway.

You can do motion-activated recording and streaming with either a USB camera or RPi "official" camera. The latter has better performance on the RPi platform in general (one reason is USB-2 bandwidth limits), and it is more cost effective vs. a USB camera.