i realise i could go with a cctv nvm unit with four sony style cctv cameras for a few hundred and be done, hdmi cable out into a box into the mac and use as a live stream, sure, that’s one way - i kinda like the idea of the computer units to eventually be able to run other tasks as well so scope for it to be bigger, also the nvm cctv would probably quite the power draw.
so kerberos.io dropped a new update and wow has it made all the difference, i can run at 720p now at a comfortable 25fps with the raspberry pi camera 2.1 and the picture quality and recorded streams are fantastic, it’s a great cheap alternative to cctv compared to spending a fair bit on another solution, i’m glad i experimented with it. now that version 2.4.0 is here and they improved the hardware encoding somewhat. the three biggest things for me were. .
- OpenMAX IL hardware encoding for Raspberry Pi camera - Optimized live streaming - Optimized h264 recording.
- Basic authentication for live streaming (username and password)
- Auto removal if disk is full
i really struggled with the raspberry pi zero w from the start with sheer grunt, it’s only got one cpu and it’s a tiny tiny little thing, just one cable and overall costs of like £30 - that’s the board, case and the camera. that’s nuts so to get a performance boost like this that really gets the quality up to 720p at 25fps for that sony sensor is awesome. i’m really pleased with it, now it’s time to build on this system and get a bunch more - i’d like to cover all sides of the van and build a system that just works, has a remote cloud backup and is eventually powered by solar so it can run without mains power, i’ve put together the upgrades list below.
hmm, upgrades.. ..
i’ve been wanting to swap out the iPad 2 for some time, it’s been a work beast for over five years and i still might have to use it or replace it with a similar model if we have problems with the unlimited 4g - it’s a bit of a gamble with the new £99 4g LTE router but i have to give it a go, it will bring much faster in general networking than i have now, not that it’s been bad but it could be a little faster and so offloading and moving data over the local wifi network a little less saturated.
i might also hook in single ethernet feed from the wifi point to a gigabit PoE switch to feed the cameras - local gigabit networked cameras so i can stream into OBS and also use the wifi backhaul to push the videos and images to S3 — reminds me, i gotta ask the team at kerberos.io if they can push the content say early mornings to the cloud, like have a setting for that
- replace iPad 2 with tp-link ac750 4g LTE sim slot unlocked dual band router to improve interconnect speeds between teathered machine and pi cameras (just hope i can still get away with unlimited 4g, good test!)
- 3 x raspberry pi 3
- 3 x raspberry cameras but not sure if going for noir or normally yet
- 1 x wemo insight switch to see what kind of energy a pi3 with camera pulls so i can do some basic maths for all four boxes to allow me to work out what battery power needs i would need connected to a solar panel on the roof to be able to run the whole system completely off solar and batteries, reason is to package all this up later on for other projects - can also use the memo afterwards to power down a power strip to reboot boxes, if wanted to be extra can get four to remote hard start any of the boxes if they hang
- (alternate) thought about Pi PoE Switch HAT for feeding the raspberry pi units so just one cable for easily/neater installation and the zyxel 8-port gigabit web managed PoE+Switch (8 port to phase our existing 100mbit)
i’ll make sure to put together a little video of the installation, putting it all together and the steps that i take but that video might take a little longer to do than most because i’ll spread the work over a couple of days i think, gradually adding to it all as i go — should make for a pretty nice project and as long as it goes together well i can start on a little service to package it all up ready to go, i’m sure i can think of a few people that would use this! :)
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