Surveillance Camera/Baby Monitor

H

harrison0550

Limp Gawd
Joined
Oct 28, 2010
Messages
129
First things first I am going to have to say please forgive me because I know nothing about surveillance cameras at all and sadly just googling isn't enough on this one, Second I dont know how to ask short questions so please forgive the long question.
Here goes, my wife and I just had our first baby girl 3 months ago and up until now she has slept in the bassinet beside our bed but now she sleeps all night so it's time to put her in the crib in her own room. Only catch is we are both heavy sleepers and so far I have not found a baby monitor I like so I want to wire in a camera above her crib and have it display with sound on our TV in the bedroom (that my wife must have on to sleep anyway). I also would like to be able to see and hear her from my laptop or the tv in the living room. Any suggestions on how I can do this and what the best cameras would be. Obviously it would need great sound and good picture quality in low light. Oh and the green wire in the pic below goes to the babies room hence the letter "B" (creative labeling right LOL) and currently is hooked to nothing so I was hoping to wire it in with that.

Thanks for any suggestions guys

Oh and here is my current home network if that helps any............
P1010263.jpg

homenetwork.jpg
 
This just really depends on how much money you want to spend but there are many ways to get the job done, im not a expert either with security cameras but i know that you can get ones with RCA ends for audio and video. Also you can get a device that changes RCA to Ethernet for a ip like camera (though now that im looking for it i cant seem to find it.) which would solve your watching on laptop issue, being that you are using RCA as well you can split that i have seen the RCA splitters at dollar stores for like a dollar and then you could maybe feed it to a rf modulator though you would need a better rf modulator that you can set the channel on it so you can put it where there isn't a channel in analog assuming you are not using digital boxes and there is a free analog channel and still have analog catv to your televisions. All in all what i described should work in theory but as for actually doing it before or if there is a better way i could not tell you.
 
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Thanks, I looked at the rca type cameras but I think that would limit me to watching on one device at a time. I was hoping to find one that I could wire into my network and switch between laptop display or bedroom tv or living room tv with picture in picture. I think maybe if I get a decent ip camera and wire that into my network and then from my htpc I could watch in the living room and stream to the laptops but still leaves me with how to get it to the bedroom tv. Maybe add another video card to the htpc? Then send the signal to the bedroom tv? I dont know. Oh and I was hoping to keep the camera cost under $200.
Thanks again!
 
Ohhh $200 humm well then not sure how much it would cost to peace my plan together.... anyways it seems maybe i wasn't clear enough though in my explanation which is probably way above your limit but basically the rf modulator would take care of getting the signal to the tv through your existing cable tv coax the device you are looking at to do this for you is this.

http://www.ambery.com/unauvitorfco.html

I have seen them on ebay for like 80 dollars.

not many rf modulators will do as you need one that you can pick your channel you want to use.
then you will need a standard surveillance camera that has rca out

for my example i will show you this camera i have no idea how much it costs and it dosn't have audio but this is the type of camara you would be looking for.

http://sites.google.com/site/topchips/20080922-3.jpg

you would also need to split that video and audio signal which can be done with one of these

http://media.uxcell.com/uxcell/images/item/catalog/ux_a06063000ux0002_ux_c.jpg

I hope you are still following me here so now we have basically the camara going to the splitter and one end of that splitter going to the rf modulator that would go to your cable tv wire and then going off to your tv's which are connected through cable tv. Now comes the part of getting the video on the internet. Basically what you would do is from the other leg of that rca splitter you would have a wire going down to a dvr card in your pc for my example ill show you this card.

http://image.made-in-china.com/2f0j00FBlatvchbDkV/USB-DVR-Card-CY-U1004-.jpg

but there are many that do the same thing and there is other hardware to do the same thing.
 
I actually have everything you listed above. The rf modulator the cable splitter, etc. I work for the cable company so I have all the wiring as well. I was just thinking that with the newer ip cameras out there now there would be a way to wire it in using the existing rj45 that I have ran to that room and tie it into my network. Then access it from any DLNA or UPnP device on my network. I could go the rf modulator way but then I would have to rerun all new wires to those rooms. Thanks for the help.
 
np, i dont think you will really be able to cut down on running extra wiring though i could be wrong im not a expert in this field. There are hybrid cameras like this one http://www.toshibasecurity.com/products/prod_camera_detail_ikwb02a.jsp that do ip and rca though if at the same time im not sure also the camera features POE.

Also i forgot they have these things http://www.traderscity.com/board/us...5-camera-cctv-bnc-video-balun-connector-1.jpg and you can use them with your cat5 cable and the other way i described to connect it all. They also have a version of that you can use for power.
 
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Thanks again guys. I really really like the hybrid cameras that do both ip and rca. Would be perfect solution as her room is beside our master so I could run the rca directly to our bedroom tv and have the rj45 hooked into the network as well for our laptops for nights when we are on the deck or downstairs. Now time to pick a good low light good audio camera. Has anyone used the TRENDnet products before? They have decent reviews on newegg and for the most part keep me below $200. Also I cant seem to find any info on whether I can use both the rj45 and rca output at the same time?
 
I cant say i ever have used a trendnet device maybe shinygecko or someone else has and can tell you more about it, the only ip cameras i have used are d-link cameras and they where pure ip camera, also i have no idea how well those will work out without a infared led ring.
 
The first security installation i did was with a dozen of those trendnet cameras because of their price. 3 of the 12 were doa and i was overall disappointed in the software and stability of the cameras in general. They would constantly require a power cycle. This was a few years ago and they might have gotten better since then but in my experience i would avoid trendnet cameras.
 
I was afraid of that. You get what you pay for as with anything. So far I really like the one above and maybe if I can keep the wife out of the newspaper and the black friday ads I will be able to order one. Just concerned about the low light in the babies room and finding the right camera with good sound as well.
 
I got a Foscam FI8908W earlier this year when I had some packages stolen out of my mailbox. It's actually pretty good for how cheap it was. It's even pan-tilt and there's an (independent) iPhone app for it. If you search on the model number, you can find quite a bit of user-based info on it. Right now, you can only get sound through the ActiveX viewer, but they're working on it for the "push" (Firefox, etc.) verison. A coworker was having a baby close to when I ordered mine, so he ordered one specifically to use as a baby monitor too. He has an iPhone and his wife has a Droid, so they figured that would be better than paying more for an actual monitor with a crappy, proprietary screen to watch it on.

If it still takes it, code cybermonday will get you another 15% off. If not, you can sign up for their demo to get 10% off.

I paired it with Vitamin D Video for recording based on triggers. It has decent, but not perfect, object detection. It does a pretty good job of capturing activity near my mailbox without having to manually watch 8 hours of video every day. Not really relevant for a baby monitor, but I was quite impressed with this software and figured it deserved to be mentioned along with the cam.
 
InvisiBill said:
I paired it with Vitamin D Video for recording based on triggers. It has decent, but not perfect, object detection. It does a pretty good job of capturing activity near my mailbox without having to manually watch 8 hours of video every day. Not really relevant for a baby monitor, but I was quite impressed with this software and figured it deserved to be mentioned along with the cam.
Click to expand...

what version were you running?
 
schnell said:
what version were you running?
Click to expand...

I tried out the free version and liked it, so I bought the Basic version for $49 to get more features, mainly higher resolution. The Pro version ($199) is the same, but it supports as many cameras as your computer can handle, whereas Basic is limited to 2.
 
The TrendNet cameras have definitely gotten better. I use about a dozen of them - never a reboot or restart and they work flawlessly for the past year.

Foscam has also been stable, but I have not used very many.

For the video surveillance software I use Security Monitor Pro. Works well with both the TrendNet and Foscam cameras.

I am also looking at Vivotek and ACTi cameras - anyone have experience with these?
 
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