IP netcam software with Homeseer; what to do?

[Mr Spock]

I've started to go down this road and read a few of the posts here and at the HS forum. I'm coming away with total confusion on the best way to go. Here is what I'm trying to work with.

I have 4 of the Airlink101 747 IP cameras. This does not seem to be a commonly used camera. It has PTZ, 2 way audio, JPG and MJPEG output. Airlink supplies setup and viewing software with it that's basic and generally OK. But I want to be able to use the built-in motion detection monitoring for MJPEG. This requires me to have a FTP server, which I've not setup and not particularly knowledgeable of.

I looked at Webcam XP. Most users seem to like this software. It has the FTP upload part. However it only partially supports my camera; no audio support when viewing the cameras. The Homeseer NetCam plug-in is described as very basic and buggy by users and HS does not seem to be supporting it much if at all. I also don't think it supports audio or PTZ.

So here are my goals:
1) FTP uploading of MJPEG files from the built-in motion detection monitoring. Management features would be highly desirable.
2) Ability to use JPEG and MJPEG with 2 way audio and PTZ in homeseer web pages. Not sure about details on this one, might be asking for too much.
3) Not looking for JPEG and MJPEG on portable devices yet. That can wait.
4) Currently I have one PC; my homeseer server/client touchscreen PC. Core 2 Duo 6400, 2.13GHz, 4GB, windows XP.

I'm a hardware engineer, so I'm knowledgeable on that side. On the software side I'm a newbie with limited VB.net skills, but want to learn.

What can you guys tell me?

Thanks.

 

[jharrell]

Welcome to the world of IP cameras with no standards.

I recommend CCTVForum.com for help from the pros, but they know little about hacking up a solution using home built software, they don't deal with that and buy real DVR server software solution instead costing $$$.

Big problem, most IP Camera's, NDVR's and software rely on an activex control if they allow web access at all, this is really not web, but IE/Windows only. I would really like to see at least a Silverlight based client with fallback to HTML/JPG.

Bottom line JPEG is a standard, MJPEG is kinda a standard, but neither isn't specific enough to cover how it's transported over TCP/IP, is it HTTP or RTP or just raw TCP? MPEG4 and H.264 suffer from similar issues, there is no end to end standard for IP CCTV yet so each camera is different and every piece of software has to basically have "drivers" to support them.

If your lucky your camera will support a plain JPEG over HTTP GET, so you can just grab it and refresh it when you need or use a web browser to do it, frame rate is poor but integration possibilities are high. MJPEG is not to terribly complicated if you are proficient in .Net to decompose into JPEGS for browser display, forget MPEG4/H.264 for rolling your own or displaying in broswer.

Axis cameras are good for integration because their API is well documented and they support plain JPEG over HTTP but they are expensive. They are even trying to work out a real standard including PTZ and audio, but it looks like blueray vs hd-dvd all over again with the various manufacturers.

I really like the price and features of Acti camera's, but not as well documented as Axis.

I like Luxriot for real software, runs as a windows service and not too expensive, relatively speaking, but they don't have an html/jpeg only interface.

 

[Aaron]

I posted the doc you need to see the commands in another thread.

 

[Mr Spock]

I can say this camera does have an Active-X piece of software it pushes out to the browser the first time it access the camera. It can also push out a Java version in-case of compatibility issues. I found that some Vista PCs with IE8 would only work with the Java version. However the Java version seemed to be missing some features.

Aaron, what commands are you referring to?