Viewing Camera's via Elk set up online?

[canadaland]

Hi - we are renovating, and are about to purchase the Elk M1, M1XEP, M1XSP, motion and glass break sensors, door sensors. This all started out by wanting an online thermostat

It has just occured to me that we will have the alarm trigger, get a message when it goes off if we can hook it up right, then - - not be able to verify anything either via video or audio. With the drywall going up next week, I am a bit worried now on quickly figuring out if we can bring cameras into the system. Can indoor and outdoor cameras, triggered by the alarm I guess, be wired to show an image online once the alarm is off? (Sorry, low tech over here sadly). I am thinking that we may need something else in addition to our current shopping list, but I haven't been able to figure out what the piece might be. Any tips are appreciated!

Also - I guess the alternative would be the listen in add on?

Thanks!

 

[forgets]

Elk doesn't make any camera's / DVR's themselves, but if you want to interface with ELKRP later to view the camera's on their software then they have a list of systems that work with theirs on their website. Wiring for camera's is definetly something you'd want to do before the drywall goes up, so you kind of need to decide what type of camera's you want to wire for, there's IP camera's which mostly wire via cat5e and power or normal camera's which wire with rg59 and usually 18/2 for power. Here's kind of a basic breakdown how each might work to help you achieve what you're looking for.

For IP camera's each usually has it's own IP address that you punch into a web browser (though you should check if there's an app for whatever smartphone you're using that support since most phone browsers lack the plugins necessary to view them natively) and you can view them that way. Once caveat though is most IP camera's don't have zone triggers, but you can always have your m1xep email you that a zone violation has occurred so you know to check the camera's. Also most IP camera's don't record their streams, so you have to have a seperate PC to backup their streams unless you're just ok with viewing realtime images.

'Standard' camera's usually hook up to a DVR, which if equipped for internet viewing can then be port forwarded through your router to view over the internet. You should also check and make sure there is a native app for your smartphone for your DVR as most of them user plugin's as well that most phone browsers don't support. Depending on which model DVR you get it may have alarm outputs that you can wire in conjuction to your elk to let it know motion is being detected in one of your camera's.

I have a system in place that allows me to do exactly what you're asking, however it's done with 3 seperate pieces of hardware / software that are all designed to work with each other, so again, research on what you buy is key, but i'll tell you about my system just to give you an idea. My home alarm is an elk m1, my DVR is a dedicated micros DS2 (digital sprite 2) and i manage both of them through an Iphone app called eKpro (made by a cocoontech member named jayson). Through eKpro i can view a realtime status of all my elk zones and turn on / off lights and outputs, then view live streams from my DVR as well. It was the easiest to implement system from what i researched as the DS2 was already supported by elk's RM software in case i ever get one of their touchscreens, and it was one of the first systems to be supported by ekpro (which a lot of other forum members will attest is definetly worth the price for doing HA on an iphone). You can always try out different DVR's or IP cameras (ekpro supports a lot of those too), but imho, i'd definetly go with a system that already has drivers / software out there to have it up and running on day 1.