Video control: video surveillance of the house and site via the Internet

Recommendation points

• Placement of observation points
• Basics – camcorders
• What’s included in the hardware
• Setting up remote access
• Security measures and system protection

With the help of remote video surveillance, you will know what is happening in your house or area. If necessary, record remotely from surveillance cameras. Organize video surveillance of your summer cottage. In this review, we will analyze the construction of a modern video surveillance system with access from the Internet..

Placement of observation points

Start by choosing where to place your surveillance cameras. In general, a number of recommendations must be followed:

1. Avoid blind spots on major human routes.
2. Stairways and flights are viewed by the camera only from top to bottom.
3. Daylight should not hit the lens.
4. The only passages (checkpoints) are equipped with two cameras: general and close-up, aimed at the faces of incoming.
5. Sources of artificial lighting in the field of view of the camera should not be closer than 4-6 meters.
6. In long corridors, surveillance areas should overlap..
7. The higher the camera is, the larger the area covered by it, but the less detail.
8. All outer corners are viewed from both sides towards each other.

For some objects, the requirements may be more specific. For example, cameras in parking lots and vehicle passages are installed so that license plates and the driver’s face are visible. On the other hand, in large open areas, cameras are installed higher..

An important point: it is illegal to use covert video recording tools, but specialized security companies can help with this. In any case, the facility must have notice signs: “Attention, video surveillance is being conducted!”

Basics – camcorders

Surveillance tools are mind-bogglingly abundant right now, but we’ll look at a few specific examples and examples of their use. Here is a list of the most important characteristics for any camcorder and the criteria for comparing them:

1. Lens focal length.
2. Width (angle of capture) of the lens.
3. Camera resolution.
4. The presence of color in the image.
5. Video recording rate.
6. The presence of IR illumination.
7. Controlled swing mechanism.
8. The presence of a zoom (zoom).
9. Size and power consumption.

For each device, the characteristics can vary greatly depending on its purpose. Let’s consider examples.

Option 1 – BL-VP101 from Panasonic. This is a camera with good recording speed and a resolution of 640×480 px. The camera is quite compact and, despite its primitive appearance, has built-in mechanisms for face recognition, auto-activation and brightness adjustment. Ideal for entryways, elevators or offices to monitor workplaces.

Option 2 – Siemens CCIS1345-LS. This is a video camera for indoor surveillance with a resolution high enough for its class – 704×576 px and the ability to shoot in low light conditions. The camera is designed for use in IP-video surveillance networks, supports most protocols and has an internal buffer in case of a communication link break.

Option 3 – outdoor video camera Tesla TSP-6812FHP for recording Full-HD video. It has infrared illumination with a distance of up to 40 meters, a varifocal lens and an absolute degree of dust and moisture protection. Such cameras are best used for monitoring wide street spaces..

What’s included in the hardware

Typically, video surveillance systems use digital or analog-digital video recorders, in which the stream is recorded on a hard disk or solid-state drive. Upon reaching the specified volume, new video files are written over the previous ones, thus the depth of the recording archive is formed. Remote access to such systems is quite difficult to perform, because this requires an extended user interface.

The optimal solution would be to locate the server directly at the site – an ordinary PC with a total size of hard drives of about 150–250 GB for each camera, depending on the recording quality. To process streaming video with average quality, you also need about 100-140 MB of RAM for each camera, plus about 1.5 GB for the operating system and background programs. Thus, the entire system operates with about 4 GB of RAM memory, which means a 64-bit operating system is required and, accordingly, a processor with split cores running at 1.6 GHz or higher..

1 – IP video cameras; 2 – router (switch); 3 – server; 4 – internet; 5 – mobile client; 6 – remote user

This is where the main advantage of IP cameras is manifested: there can be an almost unlimited number of them in the network, they are addressed and identified as any device on the local network. In most software applications, cameras are detected automatically, you just have to assemble a network on Ethernet switches (switches) and properly configure: determine the IP addresses of devices, set the baud rate, security connection options and other settings.

Setting up remote access

To access your server from anywhere in the world, organize a high-quality connection with a real speed of about 5-8 Mbps. A number of applications need to be installed on the server PC, first of all – a program for multichannel video recording from IP cameras. Usually, manufacturers supply their equipment with proprietary software that does not cause questions in installation and configuration. If not, buy solutions such as GLOBOS or Cerberus. There is also free software, for example, Smart Start, which allows you to network up to 16 cameras with an archive depth of about two to three days, has functions for enabling recording by motion detection and some built-in protection mechanisms.

For remote access, it is better to use programs like TeamViewer or the SSH tunnel connection service. In any case, after starting the program and authorizing, you will see the desktop of the server PC, as if you were next to it, nothing complicated.

Security measures and system protection

There is a category of objects for which it is important to save every second of the recording, and you simply cannot do without the services of an experienced technical specialist. In ordinary cases, you must independently protect your system from unauthorized access..

The best way is to base the server on UNIX-like systems and manually configure access: open only the ports that are needed and controlled by the firewall, remove unnecessary software running in the background, avoiding hacking through vulnerabilities of other programs.

Windows systems are easier to set up, but here you will have to purchase an OS activation key, at least for one workplace. Also, don’t forget to install inexpensive anti-spyware and configure your firewall correctly. There are three main ways to access the system:

1. Through a remote connection by selecting a username and password. Use complex passwords in case-sensitive systems, combine both numbers and letters in the keyword, the optimal length is from 6-8 characters.
2. By infecting the system with malware that opens access without the owner’s knowledge. Therefore, no user applications such as mail agents and Internet browsers should be on the server PC..
3. By physically connecting to the cable lines of the video surveillance network. Protection against such interference is the manual distribution of privileges to all network devices, which can be very difficult with IP cameras: this is digital equipment, and it must have feedback with the server to perform a number of functions.

It is also important that the system not only prevents unauthorized access, but can also notify the owner of malfunctions, for example, about an attempt to write data to a medium or a damaged camera cable..