So here's my idea, is it going to work?

[Phil.]

We bought a bunch of CCTV cameras for around the house a while back, i wanted them all wired into a pc then an elaborate bunch of modulators and convertors would output them to the tvs..Anyway that didn't pan out because i couldn't find a decent BNC capture card in time. So now they are wired into central splitter box for all the tv's in the house..

Idea now though is to get a TV tuner card, put it into some old pc and put it out of the way somewhere. Tune it into the camera channels and leave them open on the desktop at all times. Then set up some kinda VNC client on it so as to dial in and view the output of the cameras from work or where ever.

Would it work? What would work?

[silky666]

You lost me at "We bought a bunch .."
____________________
There's nothing that shouts "Poor Workmanship" more than wrinkles in the Gaffa tape.

Gaffa tape is like "the force" - it has a light side, a dark side, and it holds the universe together.

[apple tango]

How come you need as many CCTV cameras as the MI5 building?
____________________
CBR125 -> Bandit GSF600 '99 -> SV650 02

[Itchy]

[Phil.]

[bazza]

https://www.maplin.co.uk/Module.aspx?ModuleNo=46113&&source=14&doy=2m1

Probably should have thought it through instead of buying "a bunch" of cameras before finding out you didn't have a scooby WTF you were doing.
____________________
"That's it. You people have stood in my way long enough. I'm going to clown college."
'98 Ducati 750SS, '08 Suzuki GSX650F ©2004-2014, Bazza's Harmless Banter

[Itchy]

[Phil.]

[Phil.]

Been messing about today with the old pc seeing what i was able to do with an old tv card i found. So got that setup in this old pc and it found the cameras no problem;

https://img58.imageshack.us/img58/5418/photo2rb6.th.jpg

Unfortunately there was no auto channel switcher on the software, but no problem i thought, will be controling the desktop so changing the channel wont be a big deal.

So i set up TightVNC on it and opened it up in Jaadu on the iphone. And no picture from the PVR software! No idea why it's not outputting video, codec i guess. Youtube videos come through, very slowly. But that wasn't helping. I tried active webcam and that'd of been perfect but it can't switch channels on the tv tuner automatically. So only option there would be to buy 3 more tv tuners and have it cycle them. Too expensive.

I went back to messing about with the PVR software and found this auto channel flip thing which would put screen shots of a few channels in rotation and the iphone picked them up!

https://img383.imageshack.us/img383/7295/photojb0.th.jpg
https://img522.imageshack.us/img522/6715/photo5ai6.th.jpg

So now the PC is out of the way with only a power, network and tv cable. Static Ip and VNC starting at boot to make sure i can always access it from the phone.

Edit: Setting up port forwarding was pretty easy so can now VNC into this pc from anywhere using the dyndns address and see if anyone is breaking in. Total cost £0

[ZaphodBeeble]

Wouldn't this work better?

Ebay Item

I think the VNC problem with the CCTV capture is because the capture card uses a hardware video overlay instead of a software display mode. If you can switch the capture software to display in software mode it might help.
____________________
Current bike: VTR1000F Firestorm. Previous: Firestorm (written off) - XJ600 Divvy - NSR125 - DT125 and a load of offroaders.

[Jamrock]

Chances are the video isn't coming through on the iPhone because of 'overlays'. Go through image settings on the PC and see if you can find any settings to do with overlays, it will basically stop the seperate screen (in your case VNC) from seeing the running video.

[Phil.]

Thanks a bunch! I disabled video overlay (removing hardware acceleration) and can now get a much better picture from the cameras. Granted i have to switch the channel on the pvr but much improved!

https://img386.imageshack.us/img386/1038/photove8.th.jpg
Must remember to shift that cobweb!

BNC capture card would of been the better option for this over the web stuff but after the first cheap card i bought turned out to be useless and for the reasons i explained earlier about the small tv's the way it's worked out is perfect.

The only problem left to sort out really is the opening it up through the browser. I have opened up 5800 for tightvnc and when i point to the dyndns address everything seems to connect ok, password prompted and it's accepted but then i get the following error:

Error: Unknown RFB rectangle encoding - 208

I have had a look round for a solution to this but only mention is acknowledging it's a bug. Any ideas?

[ZaphodBeeble]

Have you tried putting in the IP directly instead of using dyndns?

Try turning off Copyrect encoding. Try using another VNC server (I have used TightVNC with RealVNC server) and/or client.

What screen resolution are you running on the server? Try adjusting it down a bit and also reduce the colour depth to 16bit
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Current bike: VTR1000F Firestorm. Previous: Firestorm (written off) - XJ600 Divvy - NSR125 - DT125 and a load of offroaders.

[tsmith]

use webcamxp available from https://webcamxp.com/home.aspx

and for connecting remotely, try logmein free from https://secure.logmein.com/home.asp?lang=uk

webcamxp supports multiple cameras on a variety of inputs. logmein streams so quickly you can almost watch TV over the internet using remote control if you have a 2mb+ internet connection