Sorry, but this is going to be a fairly long post....
My boss has tasked a few of our guys (me included) with setting up a new system. Here's the description:

Around 10 cameras and microphones at various locations. The video from these cameras is to be fed into a distribution system that we already have onboard (RGBYZ Cable), from where it will be accessible to numerous flat panels. The sound is to be sent to an amplifier from where it will be distributed to different locations around the boat. So far, not to complicated of a task....however.........

He also wants to have the camera and sound feeds going into a server, from where they will be archived to DVD, and reviewed at a later time. I noticed the fact that having it go through a server will allow me to tap into it using our ship's Intranet site, so that's something in the planning for the future.

Questions:

1. What camera / microphone equipment should I suggest. The units need to be of nice quality, durable, and small.

2. How do I get the video / sound to the server, and what software would I need to make this all work? I'm thinking that more hardware will be needed as well, as I'd like to keep the video/sound feeds separated (video1/sound1 separate from video2/sound2), so that the option is available to archive each set separately. Also, the ability to put them all together, into a sort of "security system" setup would be desired as well.

I'll admit I haven't researched too much, other than tonight, mostly due to working really late this week. If anyone here could put me on the right track, I'd greatly appreciate it.

 

Doing this the analog way, ie. security cameras and microphones would be much more efficient and cheaper. Sounds like the best route you can get is oen of those 802.11b cameras that Linksys and D-Link sells. I dunno but isn't recording someone's voice illegal in Hawaii?

 

I work on a submarine, and this is being used to record training scenarios that we go through, so we can critique ourselves better afterwards. I can't go wireless, either, due to the environment the equipment will be in. I found this site tonight: http://www.americandynamics.net

Do you know anything about their products? Is there anything at CompUSA that I may be able to do this with?

 

Having worked with this in the past i have come accross a few products deemed as "usefull" I don't record sound so i'll just give the heads up on the video.

First we've been using a motion detection system that captures pictures by the second if a person falls under the motion detector. I can't for the life of me remember the name of the product (first started this thing in like 97' before i was even around the company). It holds ALOT of records on a machine thats considered perhistoric. Uses some kind of pripriotory card to handle the input streams

Second usefull tool as you've noticed are the wireless cams but there are also network cams which run on standard cat5 and host their own lil webserver of sorts on a basic linux system. Our current "basic" model allows attatchments but i'm unsure as to sound + video recording.

Here's a list of products that seemed interesting too
http://www.skywaysecurity.com/camerapackages.cfm
http://www.axis.com/products/index.htm (network camera we purchased)

Btw video servers are availiable though a lil costly to normal people. They are called DVR units. Search for some "Network DVR" 's or similiar on google for some interesting products like in marchonet.org

Good luck

 

Bump!
Thanks for the good information! I think I've found something for the video side of things (network DVR), but most of them only come with 1 input channel for audio. Anyone know of a DVR that has multiple camera / audio inputs?