Matthew Ames wrote:
"Grimly Curmudgeon" wrote in message
...

If you have an old PC spare you can do all that without the expense of a
dedicated PVR. A 4-way input card and some cheapy Chinese cameras from,
for example, this bloke...

http://stores.ebay.co.uk/DIGI-FLEX-U...Q3amesstQQtZkm

And set up a copy of Active Webcam from PYSoftware.
http://pysoft.com/ActiveWebCamMainpage.htm
This allows you to set up parameters for motion detection, disc space
and image quality and is very easy to use. You can also send video out
from it and view or record it from afar, either on your LAN or anywhere
on the web.

I did wonder about the PC approach, but I assumed (and hoped) a CCTV / DVR
box would be a cheaper route to take in terms of power consumption. The
only spare machine I currently have is a dual p4 Xeon 2.8Ghz, which is
rather greedy when it comes to electricity :-(


An old laptop has low power use, or you can heavily underclock a
desktop machine to reduce power use significantly. You'd need a
clockable machine of course, and it still wont be as mean as a
laptop. Fitting a laptop hdd would reduce power a little more. FWIW
486s had a much lower power use than modern machines.

For people that already have an always on computer, running the
cam app in the background doesnt add much power use.


NT