One little project I’m undertaking is to build a CCTV system for the house. A little background, last Christmas our place got broken into. Among other measures, a CCTV/camera system was something we wanted to install. The requirements are basically to be relatively cheap and preferably with motion detection so the cameras don’t need to be turned on constantly.

The biggest cost to the system is likely to be the cameras. For prototyping, I will use an old Ubuntu box and getting one camera to start with. ZoneMinder is the software that will be running on the Ubuntu box.

After doing some research, the D-Link DCS-920 will be the initial camera for prototyping with. It seems to be the best compromise between cost and features. It’s wireless and appears to have fairly decent image quality.